June 28th 2010
Some of you already know that I aquired an all matching and minty 1944 M47C No4Mk1T sniper with transit case and No32Mk3 telescope last winter. It was one of those rare opportunities to make good on a boyhood dream to own one of these rifles.
Well, I took the old girl out to the range today and got her zeroed at 200 metres using 20 rounds of 92 IVI Ball which I happily discovered collecting dust in my ammo locker. I like suprises!
Truthfully though I never particularly liked the 92 ammo lot. I recall some real inconsistency issues - but moving right along its good enough for some short range trials.
I found the No32Mk3 scope to be very easy to zero. It took two-rounds at 25m to get aligned and another 4-rounds at 200m to get in V-Bull territory.
As you can see from the target below I have one more click left to be dead bang on.
Drum appears to be calibrated in 1/2 minute clicks. There is a sliding dial which has a divit that fits the nose of a 175gr FMJBT perfectly (the turret grease is still plyable). Simply hold the turret in place with your fingers and turn the dial until the '0' arrives at the ^ Indexing Mark. Bang, there you go, you're zeroed. The cams in the turret are calibrated to compensate for 174gr Mk7 (not Mk8 175gr) ammunition bullet drop which makes "Getting on Paper" out to 1000 yards a piece of cake. I have some old Mk7 ammo from 1948 and a few rounds left of the 92 Mk8Z FMJBT. I'm going to chrono both marks of ammo and evaluate what the performance variation, mean and standard deviations are.
Anyhow, I decided to see what kind of grouping I could get with this ammo at 200 metres.
Position: Prone Supported (sandbag to support the left forearm)
I worked very hard for each round. Had to take several rests in between shots.
The optics are not crystal clear and actually strain the eyes a little but this is still a dramatic improvement over open sites.
You can just make out the 2" black squares I drew on the paper with a permanent marker.
The vertical post makes defining the target point of aim much easier to quantify than conventional cross-hairs. I'll consider moving to a German No.2 post reticle on all of my hunting scopes.
Anyhow the results are below for your consideration. (Thank you cell phone camera)
I'm thinking perhaps some tailor made handloads might be an interesting examination of what this rifle is really capable of.
Some of you already know that I aquired an all matching and minty 1944 M47C No4Mk1T sniper with transit case and No32Mk3 telescope last winter. It was one of those rare opportunities to make good on a boyhood dream to own one of these rifles.
Well, I took the old girl out to the range today and got her zeroed at 200 metres using 20 rounds of 92 IVI Ball which I happily discovered collecting dust in my ammo locker. I like suprises!
Truthfully though I never particularly liked the 92 ammo lot. I recall some real inconsistency issues - but moving right along its good enough for some short range trials.
I found the No32Mk3 scope to be very easy to zero. It took two-rounds at 25m to get aligned and another 4-rounds at 200m to get in V-Bull territory.
As you can see from the target below I have one more click left to be dead bang on.
Drum appears to be calibrated in 1/2 minute clicks. There is a sliding dial which has a divit that fits the nose of a 175gr FMJBT perfectly (the turret grease is still plyable). Simply hold the turret in place with your fingers and turn the dial until the '0' arrives at the ^ Indexing Mark. Bang, there you go, you're zeroed. The cams in the turret are calibrated to compensate for 174gr Mk7 (not Mk8 175gr) ammunition bullet drop which makes "Getting on Paper" out to 1000 yards a piece of cake. I have some old Mk7 ammo from 1948 and a few rounds left of the 92 Mk8Z FMJBT. I'm going to chrono both marks of ammo and evaluate what the performance variation, mean and standard deviations are.
Anyhow, I decided to see what kind of grouping I could get with this ammo at 200 metres.
Position: Prone Supported (sandbag to support the left forearm)
I worked very hard for each round. Had to take several rests in between shots.
The optics are not crystal clear and actually strain the eyes a little but this is still a dramatic improvement over open sites.
You can just make out the 2" black squares I drew on the paper with a permanent marker.
The vertical post makes defining the target point of aim much easier to quantify than conventional cross-hairs. I'll consider moving to a German No.2 post reticle on all of my hunting scopes.
Anyhow the results are below for your consideration. (Thank you cell phone camera)
I'm thinking perhaps some tailor made handloads might be an interesting examination of what this rifle is really capable of.
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