Plecotus

Seems that, in my effort to be concise, I didn't give enough background.  Apologies.  I think the word 'bookings', without context, was misleading....

This is for one of the clubs I belong to.  It has an indoor range.  Currently, there are a number of more or less regular shooting nights and a number of ad-hoc sessions run by RCO-keyholders.  Members have no way of knowing, currently, if the range will definitely be open on a particular day/night and, if it is, whether whoever is opening it will have access to the armoury to be able to sell ammo and/or make club firearms available as not all range keyholders have armoury keys. 

Equally, if an RCO plans an ad-hoc opening, perhaps because someone has asked if the range can be opened to do something specific,  there is no way currentlly that said person can find out if anyone else will already be using the range when they get there. 

We don't need to manage commercial bookings or anything like that, just a simple(!) system whereby members can see when the range is booked, what it's booked for, what will be available in that session and, for RCOs, the abilty to post when they are opening and what will be available.

Does anyone have any suggestions or, beter still, experince of an online booking system that coulld be used to allow members to book range slots and see when the range is already booked etc? 

9 minutes ago, Catch-22 said:

Yeah that’s right. If you have some graphite (or similar) just swab a little on the internal plastics of the thrower. I believe Adam puts some details in his instruction manual.

I used HbN because I coat my bullets with it. But I could have also used just a dab from the Redding Dry Lube (graphite) I use for sizing brass.

Neither graphite nor HbN will affect powder in a case. I believe most powders have a slight graphite coating (or similar) applied to them anyway.

Coating the internals may help (it did for me) but may not. Worth giving a go. If it doesn’t work and loosening the screw doesn’t work either, no matter how much you loosen it, then it might be worth getting the v3. For me it worked well enough to not need to upgrade to v3. 

Thanks for that - very informative.  I'm going to have another go.  RS80 is the only powder I've really had any problems with so, if I can crack that, I'm sorted and if this worked for you, no reason why it shouldn't work for me.

I have looked at the V3 but I've not had the V2 a year and loathe to spend the extra cash, no matter how tempted I am.  To be honest, I load relatively few rounds with RS80 (I only use it for .338) that I would always manually charge and auto-trickle up but it would be nice to get it working properly.

Fingers crossed that we get back on the MOD ranges with HME calibres soon.  I think you shoot with ODRC so maybe catch up(!) with you there. 

18 hours ago, Catch-22 said:

On the outside of the round drum (thrower) there’s a small Philips head screw. 
Per the instructions, it needs just fine adjustments. Essentially it loosens or tightens the operation of the thrower, changing how different powders flow through it.

I’d originally tightened it a bit for use with RAMSHOT Magnum (ball powder) but had trouble with RS80. Unscrewing that screw, thereby loosening it a bit, made RS80 flow through it better. Also worth mentioning is the fact that I also followed Adam’s suggestion of coating the inside of the thrower drum with graphite or HbN (I used HbN on a Q-tip) to make the internals just that much smoother. That might have also helped a bit?!??

Thanks for that.  I have tried adjusting that screw a bit but it didn't seem to make a great deal of difference.  I ust admit, I didn't lube the inside but, based on your experience, it's probably worth trying. 

I've never used graphite of HbN before and I had to look up what HbN was.   I presume with HbN you just dab it onto the plastic?  All the products I've seen thus far seem to be powders so perhaps I'm missing something?

Sorry if I'm being thick....I just want to make sure I don't end up contaminating my loads with lube.

15 hours ago, Catch-22 said:

I still use the v2 and haven’t had issues with large kernel powders (i use RS80 too) since adjusting the screw in the Auto-thrower.

 

Could you tell me what screw you adjusted, please?  I keep having problems with RS80 in my V2.

1 minute ago, Re-Pete said:

Bragging again......??😃

Pete

I didn't say I ever actually hit anything 🤣

2 minutes ago, Re-Pete said:

The big problem is, if you shoot at Bisley, you'll never want to shoot anywhere else.................

Pete

Not true for me, Pete.  It's only 1,200yds at Bisley I believe. 

On 11/1/2019 at 3:27 PM, Miseryguts said:

Hi, yes, I load 2155(which I assume you mean in the above) to COAL of 2.800 to give a jump to lands of 45-50 thou, on top of 43gr N540 which last time out gave me 4 shot group 0.4moa at 200 yards - good enough for me anyway! The ELD(TMK) version of this (5155) is what is giving me the headache, as that bullet at COAL 2.850 gives a jump of 125 thou to land, and that means that the neck is only gripping about 0.25 inches of the bullet, nor will it fit the magazine and would have to be fed by hand. Not had chance to shoot these yet as we have gales and/or rain most days here - at least on the days I have time to go to the range as I have a shoot which takes up a fair bit of time also.

As I see you are near Chepstow, I assume you shoot at Severnside? Provided the weather is clement I will be there on Sunday to try these loads on the 200 yard range in the afternoon.

M

Not 2155 - these: http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2008/12/sierra-introduces-new-308-155gr-palma-bullet/
 

I've never actually shot at Severnside although have been to Rogiet Moor, with Offas's Dyke RC quite a few times.  My home range is Monmouth.

I won't be shooting anywhere today though.  Did my back moving a bag of cement on Thursday and several hours of gutter cleaning and repair yesterday didn't help either.  Hope you have a good day.

I regularly shoot the SMK 155 (2156) and found, after a lot of experimentation, that in my rifle, with my load, .015" will give me a sub-0.5MOA group at 100yds.  Might not be right for yours of course.  Only testing will determine but that's half the fun. 

Very close to the Monmouthshire border....and also, very damp!!

I'm all sorted now but many thanks

Hi Sean,

I'll take the ammo boxes if they are still available please.

Would be very grateful indeed if those brave early adopters on here could post their experiences with whichever of the upgrade components you've ordered.  I've generally found the V2 kit to work well with most of the powders I use but, like a couple of posters on here, when using RS80 for my newly acquired .338, it kept having problems which required eveyrthing to stop while messed about with it.

It's a great shame that QL is so far from reality with RS powders.  I've found it excellent with many other manufacturer's products so I'm guessing it's to do wth the data that RS have provided more than anything else?  I find RS powders excellent in every resepct and I too use them for just about everything.....would be great to see the QL problem sorted out. 

Plenty of options there - thanks chaps.  I very much appreciate all those who took the time to comment.  Now I just need to make a decision!!

 

Can anyone recommend a lading tray/block that will actually take this cartridge case?  I have a couple here which were all advertised as being up to the job but all were too small.  Ideally, something that's available in the UK or EU. 

Thanks.

Not sure if you're splitting this yet but i'll take the 100 Lapua 338 cases and the 50 Berger 300grn bullets if you are.

My .308 is one of Mik's and it shoots incredibly well.  .338 on order and eagerly anticipated.  Top bloke.

22 hours ago, Bob57 said:

That sounds like a nice job you have there👍, I'd say barn owls are definitely more prolific than ever, I've been foxing at night for a good 35 years now, and not many years ago it was a rare treat to see one while out, but these days I see them on every shoot I visit.

The one thing that upsets me most is how few swallows come back to the farm each year now, they used to fill the telephone line going across the yard, now we only have 1 pair nesting in the stable this year !!

Are bat surveys still done with one of those bat detectors ?, as watching them through the thermal is so easy, I often watch them zipping about when I'm waiting out for a fox, amazed at how sometimes it's so cold, and you can still see them out hunting.

We do have an owl ringing group come to the farm,  who have a few boxes on trees, one of which a stock dove flew out of the other day (last year had 4 kestrel chicks in there😃), and barn owls in another box, all were rung, as it's not going to be easy to get to the box without some effort clearing a path, we will have to decide whether to have this brood in the barn rung.

It's not a bad job really although I do more commercial (i.e. non-conservation and/or research) work than I would like these days. 

Barn Owl is a prolific breeder.  When the population crashed in the 1960s/70s, this was almost certainly a conequence of organochlorine pesticides.  Once these were banned, the population started to recover but there have been mroe recent declines too.  Lots of likely reasons behind this.....lack of food and a reduciton in available nesting sites have all been implicated.   

Swallow numbers in the UK have been falling for close to ten years now.  Most likely culprit is reduciton in insect food availability.  Almost all of our insectivorous specialists are doing badly.

For both these two birds, another problem has been a reduction in avaiable nesting sites.  

We use both thermal and infrared cameras for bat work.  Thermal cameras are excellent but none of them have a sufficiently large field of view to replace a human observer but they are great for locating roost entrances in buildings and particlarly so, roosts in trees.  Bat detectors are still used extensively because we can use the recorded calls to ID the bats.  Cameras can help with ID but cameras and recordings together are a powerful combination. 

You're spoiling your ringers cutting paths for them.  We almost always have to sort such things out ourselves and, after all, what else are trainee ringers for 🙂



 

12 hours ago, Bob57 said:

A thermal spotter must be a godsend if you do wildlife surveys, must save so much time, as I found out this evening when i quietly opened a small door into the big old barn to see if I could see the owlets, there's an old owl box, been in there years, and I could see the heat source coming off them through the ply sides, not sure how many in there but we'll leave them in peace and hopefully they'll all make it out☺.

 

 

We've got several in my business now and they are used most weeks.

Barn Owl chicks spend a long time in the nest so you should be able to watch the adults carrying foor in for a good while.  They may well have a second (or more) brood too.  They's been recorded breeding in every month of the year in Britain!  They are also one of the most widely distributed species in the world - they are found from here to India and many places in between.

If you werent so far away, I'd be asking if I could come and ring the chicks.

1 hour ago, Bob57 said:

Every evening for the last week or so we've had the pleasure of watching a barn owl hunt the back field while eating our dinner, and wondered if they have a nest in one of the barns, as it flies back to farmyard fairly regularly.

last night I decided to stand on the back of the truck, in the gateway leading into the field to shoot some rabbits that are chewing the wheat off, watching through the thermal when a barnie flies down the grass margin, over my head and into the old barn 80yds away, which i now know has a board missing behind an elderberry bush.

I spent the next 2 hours watching both going in and out, a magic couple of hours of viewing through the thermal and now I know where they are 😃.

Among other things, I do wildlife surveys for a living.  We use thermal scopes and cameras a lot, often for the kinds of things you descrbe here.  Lovely to watch too - sometimes it's not just about the science!

If you're charging any kind of fee or using it for anything which could otherwise be considered commercial use, you may well need a licence to operate legally. 

I've only ever enjoyed excellent service from this company and I always recommend them.

Cheers, guyys.  I already have the required scale in my lab so I don't need to worry about that.

Could anyone who has purchased an autothrow and autotrickler together recently let me know what the door to doo cost is likely to be to the UK, assuming that I'm not one of the lucky ones whose parcel sneaks through customs un-noticed?