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The AW 50’s are an excellent bit of kit. I had the older version with the recoil system ( aka spring) in the butt. This made the cheek piece non adjustable but you could add padding. I also only used it in 50bmg but I got excellent results with lathe turned solids. I always used a Nightforce nsx on that rifle. The USO would have been a non starter due to mounting height. I would strongly recommend against a USO sn9 scopes having had two 80mm and one 58mm ( the 58mm I only had briefly). The issues were the same - the scopes do not hold poi or track. To explain: what you have in effect is a front ball / gimbal joint and on the rear two pusher springs holding the tube against two micrometers, that it - that’s all that keeps the scope body in place, now when you turn the front parallax you can see the reticule displace a small amount left or right using a collimator. I came up with a fix of a round pin in the bottom of the gimbal that USO made and installed in my scopes, this solved the rotational shift but you still got vertical shift from shot to shot as you always have some play in the gimbal for the evelation and windage adjustments to function ( ever wonder why the old Unertil scopes had a spring over the scope tube - in essence creating a return to battery system). In the end the scopes to me were not fit for purpose and there are better systems out there as mentioned.

SRGNXL, personally I would not buy another one. The two sn9’s I had did not track as consistently as conventional scopes ( on my USO collimator) nor did they hold POI as well which came down to tolerances in the front gimbal. There were also other issues - a long / extended picatinny rail is needed to mount the optic and with a 80mm objective mounting height is very high ( obviously an adjustable cheek piece is needed). Resolution was excellent. The best of breed of that system would be the March Genesis. From what I understand there are no POI and tracking issues and the integral mount is of reasonable length. If your not doing a fully dedicated ELR setup a ‘ normal scope’ with either Ivy mount or Charlie Tac unit would be the way I would go for a more versatile setup.

Hi Dave, many thanks for the info. What is the recipe for 90grn SMKs with RS 52 please? ........time for me to get out of my 308 and 338 comfort zone.

Hi Dave, a mate has ordered a JP Rifles 224 V ( semi-auto ) which I think I will be doing the reloading for - so a good chance to steal it at every opportunity- really want to see if it will hold its own out to 800m and possibly use it in a comp or two. Already have the brass and Berger hybrids.

Hello Del, you need to speak to your fashion advisor Rory - I hear FKW West Ham kit with flip flops and a red beard is the in thing :) .........imagine the pink slacks and straw lot would be somewhat bemused. From what I saw at bisley ( admittedly some time ago) I guess there were a few distinct “culture” groups - camo everything - which can be a cost effective option from army and navy stores on line, Gucci Lakeland wear such as Direct Alpine and Bergen’s etc that cost an arm and a leg or best China 5:11 crap. Personally I would go with army surplus gore-tex rain coat and leggings ( Czech army surp gore-tex is excellent quality, if you can get it ), Lidl thermal underwear, spend money on quality socks and goretex boots ( Meindl) as nowt is comfortable if your feet are wet and cold and a half decent fleece and gloves with army surp trousers.

For rifle I have a pair of MSA Sordin with gel pads. They sit well and don’t interfere with the cheek piece on the AI. For pistol and carbine I have a pair of electronic peltors, they wok well and take a fair bit of abuse.

The best explanation that I have heard is that a three shot group can show you what does not work well in your rifle but it takes a five shot group to show you what does work well in your rifle.

Without wishing to go off topic I think the point is that temperature affects barrel node in several ways so you get a ballpark solution with either of the 2 methods. The nearest thing that I have to a br rifle is a Sako Finnfire Range 22lr. It has a diet of Eley Tennex - same lot number ( from one machine) - most would consider it fairly consistent ammunition. If I shoot it on my range over a year then group sizes at 50m vary from thumb nail size to little finger nail size. This is overall temperature effect I think. I can tune it on a given day by using a barrel tuner..... but that is it. I would also argue that centre fire BR shooters use similar practices with the black art of clicking a Harrell powder thrower to tune the load on a given day rather than using a barrel tuner.

OWC or Ladder - for me about as effective as trying to herd cats. What I mean is whatever results you get one day will change when temperatures change ( ok a bit extreme here, I shoot over a year from -20c to +35c) but changes in temperature will effect at least 5 things, primer ignition, powder burn rate, expansion / contraction of barrel, case and bullet friction. All of which will change barrel harmonics. I don’t even think it’s as simple as adding/ reducing powder to maintain a specific velocity. So unless you only shoot within a given (small) temperature range how useful / repeatable are the results?

Robin C, excellent reply. Just to add that at least regarding CZ pre EFP days when CZ was not in the EU, UK competitors could apply to the Czech embassy in London for a temporary firearms pass..... with a copy of competition invite or hunting invite. Protocol was to grant a 30 day pass. This should now be the situation if the U.K. leaves with a no deal. One fly in the ointment however is if one travels by car with firearms through several European countries ( assuming no deal and no EFP) you would need a temporary pass from each of the countries you pass through. Some UK competitors who came to a CZ comp earlier this year were anticipating this but obviously the EFP continued so no issues.....which was just as well as FLO’s we’re clueless.

Banus02, look at it this way Lowlight on the hide did a shoot off between the RPR and AI . The difference of outcome was not much and that’s from an AI guy. An RPR of course does not offer the same qualities as an AI but it gets the PRS job done. Andy, I think depends where peoples starting point is - if someone already has a good action (Tikka or better) there are great options out there for stocks, triggers etc but having just finished scrubbing rust off a mates T3 stainless that he put into a KRG stock, Bix n Andy trigger, had it threaded - it became an expensive way of creating a Tac A1. What I think the likes of the RPR and Tikka probably do though is make tuning a bog standard Remmy 700 action less desirable/ cost effective these days. OTT, if you like light - the Kelbly NYX is a nice option. The AI has other qualities though and balances really well with a 20” barrel- appreciation for them qualities comes in a few ways ( there is one range here - sort of a sand box that kills kit, especially gucci kit - the investment of flights, travel and all the rest of the organisational agro is depressing when your rifle takes a dump). Ai’s are reassuringly much more robust in this respect .

Wanted to add one caveat on this - what I am trying to get at, is on one hand why would you turn up with a tomato stick having spent good money on fuel, entry fees, accommodation, ammunition and food, not to mention time but on the other how to make stuff financially inclusive rather than exclusive. IPSC ( pistols) in this respect has been great in production and production optics class - you go out buy. £1200 quid CZ Shadow 2 and have at it.....just need to afford 50k round of 9mm each year to be really competitive.

As the PRS / Send It / PRL and other similar European “tactical” comps become more popular it’s worth trying to list some kit that may not be the cheapest or dogs dangles but is certainly able to be competitive at reasonable cost. In this respect these types of competitions should exceed with different courses of fire and varied shooting positions in allowing the Indian rather than the arrow to be what matters. Heres one take from a rig I set up for a friends client: Background is a AI with S&B optic - over £10k altogether which is not realistic for most folk. However in the foreground is aTikka T3 Tac A1 with Vortex Razor 4.5-27x56 HD2, Spuhr mount and fortmeier bipod for a much more wallet friendly £4Kish ( new) for quality kit ( to my eyes the Vortex had better depth of field and contrast than my S&B pm2 5-45x56. Mercifully the S&B has slightly better resolution and doesn’t weigh a ton). What’s other folks ideas of “good” kit for these types of comps that won’t break the bank and encourage people to have ago ?

Andy must admit the 3k is or was used by URNA here along with AIs . Of the ones that I have shot I preferred the old wooden stock to the plastic Mc Millan stock. An Etac stock for it would be a sweet thing.

Hi Andy, the bucket of cold water over it is that by the time it’s all sorted.......you have built a Tikka Tac AI for double the money. :)........ I’ll get mi coat.

Terry, sums It up perfectly I think PRS in the US is going down the same sad path as IPSC pistol. A possible way to “keep to the spirit” is keeping the COF as varied as possible and add in other realistic factors like all kit carried at all times and everything in one rucksack ...... Having to walk some with all your kit is not a bad thing.

A small thing perhaps and it may already be in place in the U.K. PRL type shoots but prizes - what has gone down well here (cz) is the usual prizes / cups for first 3 places and teams but then at least half a dozen lucky dip prizes- and good ones. This encourages more people to enter who probably know that they don’t have much chance of getting to the top of the leaderboard. In the end it is good business sense.

My 2p. In basic terms what you described is good. 1 thou expansion is good in a bolt gun - Ideally resizing would return it to 1.167” again ( or 2 thou below that in a semi-auto). To muddy the waters however, what the measurement gives you is one linear measurement that try’s to describe case expansion in the chamber and subsequent contraction that happens in all directions. Arguably its the most important measurement as if the shoulder is pushed back too far ( say 1/10”) you can start getting into case head / web separation and all the nasty consequences as the case tries to expand linearly beyound it’s failure point ( on firing first pressure shoves the primer back from the primer pocket to the bolt head until pressure shoves the case back against the bolt head - this is why some importance is given to reading ejector marks, flat primers etc - sort of like tea-leaves).

The USA company is RRS ( Really Right Stuff). However an Arca Swiss camera plate will do - available at any decent photographic outlet. Can be attached with a nut and / or bolt. Crap pic but you get the idea from the AX.

Hi Andy, many thanks for the kind offer to lend me a reamer . Atb David

tell me about it Dave.......just bought 340 pieces of new Lapua 338 ammunition for my new barrel........my wallet is now on a defibrillator......the kick in the nuts is the 500 or so pieces of once fired 338 Lapua cases sitting on the shelf that won’t chamber in that barrel (Krieger). The cunning plan in future is for Craig to order a reamer from Mr. Kolbe so we can both use the same reamer and hopefully avoid future jam doughnut ups.

A few thoughts and experiences. Most of the time FL sizing older brass will work in a new chamber and if the cases are a “bit” tight a small base die may work. However if the chamber was cut with a min spec reamer and the previous barrel had chamber on the larger side then sometimes you can get issues - just been through this with a 338 Lapua barrel. Fired cases through my original AI barrel or my mates AI barrel would not chamber be they unsized or FL resized in my new barrel. Once the cases expand towards the case head they don’t spring back like the necks and shoulders due to being harder and of thicker material.....so you get hard extraction. I modified a die to make a small base die as regular small base dies are not available for 338 lm unless special order from Whidden or CH4d. You can then get the rounds to chamber fine but after firing extraction is still hard ( this is not due to pressure or head space issues). At this point you either polish, re-ream the chamber or buy new brass / ammunition. Using new ammunition and 5 reloads after on 5 cases there has been no extraction issues at all. Still some merit in new barrel = new brass sometimes. Out of interest I tried two different Redding body dies for FL resizing but found no difference between them. Neither would close the bolt on a resized case fired from my old barrel in the new barrel. Factory ammunition would close and extract without issue. For me FL sized cases are not the same as new ammunition. Other alternatives such as roll sizing may also exist https://www.rollsizer.com/product/electric-drive-brass-rollsizer/ but at that price point it is easier to re-do the chamber or buy new brass.

For bag carry I use a clean bore snake for the odd emergency removal of mud or sand. Proper cleaning gets done with a Tipton carbon rod and bore guide. Using a bore snake for the bag also negates carrying a bore guide too.

With a 24 inch tube I would give 155 grain Berger Hybrids a try. At least try the bc data in a ballistic calc.

The CZ comps are similar ( Tiff and others have been to our comps). The kit will be fairly similar. Currently I am running an AI AXMC in 338 Lapua with break and 20” barrel, S&B 5-45x56 pm2 with LRR reticle and AI bipod. Fits into a Peli 1700 case for easy transportation. The AXMC has weight but with a 20” barrel is very well balanced. Balance is more important than weight to me, as already pointed out weight has many advantages - but balance has more. This is a big advantage for unsupported shots. In terms of Long range(ish) performance I have not noticed any disadvantage in terms of hits at 800m directly compared to my mates 27” AXMC. Caliber, on the face of it 6.5 Creed or 6.5x47 Lapua would seem to be the thinking mans best choices, however there are a couple of caveats for me - some of the the stuff I shoot requires service calibers only and as everything is shot without sighters you can sometimes see a bigger hole on target and not a smaller one. In the end the mix between caliber and barrel length comes down to wind drift which for the most part is due to bullet bc and drop which is due to bullet speed. An extreme example with 338 of something like a 300fps 790 ms vs 890 ms ( 850 ms is about Lapua factory) shows about 24 cm extra wind drift at 80Om in a 4ms wind at 90 degrees and an extra 1.3m of drop. A mate also has a different idea and has ordered a JP rifle in 224 Valkyrie. It looks interesting. It would be section 5 for the U.K. but it will be interesting to see if it can hold its own with bolt guns.