May God richly bless the people of Egypt. What a gift of hope and opportunity and potential they’ve been given today. I pray that they will use it to pursue peace– within and beyond their borders. And may America be a blessing to them as well. May it be so, gracious Lord.
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Of much, much less importance is the personal pleasure of trying again– and … finally … succeeding!– at sighting in the browning red-dot sight on the Magnum Research .17HM2 rifle.
I don’t think illness was the issue today, but I didn’t get up and going too well. Sunset was in full spectrum by the time I finally put it all together and got to the range.
Turns out it was a good thing that so little daylight was left.
I might have ended up spending hours and hundreds of rounds (and loving every second of it).
After all the trouble I’ve had with this rifle, it turns out that the answer to sighting it came with a plain piece of foam-core board salvaged from office discards laid “landscape” style and my trusty pair of Barska shot-spotting binoculars (one of many value-conscious buys from The Sportsman’s Guide).
From the 50-yard station, I targeted a 2-inch Shoot-n-C and hoped that the foam’s width would provide enough space to walk the shots in with sight adjustments. The rifle was mounted on a Stoney Point “PoleCat” tripod (the medium size is great for seated and bench level shooting).
And it actually worked. Wow, was it ever satisfying. I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s session now that the sight is dialed in.
The pictures that follow track the strategy and the progress.
I started with a small center spot on the big board mounted on yard sign clips in front of a full-sized railroad tie and the rest of the backstop.
With the illumination on a 4-setting for brightness, I used the center-dot-in-cross-hairs as the reflex sight picture and set it over center-red on the target and went one-eyed during the sight-adjustment process (force of habit, mostly). I worked in groups of 10 shots and usually checked hit locations after every five shots and made adjustments after every group.
The first five shots helped me find out a big part of the reason I’ve been having so much trouble with the sight-in. The sight was way off. The bullets were hitting high and right by about a foot– far too wide to be strikes on the other target boards I’d been using.
Some adjustments brought the next five in much closer, although my aim was obviously spreading things around a bit. This is not great by any standards, but I had an almost silly sense of accomplishment out of this inadequate but very clear progress toward the goal of getting the gun and sight to work together and get on target.
The next five are in the six shots low and right. The adjustments were too far down and not quite enough left. The next five (including one of the shots off the target low/right) got me inside the target ring itself. That’s 20 shots to a touch on center-red, and I was thrilled.
The next 10 shots went to another 2-inch target mounted lower-left on the board, and I was still trying to dial it in. Always nice to get a 9-ring hit, but the rest were just “close” … but not close enough or consistent enough.
The following picture is from a 20-round test group after I thought the sights were set. They obviously were not. All 10 of the next shots were left and a bit high. I adjusted the sight again. I should say I over-adjusted, because the next five were low/right. I finally managed to get on target after more adjustments. What a great feeling after almost two years of trying to get all the variables worked out to some measure of success.
The rest of the session was fine-tuning and checking for repeatability. I began to picture squirrels under the glow of the red cross-hairs. These ballistic-tipped Hornady rounds (with match-grade Eley primers) should make for very decisive hits.
Speaking of the cartridges, though, the stove-piping issue persists, and it’s not getting any better as far as I can tell. I may have to break down and try out the Federal HM2 rounds in the storage bin to see if the ammo is the problem, but I almost don’t want to know yet. Maybe I’ll make sure I’ve got at least 1,000 rounds through it before getting overly concerned.
I also need to keep in mind that I have installed a cheap, after-market recoil buffer. For all I know, it’s preventing complete extraction, cycling and re-chambering of the rounds. No panic yet, but attentiveness, yes.
After 50 rounds, I felt like I had the sight very close and any variations were more an issue of my aiming than the sights settings. With 10 more rounds, I targeted another Shoot-n-C 2-inch circle placed in the lower-middle of the board. I also switched the sight picture of the red-dot to the dot-in-circle image, and it helped me better frame the whole target inside the projected circle. These last few shots were also taken “two-eyed.” I really want to learn that style of shooting at least as well as the “squint-eye” style I’ve defaulted to all these years.
There are still signs of aim-float in these last 10 shots, but getting five of 10 on the 2-inch target from 50 yards was much more of a result than I’d allowed myself to hope for today. Even the two fliers on the left– nearly keyholed on each other– were encouraging as signs of aim consistency.
From what I understand, Teddy Roosevelt swore by the both-eyes style (at least until he lost the sight in one of them), and if it’s good enough for our Rough Rider President, it’s good enough for me.
This sight-picture is shot o’the day, because I plan to make it my sight o’the day tomorrow, and I’m expecting to have at least a couple more empty cartridge boxes by sundown on Saturday. Motivation and anticipation are both running high.
I’m very glad that I finally got to really, actually enjoy this rifle that I like so much. There’s nothing like a couple of center-ring hits to keep a guy coming back for more.
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Today belongs to Egypt, and I sincerely pray for God’s best on the people and the government-to-be as they go forward. May they, and we, act in ways which leave room for God’s abundant, generous grace to be poured out.
than to go out without eye-cover, especially with these rounds, but I forgot to grab them this time (it’s been a problem with small caliber guns, but that’s not good enough, and it’s no excuse).
Once again, I’m blessed more than I deserve to be.
Gun-a-Day 