Today was a good day for a range trip. Sunny and quite calm. I wanted to spend all my effort on playing
with the bloop tube, so all groups are 10 shots of Eley Target. I know Target isn’t the highest dollar ammo
out there, but I’ve tried almost all the Eley and Lapua offerings, and this
shoots well in my gun. Right now in America,
we’re in a situation where we take what we can get. Also, all the groups are off a rest and
rabbit ear bag, so my personal wobbling isn’t really much of the equation. The last detail of note is that I was using
50 Meter targets at 50 yards, so the targets were about 5 meters too
close. One deals with the hand one is
given.
First out of the gate, I shoot a couple groups with my
standard setup. This uses the 20mm of
sight riser I’ve grown accustomed to.
The groups were “meh” at 18mm and 20mm center-to-center of worst holes. Like so:
I put on the bloop tube.
Everything fitted up nicely. The aimpoint moved significantly. This is to be expected as the design kept the
sight at the same height from bore center, so it “flattened” out the triangle
between the sight line and the bore when it moved forward. I needed a total of 75 clicks left and 40
clicks up, to get somewhat recentered. Interestingly,
I forgot to tighten the nose screw for the first group. This configuration shot
a nice 15mm group. All groups after this
were done with the screw tightened and I did shoot another 15, as well as some 19’s, so I’m assuming no
effect on group size unless I do more rigorous testing. Tightening the screw did move the aim point up about 5 bullet
diameters.
The next test was to remove and replace the tube and see how
the point of aim changed. Zoinks! Jinkies!
The group moved 70 mm straight to the left. I didn’t repeat the test any. I know for certain that if I use this in a
match I’ll be doing a thorough re-zeroing.
One other item popped up that I’ll need to address. The front aperture appears smaller as you
move it forward. This decreases the band
of light around the bull. I'm on my maximum insert now, so I'll need to
get my hands on some more discs or a different front sight. I’m leaning toward the sight because the huge
bubble level blocks a lot of the circle that aligns to the rear sight, just a
visual thing.
So am I pleased?
Taking 18-20 mm groups down to 15-19 mm groups is nothing to sneeze
at. If fixing the aperture problem can
help a bit more, I’d say I’m very pleased.
Or, as the British say, “chuffed as a fart.”