12/20/2014 - Testing Hornady 223 Match 75 grain ammo

Today I went the the range before sunrise to shoot the Aero Precision AR15 and the LWRC IC-SPR AR15.  I also took the SIG P226 and Glock 19 for some practice with those too.  I was impressed with how accurate both the SIG and the Glock actually are.  I'm not going to be shooting either one of them 1000 yards any time soon, or for that matter even 100 yards, but they are quite accurate at short ranges if you aim carefully.  I should have taken a picture of my pistol target before I really sprayed shots all over it running around with the rifles, but I didn't.

Aside from just getting in some more general practice/training with these rifles with the PMC Bronze ammo, I wanted to test out the Hornady 75 grain Match 223 ammo in these guns to see if they can produce any tighter groups.  The Hornady ammo tested is fairly expensive at about $1 per shot as opposed to the PMC which I'm getting for around 34-39 cents currently.  While they certainly did produce better groups at 100 yards, I'm not overly impressed with how the Aero Precision shoots it.  While there are some 3 shot or even 4 shot groups that are really good, I was shooting 5 shot groups and each one of the groups had a "flier" or two depending on how you look at it bringing the groups to around 2 MOA overall.

The LWRC barrel seemed to like the ammo better than the Aero Precision as you can see from the groups.  The two on the left (upper and lower aim-points) are from the Aero, while the middle target and lower right are from the LWRC IC-SPR.  In review, I'm fairly satisfied with how the LWRC shoots this load given that this is a fighting rifle, rather than some long range target gun.

The scope Vortex scope on the LWRC also lends it self to a little better accuracy than the Bushnell optic currently on the Aero  because of a better reticle.

The first group with the Aero was the lower left and then I adjusted the scope to be better alignment for the upper right group.  As for the LWRC I shot 4 shots in the bottom right and then went directly into the center target without walking up to inspect the target.  Subsequently, I didn't make any adjustments in the scope to correct the groups from going left since I couldn't really identify the groups at distance.   I guess you could say that I just got tired of walking back and forth.  I should make about 3 clicks on the .2 mill per click turret and reset the zero on the cap.

2 groups with the Aero Precision and 2 groups with the LWRC IC-SPR.