No new rifleman badges for me this weekend, but I had a great time, and got a lot of practice with the new rifle. I had never really shot an AR more than a few dozen rounds since I built this one this winter, and I had never tried shooting past 100 yards in any organized kind of way, and never at all with iron sights.
My scores today went from mediocre to more mediocre as I got tired, but I stuck it out for the practice and just getting more familiar with this rifle.
Takeaways:
-Ten round mags will probably not get in the way of my support arm as much as the 20s did.
-Foam on the top of the stock helped today, so I might need to think about another better fitting stock
-I noticed (a lot!) that as I was squeezing the trigger, it was taking so much time to take up the slack that I would often need to stop, and take a new breath and a new respiratory pause, since when I tried to hold it for that long, I would get a little wobbly. Maybe a new trigger is in order, or maybe just faster squeezing.
-I still have no idea why everything drifted so much to the left this afternoon, but since it happened to so many of us, I have to assume it was probably the wind, even though it didn't seem that windy. it was most noticeable at 3 and 400 yards.
-I need to get more organized about the data logging. It took me most of the weekend to really start to get a feel for what information was helpful, how to sort it out of the information that was not helpful, and then how to keep track of it in a way that made sense to me. I finally started getting the hang of it this afternoon, but by then I was tired and wet, and not shooting that great anyway. I printed out a few pages of the PDFs that Ben sent out, but not enough of them, and then they got wet. A regular log book and a way to keep it dry would help.
-I need to read up on the AR military sights a little more. I still have no idea what the numbers on the elevation wheel correspond to.
-The standard iron sight front post is really, really wide, when compared to the AQT target at 400 yards! I think that the tech sights on my 10-22 have a narrower front post.
-I think I like the 1907 style sling better than the web sling. I wish had brought my 1907...
Thanks to all, especially the instructors and RSOs and the range for hosting us.