223 load for 600 yard F-Class

[Delaware_Ken]

Good Morning,

I am looking for a good starting load for my 223, 1 in 9 twist, 10 FCP-K that would be good for 600 yard F-Class. I was thinking about getting my 308 set up, but I really don't enjoy the recoil that the 308 dishes out, especially over 66 shots. I know the 223 probably wouldn't be as competitive as the 308, especially in the wind, but it sure would be more enjoyable to shoot. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Ken

[Aircraftmech76]

Single shot only at that range, but 24.5 grains of Varget under a 75 grain AMAX does 1" @ 300 yards out of my BVSS-S. Good luck and have fun with it!

Kevin

[Aircraftmech76]

Bloody hell, forgot to mention: bullets are .020" off the lands. I use a CCI BR primer as well. Rounds are seated with a Redding BR die.

[rsbhunter]

Havent shot further than 100 with this load, but it shoots 1/2" out of a Rock River NM A4 with a 1-8" twist....Sierra 77 gr. bthp with 24.3 gr of TAC....win small primer....One of the faster loads with that gr bullet, not sure your twist will stabilize, but just a thought.......rsbhunter

[helotaxi]

That 1:9 twist is going to be the limiting factor. If your rifle will stabilize it, the 75gn A-Max is probably going to be your best bet. If you had a 1:8 to work with, the 80gn A-Max would be the go-to.

[Team OSully]

My son was using a model 10 last year for F-class, with a 1-9 twist.

We found that the 69 grain bullets worked quite well with it but it didn't do well at all with the 75's. The best loads come from the Nosler Custom Comps 69 grain being pushed by 23.5 of IMR 8208 XBR w/Fed match primers.

The reason I didn't mention the brass is because that is what ended up giving us fits.
Everything worked perfectly and the rifle/load combo held 1/2 groups @ 100 yards, but at 600 yards, the point of impact would jump up and down as much as 10 inches (with no wind, it was vertical strings)... drove us nuts.
Ran a batch of 100 loads (Identical in every way) through the chrono and found a extreme spread of 109 fps... after doing the math, discovered that that load will change the point of impact 1" @600 yards for every 10 fps of velocity difference.... Then it hit me... the brass.

We were using Lapua but only had 100 cases. We weighed them to find out that the weight difference was as much as 1.2 grains.

We decided to prep, size, and sort a bunch of cheap PMC brass we had laying around. We sorted a batch of 100 to plus or minus .1 grain and loaded the up with the load listed above, ran them through the chrono, extreme velocity spread.... 17fps. After discovering this, we loaded up another batch and at 600 yards (with no wind)... a perfect score... if only we were that lucky in matches.

We rebarreled this year with a 26" Shillen 1-8 twist and are still developing the loads for 75, 77, and 80 grain bullets. But the first thing we did was pick up 500 Lapua cases (same lot number) and sort them by weight. Ended up with 3 batches of 70 cases that are identical in weight... the velocity spreads are only +/- 10 fps.
At 600 yards, we found that the most accurate load, ain't worth crap if it isn't consistent every shot. BTW... we even started weighing and sorting the bullets to identical weights.

That Nosler load is pushing max pressures BTW, so work up to it for safety's sake. It was at 2.26 COL... nothing fancy with seating depth.

[gina1]

I found the following load works very well for me. I shoot a 12FCV .223, 100-600 yards
Nosler prepped brass (fire formed once) CCI primer 450 small rifle mag, 23.7 grains of BRX 8208 powder, Sierra 69 grain Match King HPBT bullet, with an OCL of 2.360. Necking only after the first firing.
Hope this help

Gina1