MOA FAL

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A mediocre rifle and shooter might counter each other and luck have it being a small group.
Doubt they're gonna repeat it :)
 
The old timers' insistence on ten shot groups would drive modern recreational shooters nuts.
The target shooter's position that since his match was 20 shots, his rifle and load should be tested 20 at a time would be worse.

There was an old NRA article on group size statistics that concluded ten shot groups would average 30% larger than five shot groups.
 
Sniper School taught us to do 3 round SLOW FIRE groups, make our adjustments until we got our zero right and then use that zero to shoot 5 round SLOW FIRE test pattern groups. After your first 5 round SLOW FIRE test pattern group, you wait for awhile and fire another SLOW FIRE 5 round test pattern group. The idea is that your first sniper shot will generally be from a cold rifle so you want your shots to be close to examples of cool or cold shots. Some guys who are smokers will fire a round, smoke a cigarette and then fire another round allowing that the time delay between rounds caused by the smoking of the cigarette is about right for the follow-up shot. So timing of the shots is also important too depending on how accurate you want to be.
 
If you are getting into field use like sniping or hunting, the procedure changes.
It is going to be a LOT of trouble to get a cold clean zero. If you have a rifle that puts following shots near the first, treasure it.
A SWATter of my acquaintance was issued a pretty vanilla police Remington. He had to learn the offset between first and followup shots.
Some people report cold dirty shots going into the group. They will zero their rifle, clean it, fire one or more fouling shots and save it that way.
 
If you are getting into field use like sniping or hunting, the procedure changes.
It is going to be a LOT of trouble to get a cold clean zero. If you have a rifle that puts following shots near the first, treasure it.
A SWATter of my acquaintance was issued a pretty vanilla police Remington. He had to learn the offset between first and followup shots.
Some people report cold dirty shots going into the group. They will zero their rifle, clean it, fire one or more fouling shots and save it that way.

And some of us almost never clean the bore of a centerfire rifle for that reason. I don't remember the last time I put a cleaning rod down the bore of my .220 Swift; that rifle will still reliably put five 50 gr V-max bullets into groups that can be completely covered by a silver dollar at 200 yards.
 
And some of us almost never clean the bore of a centerfire rifle for that reason. I don't remember the last time I put a cleaning rod down the bore of my .220 Swift; that rifle will still reliably put five 50 gr V-max bullets into groups that can be completely covered by a silver dollar at 200 yards.


Yep. I quit cleaning my rifle bores all the time and I quit having weird wandering zero issues.

I may pull a single patch damp with kroil if it is a seldom used rifle and I am worried about corrosion. And then a dry patch or two.

Otherwise I don't clean them very often.

I had (sold it to a friend) a 220 Swift that shot the same way all the time, clean cold bore or warm fouled bore. That thing was a sweetheart but I just never used it after I got an AR set up with a silencer. For coyote duty the silenced rifle got grabbed every time.



Much of our obsession with cleaning guns is institutional behavior handed down from generations ago when ammunition was corrosive. In those days it was imperative to clean your gear.

With modern propellants and primers, it is largely a waste of time in many cases. Do you disassemble and clean the motor in your car when you change the oil? Or do you just change the oil?
 
For a hunting rifle for large game, group size really isn't important so long as it places the first shot very precisely.

But the only way to test that precision is with 5 shot or larger groups, but spread over a long enough duration to allow the barrel to completely cool. Or with a dot test. A target with 5 or 10 or however many dots, and one shot fired at each dot. Both tests would establish what kind of precision a rifle is capable of.

High Power rifle shooters need a barrel that will shoot well at a reasonably high rate of fire.
 
I had (sold it to a friend) a 220 Swift that shot the same way all the time, clean cold bore or warm fouled bore. That thing was a sweetheart but I just never used it after I got an AR set up with a silencer. For coyote duty the silenced rifle got grabbed every time.

That was fixable! Manual actions are always quieter at the ear than an AR or other autoloader. The .220 (center) puts down low 130s dBs at ear with my Furtivus 30 model, which is .30 cal. (The blazing fast round doesn't like smaller bore cans). I can shoot all day long without ears over prairie rat town.

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A target with 5 or 10 or however many dots, and one shot fired at each dot. Both tests would establish what kind of precision a rifle is capable of.

That is tough shooting. I used to do a little BR 50 with each shot fired at a separate bull. Overall spreads were larger than groups I could get after getting beaded in on a single target.
 
I have a FAL

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by the way, this really improved the sight picture for me:

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I was interesting in acquiring one because of its historical significance. I have a large box of technical reports I purchased at an estate sale and one of them has results of the Army tests from the early 1950's. The Army was testing various potential 7.62 Nato rifles and the FAL was one of these. These service rifles typically shot 4 to 6 MOA and that was just fine. No one expected target grade accuracy. Mind you we were just out of a war where towards the later end of the war, the US was experiencing 65,000 casualties a month. About 20,000 of those were KIA, the other 45,000 were in various states of disassembly, and the US was running out Infantry grade cannon fodder. I talked with a man, who decades after WW2 ,was still mad about being drafted at the age of 37/38, and he had three kids and a wife to support!. Today the civilian shooting community, is all "accuracy uber allis" but those who had served in the war knew of the low marksmanship standards around the second year of the war, and knew of, or actually saw troops going into battle with weapons they did not know how to load or shoot! Given that replacements were often lost, with all their equipment, in less than a month, no one could expect high standards of marksmanship from them. I believe given such conditions, target grade accuracy was traded off for function reliability, simplicity of operation, and ease of manufacture. Those who go to the range, shoot off a 600 lb concrete bench, will never experience the disappointment of having a weapon fail in combat conditions, in the face of the enemy, and so, priorities will be different. Those who shoot at ranges are not under mortar fire, artillery fire, or within the range of a Nazi with a MG42, which would eventually alter ideas of sticking your head out and looking for someone to shoot. If you can see them, they can see you.

I talked to one bud who was a NRA Highpower competitor and he had spent a lot of money trying to make a FAL a target weapon and he gave up the project. My M1a was wonderfully accurate and I earned my Distinguished Rifleman's badge and a Regional Gold with the thing. My M1a was not a combat weapon, heavy weight Gene Barnett barrel, heavy stock, glassbedded action, and NM sights. But it looked Mil Spec from a distance

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I wish you luck on turning a FAL into a target rifle. Now these groups were shot prone with a sling in 100 yard competition, but if you can do the same, or better, off a bench with your FAL, you will have gone a long way towards making your case that a FAL can be turned into a target rifle



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Go shoot some twenty shot groups like this, and everyone will be impressed!

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There is an excellent article at the end of the Oct 2014 Shooting Sports USA on group size and accuracy: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nra/ssusa_201410/ This foundational article was written by small bore prone competitors who wanted to shoot perfect scores. In small bore prone a Match is a 40 shot event of two twenty shot targets. The typical 1600 round Smallbore bore prone tournament is 160 rounds fired for record, divided up into four 40 round Matches. Therefore the referenced article assumes that a 40 round group is the baseline.

It is always amazing to find that so many internet posters regularly shoot inside these guys, but I never meet those amazing forum individuals at matches:

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As anyone can see in table six, at least at 100 yards, a five shot group is 59% of the size of a 40 shot group, a 10 shot 74%, and a twenty shot 88%. A three shot group is below contempt, but three shot groups are the current standard for the shooting community because the leaders of the shooting community, that is in print Gunwriters, have convinced the shooting community that three shot groups are an exact measure of accuracy and consistency. However, the in print crowd are paid a flat fee, about $400.00, are not interesting in spending a lot of money on ammunition, also they are not really interested in proving the inherent accuracy of the rifle they are testing, because if the weapon is really not that accurate, the manufacturer might consider the results unfair and a slur to their product. If an advertiser pulls their ads, heads will roll at publications whose sole source of profit is advertisements!

I also believe three shot groups has resonated with the shooting community due to the human desire for symmetry. Humans are far from rational, have lots of biases, one of which is a dislike of asymmetry and a love of symmetry. Suggest three shot groups and everyone thinks of a nice pyramidal shape with the point of aim in the middle. Very few three shot groups are clover leaves, in fact a clover leaf is pretty rare. Not that anyone notices. The advertising community caters to our biases with nonsense that appeals to us. And they do it all the time, with every product, and it works! The secret to magic has been stated as timing and misdirection, but a better way to state it is that the secret to magic is timing and human biases.

The FAL is hard on brass, if you fire unlubricated cases you can expect case head separations around the fifth reloading.

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The Lee Enfield is notorious for being hard on brass:

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As can be seen in the pictures, at least with my M1a and the Lee Enfield, lubricating cases will extend case life. This is only of importance if wasting money is an issue. I consider a penny saved, a penny earned.
 
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That was fixable! Manual actions are always quieter at the ear than an AR or other autoloader. The .220 (center) puts down low 130s dBs at ear with my Furtivus 30 model, which is .30 cal. (The blazing fast round doesn't like smaller bore cans). I can shoot all day long without ears over prairie rat town.

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What a coincidence!! We had the same rifle. That Ruger M77VT is an accurate rifle!!! The factory two stage trigger is excellent as well.

Right or wrong I am now down the rabbit hole of black rifles.

I still love my bolt guns for hunting squirrel and deer. But for recreation I am usually shooting an autoloader.
 
Hate it when the rain drenches me.....have to tear apart my rifle and clean the barrel. Ill take it to the range after swab dry and fire a couple foulers. Some rifles it mattered. Some it didnt. I ran a lot of patches down to make em as dry as possible before shooting.

Worst rifle oddly was a TC Hawken Silver Elite. Any lube or oil and itd throw em wide
 
What a coincidence!! We had the same rifle. That Ruger M77VT is an accurate rifle!!!

It is. And the Monarch 6.5-20x UFCH has complemented it nicely.

It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of Rugers. And of course, I have the capability of changing the barrel and doing any action work necessary. But why mess with a varmint rifle that, barring bad winds, will esplode a prairie dog about 9 out of 10 trigger pulls inside of 300, and still about half the time at 500? I consider .7 MOA pretty dang good with bullets that are not designed first & foremost for long range accuracy. It may well be capable of smaller groups with match bullets, but this rifle has a job to do, and that means using pills with explosive expansion. Just like I'm sure my .25-06 could probably eek out a little more precision with 100 gr. Matchkings at more sedate velocities, but I'm good with hovering just under MOA using 117 gr. Gamekings because it's a big game rifle.

I'm still planning to build a 28" 6mm-06 AI for really long range varmint work, and I'll sacrifice some of that bullet performance for pinpoint accuracy to make >700 yard shots with better consistency than the .220 (about 6 misses for every hit at 700+ with that rifle, 782 my furthest confirmed prairie rat kill). The .220 I won't mess with until the barrel is smoked, though.

That 700 VLSF .17 Rem to the left of it is another really good factory shooter, printing groups slightly smaller than the Ruger. But .17 Rem sheds velocity so quick that it's not terribly useful past 300, so that's a shorter range number anyway. The AR I built with a Wilson 1:8 22" bull barrel and a Hyperfire 24-3G trigger, and that thing is also a tack driver with match bullets, though it's groups are a little bigger than the bolt rifles with varmint bullets. Still well under MOA @ 200, though.
 
3 shot groups can be totally valid. If you shoot a bunch of them. And stack them on the same target.

If the gun heats up after 3 shots and POI changes, and you are preparing for use where that wouldn't matter, then shoot 3 shots, let the rifle cool, and shoot 3 more, let the rifle cool, and shoot 3 more.
 
Group size is only half of the equation and I wouldn't say anything about a rilfe/ammo/optic combination after shooing only one 3-shot group. Point of impact (POI) relative to point of aim (POA) is the other half of the accuracy/precision benchmark. I want the POA/POI to be the same for each group day in and day out in addition to small groups. When testing a rifle I'll use OnTarget to measure groups and then use the offset data to plot the distribution of the group centers. For example, I was testing a new 6.5 CM rifle last week and shot five 5-shot groups starting with a cold, clean barrel and ending up with a fairly hot barrel. I was using Hornady factory 140gr ELD Match ammunition. Here's the test target along with a plot showing the group centers with each red dot representing a 5-shot group. I shot a .308 Win rifle the same morning and those group centers are shown with the purple dots. The scale is in inches.

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Nice shooting with a great rifle. As battle rifle achieved its title many times around the globe, far to be a target rifle.
Try with STG 58 AUSTRIAN surplus hard to get but extremely consistent.
Pics of a SAR-48HB would be appreciate.
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3 shot groups can be totally valid. If you shoot a bunch of them. And stack them on the same target.

If the gun heats up after 3 shots and POI changes, and you are preparing for use where that wouldn't matter, then shoot 3 shots, let the rifle cool, and shoot 3 more, let the rifle cool, and shoot 3 more.
Agreed. This told me what I needed to know about the rifle's capabilities, which is what I was going after for many years. My next outing with it, whenever that is, will be with a Champion Sight-in target, shooting 3 rounds each, at all 5 squares.
 
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I wish you luck on turning a FAL into a target rifle.
It's never been my intent to turn this gun into a target rifle, but only to prove to myself it was far more accurate than the ones FAL owners are bitching about. They're the guys that always scoffed at me talking about how accurate mine was, while theirs seemingly made those Chinese SKS's look like target rifles. When I use this rifle, it's a leisurely sitting, taking my sweet time and firing very few rounds, much the same as shooting my bolt .22. Difference is the .22 costs next to nothing, while the FAL is $$$$.
 
A friend has a FAL outfitted like that. I don't know about MOA, but it is pretty darned good. Weighs a ton, though.

He fondly recalls the FN sniper outfit that mysteriously showed up in a small town hardware store about 40 years ago. One of those military cases with rifle, scope, magazines, cleaning gear, etc, etc. He couldn't afford it. Nobody knew where it came from, we don't know where it went.
 
Special Forces teaches its people that all the different firearms are meant to meet certain goals and do specific tasks. They also teach their weapons people to understand that you have precision weapons and tactical weapons. The FAL rifles were designed to be tactical rifles. Most American rifles are more precision rifles than anything because of how we shoot. We like and use MOA ;ole a Bible for our shooting instruments. Europeans believe in a tactical accuracy of about 2 to 4 inches at 100 yards. The Europeans go for reliability more than anything. The original FALs, by the way, were not produced in the 7.62 NATO or .308 Winchester calibers. The first FALs were done in the .280 British intermediate cartridge and in the 7.92 X 33 Kurtz developed by the Germans in WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_FAL

Later on because we opted for the 7.62 NATO round and kind of forced all the other kids in the group to go along with our decision, the Europeans decided to make the FALs in the 7.62 NATO and .308 Winchester caliber type rifles. When they put the FALs together they continued to use the European concept of reliability and their tactical accuracy over our more precise precision accuracy. Our M-14 rifles were, and still are in many cases, 1,000 yard shooters. In Viet Nam upgraded M-14 rifles, called XM-21 and later on M-21 sniper rifles, were put to good use to take out enemy soldiers from extreme distances. The lead sniper in Viet Nam who had the most kills was an Army sniper named Adelbert Waldron with 109 confirmed kills who used a M-21 sniper rifle.

https://www.argunners.com/deadliest-snipers-of-the-vietnam-war/

The accuracy issue, among other issues, was why the U.S. military chose the M-14 over the FAL. Keep in mind that we had just come out of WW2 and did not want to rely on a foreign gun maker for our weapons if another big war suddenly developed. Keeping the manufacturing of our primary military weapon here inside the USA was a huge concern among the politicians and citizens. Now we come to a desert war and the M-21s get broke back out and put into service as a stop-gap measure to out-distance enemy shooters. This long range distance shooting problem is a feature that the FAL still has not been able to fix in spite of the 50+ years that has passed since the original testing.

The ergonomics of the FAL are great. The inline recoil system works great too. This is one of the best rifles ever developed for general military duty which explains why so many people like it so much. A good FAL is worth its weight in gold when trouble comes knocking at the door. Ammo is a little heavy to carry but it is effective when you hit your target. One shot generally does the job so that is something to think about for when you need to get to work.
 
So much failure to talk about with the M14 debacle.

I've read nothing that talks about how US Ordnance wanted the M14 over the FAL because of accuracy. Instead everything I've read points much more to the "Not Invented Here" and "We can reuse the Garand tooling so the M14 will be cheaper" (they couldn't and it wasn't) as being the primary reasons we adopted the M14. Ordnance used their usual bag of tricks to make sure their design passed the testing and the FAL failed.

The M14 was supposed to replace everything from the M3 submachine gun to the BAR with one weapon. Instead we got a rifle with the shortest service life since the Krag–Jørgensen rifle. The M14 would have been great in WWII, but by the end of WWII the world had moved on to assault rifles* and hasn't looked back.

BSW

*Select fire intermediate cartridge rifles.
 
Testing groups:

Canada just this week announced they are going to adopt the C20, a Colt Canada sorta, kinda AR10-ish thing, as a precision rifle. To prove that's what they wanted, they did this:

In terms of precision, the C20 achieved an average of .66 MOA over 144 five-round groups, collected throughout endurance testing. All groups were shot first-round cold with suppressor, using 175gr Federal Gold Medal Match ammunition.

5 round groups. Okay, seems to be the thing.

One-hundred, forty four of them!

Likely also recorded lots of wx conditions, etc. but average with all that awful variability is what they consider the group size of that gun. And 0.66 moa is damned good then.
 
Oh here we go again the " such and such battle rifle is better than that other one".

BTW put 10 shots on paper and post it at this thread
https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...10-shot-challenge.852180/page-2#post-11157598

FAL egronomics bettter than a M14? Not to me. I only have one FAL a DSA but it is finicky on ammo, my M1A ( have 3 of them) eat up any kind of ammo without failure, while a gas plug has to be used on a FAL. Standing or sitting the feel of the M14 is much better to me.

Both rested produce similar accuracy I have found however the M14 sights are much better for fine tuning. The charging handle and mag release much easier on a M14, Given a choice I trust a M14/M1A over a FAL...just my opinion.
 
Stevie, all internet groups aside, if your FAL is consistently even just over 1 moa accurate, congratulations, you really have won the lottery. There aren't many out there that can do that consistently. The ones I've seen could hold about 2-2.5 moa consistently and could balloon up to 4 moa with ammo/loads that they didn't like. However, you know as well as I do, that only three data points doesn't prove whether any rifle is accurate or not. Any claims, even with a target full of multiple three round groups, is usually done to just confirm a bias toward the rifle being accurate (ie - shooting a ton of groups to get one to post). I get it - if you shoot a whole bunch of five shot groups and they all hover around 2 moa, or a few 10 shot groups around 3 moa, nobody is going to bat an eye. "Sub-moa" is the catch phrase that gets attention, especially in a rifle made more for function than accuracy.

I'm not posting to pass judgment on anything. The only thing is that if you truly believe that most people don't shoot 5 and 10 shot groups anymore and would not at least test 5's and 10's through the rifle, it's just an excuse to protect the preciousness of having a "sub moa" rifle. Anybody who really wants to know what they have or the quality of their barrel or loads will shoot multiple 5's and 10's over and over again for testing and evaluation. Then you have a baseline for comparison. Ammo cost isn't the issue here as you could test steel cased, surplus, hunting ammo, etc. It doesn't have to be Gold medal match. Even if you burnt three boxes of 20 from WM in a couple of hours at the range, at least you would know something. A rifle that can't be tested, can't be trusted. For instance - What bullet weight does the rifle prefer? Is the gas setting correct for the ammo? Does the gas setting need to be changed when you switch ammos? (Pogo'ing a FAL is not fun with underpowered ammo which sticks a case if your gas setting is too low). Does the accuracy change as the barrel heats up? Do you have any bad/finicky mags? (The bane of the Metric FAL is the folded sheet metal magazine.) Shooting any firearm more reveals more about it than just sighting in. Cheers!
 
So much failure to talk about with the M14 debacle.

I've read nothing that talks about how US Ordnance wanted the M14 over the FAL because of accuracy. Instead everything I've read points much more to the "Not Invented Here" and "We can reuse the Garand tooling so the M14 will be cheaper" (they couldn't and it wasn't) as being the primary reasons we adopted the M14. Ordnance used their usual bag of tricks to make sure their design passed the testing and the FAL failed.

The M14 was supposed to replace everything from the M3 submachine gun to the BAR with one weapon. Instead we got a rifle with the shortest service life since the Krag–Jørgensen rifle. The M14 would have been great in WWII, but by the end of WWII the world had moved on to assault rifles* and hasn't looked back.

Yup. In my not-so-humble opinion, the FAL is the superior weapon betwixt the two.

In terms of accuracy, my experience with plenty of both demonstrated that run-of-the-mill specimens are on par with one another, and in the same arena as most other standard model battle rifles. If any of them are 2-3 MOA with ball ammo, that's about all you can expect. The MOA or better accuracy of vanilla .308 AR platforms even in the budget category is definitely the exception in semi autos, not the norm.
 
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