Bartholomew Roberts
Member
I have to say that I was a little concerned about whether the rifle would live up to the hype and the long wait for the tax stamp. So far, I've been pleasantly surprised, though I don't know why I wouldn't be in retrospect. Right out of the box, the components are top notch: Geiselle SSA trigger, Knight's URX 3.1, Magpul CTR stock, melonited 1:7 twist barrel. One of the nicer things about the rifle was very little need to spend time and money modifying it to get it the way I wanted.
On shooting it, I was surprised to see that the 9" barrel and AAC Blackout flash hider generate literally no visible flash, even in dusk conditions. I was also pleasantly surprised to find none of the blast that I associate with 11.5" 5.56mm rifles. If anything, it was tamer than my 16" 5.56 rifles.
Shooting it, I tried Freedom Arms 147gr, Hornady 208gr AMAX and Barnes 110gr TAC-TX. The Freedom Arms was a little disappointing - I did get a really good deal on it (less than $0.50/rd for .300 during the height of Newtown); but the accuracy was so mediocre it about drove me crazy trying to use it to zero the rifle. Easily 6 MOA ammo when fired for 5rd groups or larger. Decent blasting ammo though.
Both the Barnes and the Hornady loads were providing excellent accuracy from the melonited barrel - often throwing them through almost the same hole as a previous round. The Hornady 208gr AMAX had such a great BC (and the Freedom Munitions was so slow out of the 9" barrel) that it was actually printing higher than the supersonic Freedom Munitions load at 50yds. According to my ballistics calculator, actual drop should have been about 1.67 milrad at 100yds on the 208gr load; but I was holding off using the 1 milrad crosshair and still printing a bit high at 100yds, though groups remained tight.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the rifle and I think I'll be working it out quite a bit more in the future.
