I had results that surprised me in Saturday's range session.
I shot 5-shot groups with Speer .429 240 grain Deep Curls in a variety of sabots with both GOEX FFg and Pyrodex RS. All shooting was at 50 yards because the back of the rifle range is still a little wet and sloppy for walking.
The first target was with 95 grains GOEX in Harvester crush rib sabots. These load very easily in the Omega's barrel. Here's the target.
That group was not quite as good as I was getting last week. But my first target of the day always seems to be not quite as good as the following targets. Maybe I settle down a bit in shooting technique. Anyway, the first shot from a cold clean barrel was that one immediately above the bull - which pleased me.
Then, leaving the powder measure set at 95 grains, I switched to Pyrodex RS. Here's that target.
This surprised me. I knew I had a good hold for all of those shots. Accuracy with Pyrodex RS is usually about the same as GOEX.
Next, I switched from Harvester crush rib sabots to the regular Harvester smooth sabots, and loaded with GOEX again. The smooth sabots were tighter in the bore, but still loaded very comfortably. Here's that target.
Now that really pleased me. Let's try the Pyrodex again with the smooth sabot.
Here's the target.
Wow. Once again the Pyrodex group was poor.
OK. Let's try some MMP HPH-12 sabots with the GOEX. They loaded about the same as the Harvester smooth sabots. Maby a tad tighter, but not much.
Here's that one.
NICE! Let's see how the Pyrodex does with the MMP sabots.
Here's the target.
HOLY COW! That's hard to believe.
Now I know that with the same 95 grain load the Pyrodex is shooting faster than GOEX. So I reduced the Pyrodex load to 85 grains to see what what would happen.
The five-shot group looked like this.
That's a little better. But still not as good as the GOEX loads. It looks as though GOEX will be the powder of choice for this bullet in the X7 - a thing that does not bother me in the least.