First Shots With The QLA-Less X7
 

This morning I got a chance to take the first shots with the Omega X7 after removing its QLA.

Hornady .452/300 grain XTPs in Harvester short black sabots have always shot the best from this gun. I would like to have gone through the scale using those with 75/85/95/105 grains of powder, maybe even with both GOEX and Triple Seven.

But my supply of those was down to only half a dozen bullets. So I decided to stick with one powder charge and try five different bullets.

I shot five-shot groups at 100 yards. Results weren't too bad. Had the gun been sighted in for dead center zero at 100 yards with any of them I could probably hit a fair percentage of Sabotloaders clay birds.

All bullets loaded easily with a thumb start and no short starter.

Anyway, here are the targets.

300 Grain XTPs


300 Grain SST/MLs


300 Grain Deep Curls


270 Grain Deep Curls (A bullet that never seems to shoot real well for me.)


250 Grain Deep Curls (Reduced the charge to 85 grains for this one.)


When I started shooting around nine o`clock the weather was fairly pleasant. By the time I finished near noon it was a brutal 92 degrees with 84% humidity. I was happy to quit.

What i wonder is how would the rifle shoot if loaded with BH209? What i wonder is how would the rifle shoot if loaded with more powder? The standard load used in my X7 is 110g BH, 300g Deep Curl, crush rib sabot, and W209 primer. The crush rib sabot is a very tight. Makes me wonder how your rifle would do with a a 0.458 bullet?

From here, it looks like you did a superior job bedding the barrel, and a superior job cutting the barrel. Perhaps working the crown will help. If it is square now, you won't be able to make it more square, and your results won't improve after crown work. Right now, it seems what you basically have is a target crown without protection.


It may very well be that the easiest/best fix will be to use BH209. Knowing how you detest the powder, makes me hope it is the best fix!

Actually, your shooting is better than what i myself could have done. It could very well be there is nothing to fix. Perhaps using the long sabot will provide a tad better accuracy. Keep up the good work!!

Semi - Ain't no deer in your food plot safe with any of those loads. Do you have a consensus as to whether the rifle shoots just as good or better without the QLA?

:s2: You may be right Ron. My brother-in-law's full length Omega sure shoots lights out with 110 grains of BH and Barnes XPBs. I guess I'll give the premium route a try.

So far Bronko I think it's shrinking the groups a tad - maybe 3/4" or so. Anything under 2" for five shots at 100 yards is perfectly satisfactory. But you know how it is. I'm forever in pursuit of that 1 MOA group.

Not bad for iron sights.

No way could I do that with irons Lee. She wears glasses.

Well if its any help.. I have never had any luck with them 270 or 250 deep curl bullets past 75 yards. Out to 75 yards they did great. After that, the group seemed to open up much more then one would expect for an additional 25 yards added on. The 300 grain Hornady XTP are my go to bullet. I like them better then any other bullet I shoot. Although for accurcy, the 250 grain Shockwaves and the 250 grain Barnes Expanders are hard to beat out of my rifles. Also Grouse sent me some Lehigh 200 grain bullets and those things are just pure evil deadly accurate for some reason out of my Black Diamond XR with 110 grains of Pyrodex RS.

Nice shooting. I agree, no deer is walking away from any of them.

Have you tried conicals before and after the qla was removed ? Steve

I just checked my old target files sbuff. It seems I've never shot conicals from that gun.

Semi

Of course I can not really tell from the pictures, but it really does look like you bore was concentric with the end of the barrel. So in reality your QLA may have not been a problem.

One of the reasons that TC adds the QLA is to give the appearance that the bore is concentric with the barrel and in a lot of cases it is. When it is the QLA is not a problem in the world of accuracy. The crown at the bottom of the QLA can be.

I think it was txhunter that cut his QLA off also and posted pictures of his barrel after the cut. You would not believe how far it was off center so his QLA was a huge problem when it cam to shooting concicals.

The way TC bores and rifles their barrels can lead to the off center bore. The method they use while it is an universally accepted method it is not always the most accurate by the time the bore imerges from the far end. The worst part is that even if it is off center it really does not effect accruracy but sertainly does effect your thoughts on quality. How to cover up the small mistake - use a center QLA, which normally does not cause an accuracy problem with sabots or Powerblets...

Have you seen this 2 bit drawing that I did a long time ago. It kinda explains what I thought I had come to know... especially after seeing txhunter's results.



I have a library of this useless information