2025 BigJimFish Review / Article blog: More 350L, Garmin and Athlon Chronos, Leopold Mark 4HD, BurstFire, Field Optics Research, videos and visits

BigJimFish

Full Member
Full Member
Minuteman
Supporter
Jul 24, 2011
1,071
906
43
Columbus, OH
As with the previous 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018 threads, the purpose of this thread is to provide a catalog of this years reviews and articles, give you a behind the scenes look at what I'm working on as I'm working on it, provide a place for input and comments, and, of course, give you something to bookmark that will ping you when a new article is done.

Video Reviews and Company Visits

The biggest change this year is that I will be doing video versions of my reviews along with the written versions. I just finished up the first one and it came out a good deal better than I expected. I even did some shiny video editing on it. To be frank, I still don’t love video as a format. It is very inefficient in data density as well as time consuming to produce and consume for that matter. That being said, lots of people seem to like them for some reason and they clearly monitize better. My intention is to make the videos shorter and lighter weight versions of my articles as I gather shorter videos are a great deal more successful and the constraints of video format are far less friendly to the consumer of informationally dense content than is a well organized article. My current plan is to do short video recaps of each review as I do the review and sprinkle in video recaps of my more recent past reviews as I go along. These will be sit at a table podcast type videos and not the high production value live action stuff Frank often does. I will also be doing some videos of site visits to some of the Ohio precision rifle related companies near me. I have spoken with a number of them about this including Kelbly’s, Short Action Customs, and XTSP. My original plan was to make these live but given YouTubes constraints on live videos I am reconsidering. If you have some questions, or comments you want me to take along with me to these companies, feel free to drop them here. If all goes well and I don’t totally suck at making videos I have a few other folks in the back of my mind for future visits. Probably just who your thinking.

The Precison Straight-Walled Cartridge Rifle:

As with last year, the biggest focus this year will be on the PurePrecison / Proof Straight wall 350L project. I knew going into it that it might be challenging to get good performance from the 350L straight wall cartridge rifle and that I would most likely never get it to group like my 6.5CM. The cartridge has that reputation. I want to be able to offer some well researched advice for getting good performance from this type of cartridge though as the relatively new straight wall deer hunting regulations have given many Midwesterners the ability to hunt at distances that were just not possible before with the inaccuracy of slug guns. I want to be able to deliver some well-researched advice in how to get the best performance out of these cartridges. I was certainly unprepared for the level of difficultly in achieving this though. I will continue to examine this subject this year, as I believe I have come a long way and have some viable theories that will help shooters of this and other similar cartridges to get better and more reliable performance. Expect articles this year on the general performance of straight walled cartridges and a little about their history, loading the 350L, and some sort of ammo guide. There may also be a terminal performance examination but I wouldn’t bet on that coming yet.

Thanks to PurePrecision, Proof, Hornady, Barnes, and Nosler for contributing both product and technical expertise to this project.

2025 2 27 nosler whitetail country.jpg

Nosler’s just introduced Whitetail Country 180gr 350 legend ammunition

Garmin Xero C1 Chronograph Article
Garmin Xero C1 Chronograph Video

I have now used the Garmin Xero C1 Chronograph for an entire year and well over 1000 rounds from a wide variety of firearms and in a wide variety of situations. I guess I should probably write about it already. It is certainly a game changing piece of equipment and realistically I would not have been able to figure out some of the things I did without it as there was no way to use the old Oehler 35p on all the range trips I did for the 350L this year.

Athlon Velocity Pro Radar Chronograph

It is cheaper than the Garmin, and uses an always-on measurement technology like Garmin does. Can it hang? I have certainly seen some excellent things from Athlon in the past. The scopes they submitted to the Sub $1k long range optics series of reviews I did a few years back were, and are, some of my favorites in the category.

Leopold Mark 4HD

It is probably long past time that I looked at the new Leupold Mark 4HD line. The Mark 5HD 5-25x56 I reviewed a few years a go is a winner and that scope line is my favorite in the high end precision rifle / hunting scope crossover category. I am eager to see how the lower cost Mark 4HD line stacks up optically and mechanically, as it’s weight and features certainly indicate it will have similar crossover appeal.

BurstFire annealer

For some time I have been thinking I need to try stepping up my reloading game by adding annealing. Frankly, there was no way I was going to spend thousands of dollars on it though. After some research, I came to the Burstfire annealer. I liked the look of the design and the very clever torch adjustment system. It also features built in rotary tool attachments, and an affordable price, so I bought one. I’ll tell you what I think about it and also their military crimp cutting head. It won’t be 10 pages, I promise.

2024 10 8 first annealing.jpg

The first batch of 350L brass I annealed on the Burstfire annealer

Field Optics Research Tripods

This was another shooting accessory that I had been meaning to pick up for a while. I spend a good bit of time a few years ago at ShotShow looking at different makers products and decided that I thought the design of the DomeTOP Field Optics Research models was pretty clever. I picked one of those up as well as a bowl top. I also very much liked the design of their FlexLite GunPOD rifle vice and will be looking at their gun vices as well. I am no guru of competitive rifle shooting off of a tripod, but I’ll give you my opinion and not pretend it’s worth more than it is on the subject.

2024 2 12 pureprecision kelbly.jpg

Field optics research Hunter 32DTC3 tripod holding a Kelbly’s .308 and Pro39TC3-MIL ASFPL with FM570B gunvice holding the 6.5CM PurePrecision Crux.
 
Update 3-20-2025

Did a range day with the 350L, new Nosler 180 grain whitetail country ammunition, and a number of handloads. The wind was downright atrocious, super gusty and variable between 0 and 30mph. It was so strong that two targets blew off the board and the rocking of the target board may have added as much as 5/8 inch in vertical movement. Still, it was one of the first sunny warm spring days and the first that I have had the day off on. So, I was going to enjoy it and I sure did. It felt great to be outside at the range.

2025 3 19 pureprecision 350 nosler ammo.jpg

Out shooting for the first time this year with the PurePrecision / Proof 350L rifle, Noslers new 180gr whitetail country ammunition, and some handloads.

To be frank, I thought it pretty likely that all my groups today would just suck and I might not learn anything because of the wind. If it hadn’t been my first nice warm chance to be out and I wasn’t so pumped I probably would have stayed home. My calculator said I could see as much as 4” of horizontal from the wind and I could see the 5/8” of vertical from the target flopping as well. I was not overwhelmed with confidence looking through the scope and watching the target flopping up and down more than half an inch. Big groups on a day like today just don’t tell you a whole lot about how your ammo is performing. Much to my surprise, the groups weren't uniformly bad though. I got some pretty decent performance with some Hornady 165gr FTX handloads. I seem to be in a range of seating depths that this bullet is OK with and I may be nearing an end point with what I think I can get with it. I expect I will be able to put together a set of groups that average better than 1” before too long.

2025 3 19 hdy 165 ftx resize.jpg

Handload groups with the Hornady 165gr FTX bullet and VV N-110 powder (not a load recommendation)

I also shot a box of the new, hot off the presses, Nosler 180gr whitetail country ammo. This ammo got the worst of the wind conditions. Both of the targets that blew off the board did so while I was testing this ammo. Fortunately, this target wasn’t one of the liberated ones and a few of the groups came out pretty decent. I won’t be surprised if I can actually average better than 1” groups with this Nosler. It’s SD was also pretty reasonable at 12.9fps. As for the one giant group, I’m surprised more groups didn’t get blown open today.

2025 3 19 nslr 180 factory resize.jpg

The first groups shooting the new Nosler 180gr whitetail country ammo

Anyhow, I hope to have the video version of the Vectronix review up soon and perhaps do a company site visit in the next couple weeks.
 
Update 4-6-2025

First off, I made it back to the range on a day when the wind wasn’t gusting to 30mph and Nosler’s new 180gr 350 Legend offering performed as expected in the PurePrecision 350L coming in at an average 5 shot group size of 1” and average mean radius of .38. I did not shift the turrets during these groups so the software also allows them to be combined. This results in a 20rd group size of 1.49” and a mean radius of .397”. I’m pretty happy with that. It’s velocity SD of 24.6fps and ES of 85.2 fps weren’t great though. I thought I might look through the individual shots and find one really light throw to explain this as volumetric powder dispensing sometimes gets sticky and throws a really light one but that wasn’t the case. There were a number of shots on the far edges when it came to the velocity spread and the ones on the high side were actually early in the shot string so cooking the rounds in a hot chamber wasn’t the cause either. Whether it be due to charge weight variance or some other factor such as case fill or the powder simply being a bit erratic, velocity just isn’t great on consistency. It could be worse for sure, but it’s not great. Still, I think this Nosler stuff is good ammo all around and it joins the Hornady 165gr custom and Barnes Vor-tx on my recommended list. Through the course of my ammo testing in 350L I have found most of the factory ammo offerings to be pretty terrible with many products producing occasional groups over 3”. These three have been the exception to that.

2025 4 4 nosler 180gr whttl p2 350l analysis crop.jpg

Shooting the new Nosler 180gr Whitetail factory ammo in the PurePrecision SKLTN 350L on a day when the wind wasn’t blowing the targets right off the backer.

Speaking of the PurePrecision SKLTN 350L action, the review I did of it and the altitude stock I did last year will be next up for the video treatment. The Vector X binoculars were on the list for that, and I had actually filmed that review, but it is now delayed because Vectronix is recalling the engineering sample that I had and replacing it with the production version. This will give me a chance to compare the performance with the final FPGA settings between the Vector X and the Sig 10k’s and I want to do that before filming either the Vector X or Sig 10k video reviews.

Lastly, I had a chance to go up and do a site visit video at Kelbly’s last Friday. This includes a walkthrough of the factory as well as a sit-down talk about the actions they have released in the last few years as well as the changes since I did a review of their Atlas tactical action in 2018. It has been a while since I had been able to go up and see Ian and it was great to see how things are going at Kelbly’s. I think they more than twice the machines that they did the last time I was up. They have so many more machines that they have now actually outgrown the main factory building and kicked the 4 wheelers out of what used to be the garage to fit some in there. Hopefully the video has turned out well as this was my first attempt at this type of content.

2025 4 4 bolt comparison.jpg

Old (left) and new (right) versions of the bolt from a Kelbly’s Atlas Tactical action.