147 ELD-M breaking up and tips melting?

COB_MASTER

Private
Minuteman
Mar 2, 2013
8
1
Hi

I have a 6.5PRC with a Krieger 1:8 Twist barrel 26". I shoot 147 ELD-M (batch 2180670). I am running them just over 3000 ft/s and shoot 1/2MOA all day long.

In winter, I calibrated the BC out to 1350m and it came in at 0.345; i.e. pretty close to the published value.

What I noticed when I calibrated the next time around 20 degree Celsius( 68 degrees Fahrenheit), that the BC came in at 0.335. I went to shoot a competition and noticed that as the day warmed up, I was undershooting all the gongs from 900m onwards. I blamed myself.

Last Friday I calibrated at around 30 dC (86 d F) and noticed that I could not see some impacts (I was alone, but I now know that they broke up), but the BC calibrated to 0.31.

The competition on Saturday started out at around 20 dC (68 dF) and went up to 33 dC (92dF). It was a very calm day so wind was not an issue. However, I overshot the long gongs initially and later undershoot them. The point of impacts were very consistent on each stage.

I had two bullets break up halfway (confirmed by a few spotters). Never happened before to me.

Today, I went back to my calculator and played around with the BC to check what the settings would have been at the respective distances during the match. If I started the day on 0.35 and ended on 0.295 it would have been an amazing day.... It seems like the BC is going down as the temperature is going up. I can only explain that by the tips starting to melt like on the Amax bullets.

1. Does Hornday still have an issue with the ELD-M breaking up?
2. Do the ELD-M tips still melt? I thought they fixed it with the new tips? Anybody experience the same?
3. Could it be the jacket starting to deform, but not breaking up and thus decreasing the BC? Personally I would think that this would cause flyers, which I did not have.

Thanks
Dirk
 
A smal

What variation do you get? From 0.35 to 0.295 is telling me something is very very wrong.

I run multiple BCs so I'll just give you the variance of the first BC which is .002 so not much. The thing that I found was the BC was fine from 30 -70 degrees but at 80+ it was off that little bit. Yours does seem like a large swing comparatively.

This what I found with my setup and bullet which I don't think will directly transfer to yours. If you are changing anything other than the BC and temp I think you will chase it forever.
 
I just went round and round with my Hornady factory loads blowing up on me. I purchased 600 rounds of the 6.5 PRC early this year. I had issues with the bullets blowing up. You can read all about it here https://www.snipershide.com/shootin...ts-has-me-stumped.6996694/page-2#post-8593291. To make is short I had 3 different barrels that the bullets were blowing up in. Just a month ago I got some new ones to try from Hornady and they are good to go. So they just shipped out new ammo to replace all the other stuff that was blowing up on me. They had a issue that they knew about, thought they fixed it but it wasn't. Now it seems like they got it fixed.
 
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I just went round and round with my Hornady factory loads blowing up on me. I purchased 600 rounds of the 6.5 PRC early this year. I had issues with the bullets blowing up. You can read all about it here https://www.snipershide.com/shootin...ts-has-me-stumped.6996694/page-2#post-8593291. To make is short I had 3 different barrels that the bullets were blowing up in. Just a month ago I got some new ones to try from Hornady and they are good to go. So they just shipped out new ammo to replace all the other stuff that was blowing up on me. They had a issue that they knew about, thought they fixed it but it wasn't. Now it seems like they got it fixed.
Really? They admitted to a problem?

my impression reading the thread that was linked above is that while they may send you new stuff, they never admitted to any sort of endemic issue w these bullets.

did they put anything in writing to you on this?