Lapua Ammo Test Center Review:
I made my appointment last month over the phone. I drove from Vegas to Phoenix the day before and spent the night in the area because my appointment was at 8am. The next morning I arrived at the Nammo facility around 7:40 and checked in at the guard gate and was told to wait for my escort which was Daniel the guy who does the testing. This facility is a ammunition manufacturing and testing facility. They make military caliber ammunition from smaller caliber up to artillery ammo including the LAWS rocket. It is a sprawling facility.
Dan met me at 8:10 and we drove the short distance to the testing site . This is a CONEX that has been converted into a separate office and addition room where the testing is done. Coming out of the end of the CONEX is a 5ft diameter concrete pipe that the bullet travels down. This one is 100 yards long and parallel to it was was another similar building and pipe that Nammouses for testing heavier caliber ammowhere a medium size round is 50 caliber.
We removed my barreled action from my chassis and mounted it in the testing block that Mike at Vudoo had manufactured for them to use with the V22 action. It is a very nice piece. That block with my barreled action if then mounter in a heavy duty vice that is bolted down to their base. My scopes were already zeroes to 50 yards so he just used my scope to bore site everything in the pipe. They run optical sensors at 50 and 100 yards to track the bullet flight and placement. It would be like shooting groups on paper but it displays those groups on 2 computer monitors, one for each distance and with the bullet not shooting through material at 50 yards they can get undisturbed shot information at 100 yards simultaneously.
When asked what ammunition that I was interested in testing I had decided Lapua Center X and maybe some Midas Plus as well. He selected 8 lots of Center X and we began. First 10 rounds to warm up and foul my previously cleaned barrel. After that we began by loading and shooting 10 round strings of each lot. Each shot was plotted and displayed by the computer on individual monitors shot by shot for 50 and 100 yards. There equipment being I believe German origin displayed all information in mm so I used an app on my phone to do conversions that I understood. The groups and information is also displayed as a maximum diameter from the outside of each bullet rather than center to center so I took that into account as well. Basically I was looking for 20mm at 50 yards and 30mm at 100 yards which was within 1/16" or less of 1moa at each distance.
As we proceeded testing lot after lot we found some that shot well and others not so much. When we found a lot with potential we would shoot a 2nd or possibly 3rd 10 round string. Some of them might shoot great only to have a single shot that killed the group so we might retest a 2nd string to confirm that a bad result. Other strings were bad enough where we moved on after 4 shots. At the end of testing the first 8 lots we had found 3 lots with potential but I asked to try some other lots while looking for the "magic bullet". We tested 8 more lots with similar results. At that point I asked to test some Midas Plus and after 4 lots with similar results I decided that there wasn't any reason to pay 50% more for Midas that shot the same as Center X. At that point we removed my barreled action and switched to my wife's barreled action. This time we only tested the 1st 8 lots that we used on my rifle with similar results.
After each batch of lots Dan would print out data sheets from those lots and I reviewed then as he was continuing the tests. By the time we completed the testing I had already narrowed everything down to 3 lots for our rifles. I wanted to find a single lot to use in both rifles and they both seemed to like the same lots. I reviewed the information with Dan and decided of a preferred lot number. He check the inventory at their Missouri warehouse and I placed an order for the quantity I wanted. I also selected the retailer that I wanted to use to pay for the ammo. I went with Good Shooting as I had previously purchased from them and they had good pricing.
What I learned from the process:
I had initially thought that I could find a "magic bullet" of sorts. As the process went on my thought process changed though. Overall about 25% of the lots shot better in relation to the others. 50% shot well just a little below the first group and 25% shot larger groups or vertical strings. While shooting several strings of the same lots I found those lots to be fairly consistent string to string. I learned about the capability of our rifles and of what accuracy that they were capable. I learned quite a bit about what consistency I could expect from them. Our rifles shoot this lot of Center X at .8moa at 50 yards and 1moa at 100 yards.
Was it worth the time and expense:
I drove from Vegas to Phoenix so I used the better part of 2 days. Between hotel and gas it cost $350. The testing is normally $50 per rifle, he had said that he would do both for $50. In the end he waived the testing fee because of the quantity of ammo I purchased. I personally think that is was time and money well spent based on the education, information and confidence I now have in my rifles.
Note: Some people just send their rifles in to Dan and he does the testing. After that he sends them the data sheets and reviews the information with them. This would be a more cost effective way to gather the information and I may do that next time in 4 or 5 years when I run out of ammo. Maybe I'll take a trip to Texas and test with Eley...