This Compass Will Shoot!!!

I have had a blast this past week with my Compass. This rifle is really impressing me. However it is a challenging rifle, and I like that. Two issues that I have dealt with are barrel harmonics and barrel heat. I have found during load development, a good group is almost always followed by a bad group. Finding that sweet spot is critical. Most of the groups in today’s post were shot fast, with no cool down period.

After I have some good groups during load development I typically take those charges and run them through the chronograph. I then take them out to longer ranges and see what they will do. I never got to do this with my first Compass. 100 yards was the farthest I shot it. You don’t know this, but I have already taken this rife out to 1000 yards when it had less than 50 rounds through the gun with the Hornady 155g Match bullets. I was having trouble seeing the target with the high weeds around the target, but I was ringing steel.

For today’s post, I loaded up a few 168g Hornady Match bullets with 43.1 grains and 43.7 grains of Varget. I just did 5 rounds of the 43.1g, just to get some velocity numbers. Here are the results.

The standard deviation’s weren’t the best, but I’ve got some numbers to work with. This was the 3rd firing of my Starline Brass, and I think I will anneal it before the next firing.

Not to make excuses, but my little WOAOW/Homgeek Scale has given me some issues. This is a great little scale but it has given me some crazy numbers sometimes. As long as I check it with my test weight every 5-10 rounds I still trust it. I have another one on the way just to be safe.

All the following shots were made with the 43.7g charge of Varget on Monday (4-29) after the chronograph shots.

I was super pleased with these groups. I was just guessing for a dial and was pretty close. I had perfect conditions for these shots, zero wind. The next day I went out to send a few more. I just shot 3 rounds each at 400 and 500 yards. I hadn’t painted the 400 yard target, so I dialed a little low and right.

My 500 yard group is probably in my top 4 or 5 groups at that range. As you can see by my hand next to the group, it was awesome. The next string of pictures were taken the following day. I actually remembered to bring my paint with me and I painted all the targets and ran through them 200-500 yards. It was pretty windy that day but I was still pleased with how the $225 rifle is shooting.

These 14 shots were all shot consecutively, and overall I am perfectly happy with this load. I have 20 pieces of brass that will finish my 3rd firing, so I plan on doing a work up of IMR4895 and these Hornady Match bullets. This is just a quick post showing some of my groups from this week.