Well, I sold my CZ 452 Military Trainer in .22 LR and replaced it with an Ultra Lux. The Trainer shot great and with so many great reports I was hoping that I wasn’t trading down. But as I’m really enjoying offhand shooting with irons I wanted the longer sight radius the Ultra Lux offers.
I headed out to Rudy’s and set up a 25 yard range on level ground with an old river bank as my backstop. The weather was sunny, with a temperature in the mid-80’s, and a steady light wind (~5 mph) coming from three o’clock. In short, a beautiful day.
Other than cleaning the barrel from the preservative CZ ships with and adding the peeps, I had done nothing to the rifle. I wanted to establish a performance baseline before I started tweaking, adding a Klinsky stock, etc. For the peeps I’m using the BRNO peeps provided by Denny (you can find him on both RimfireCentral.com and czfirearms.us by searching for “Denny” &/or “Jakubec”). I’ve added a Gehmann 510 iris with a rubber eye cup. I’ll add a sunshade shortly (I sold the one I had with the Trainer). On the front globe I used a Lee Shaver 2mm/4post insert. The Lee Shaver (Lyman 20 and Anshutz, Part LS004) inserts need to be trimmed down a bit, as they are not made for the BRNO globe. I bent the lower post a little in learning to do the modification, so that probably impacted accuracy a little. As I’ll probably never use that insert again, it was the one for me to learn on.
I shot prone using a Caldwell Jr. front rest and the inexpensive Caldwell rear bag. (There are no benches to be found in a hay field.)
Below is an image compiled of the first rounds fired. (Click on the image to view it full size.) You can see both the improvement in the groups as the barrel became ‘conditioned’ and the migration of the groups as I worked to zero the peeps. The rounds were all CCI Mini Mags. The first six targets were made using the round nose bullets. The last was made using the hollow points. Note that the hollow point group opened up considerably.
First shots fired from new 452 Ultra Lux in .22 LR. Note improvement in groups as barrel is conditioned.
After conditioning the barrel, which took fewer rounds than I anticipated, I tried shooting for the RimfireCentral “25 Yd Offhand 500/50X Match – Any Gun, Any Ammo” online match. Even with the hollow points, the bent front globe post, and no sling, I still shot better than I have before. (I’m a poor offhand shooter, but getting better is always good.) I believe the longer sight radius of the Ultra Lux helps considerably.
After that I tried a timed Appleseed Quick AQT. Boy-oh-boy am I going to need to practice and get down a cadence when using a bolt action. On stages 1 and 3, I shot way too fast and had considerable time left over. On stage 2, I shot way too slow and only got off 5 rounds. By the time I got to stage 4 I knew I was doing poorly and just wanted to get it over. My score reflected my haste.
Lastly I wanted to to try some other ammo and test out the discussion I started here at RimfireCentral regarding testing different ammo. I had suggested testing ammo by rotating rounds one at a time. For example: one round CCI at target one, one round Wolf at target two, one round SK at target three, one round Eley at target four, one round Lapua at target five, and repeating the sequence until all five targets had seven rounds (of the same ammo) shot into it; then see which demonstrates the better group. But the forum members suggested that the lubricant on the different ammo brands would cause the different ammo to behave out of character.
So I tried a brief test by alternating Wolf MT and Eley Sport. Assuming either of these two rounds should perform as well as CCI Mini Mags it appears the forum members were indeed correct. For a valid test of rounds, each round type needs to be conducted in its own group with a cleaning and set of barrel conditioning rounds fired before each evaluation group. Still, I’d like to repeat the test with a wider selection of ammo, then conduct the tests in the traditional manner, and compare the results of the two tests. Some would say that the first test is a waste of time, but (IMHO) at the worst I figure it is simply more trigger time 🙂
Alternating Ammo Test
In conclusion: It was a beautiful day, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and being outdoors, and I think I’m going to like this rifle (a lot).
