I own a couple big rifles. ( One Blackpowder gun rifle shoots a 1750 grain projectile with 300-350 grains of blackpowder behind it.) I had some recoil concerns I started shopping for a recoil sled. The FCX looked cool and I figured I would give it a try.
Fit/finish and design= rest appears well built. The cantilever front rest design was slightly concerning for me. Several of my big guns weigh from 25-75 lbs or so. The front rest is not going to be able to support them. After looking at this I felt that maybe I could just use the sled function and use a separate front rest. I also have some non-classic buttstocks that won’t quite fit into the rear rest. These guns are special so I can’t blame the rest. Otherwise it is built well.
Support = overall good, I had one bag leak I had to epoxy but got a second bag from manufacturer so now I have two. If one of yours springs a leak, just glue it.
So I took the rest to the range and started working up a load for my 7.62x51. Off bags I was well under 0.5 MOA but with the rest and the new loads I was struggling for 0.75 MOA. I felt the front of the rest was drifting under load and recoil, requiring adjustment and almost the need to keep your hand on the control to hold through the shot.
Not sure what was going on, today I grabbed my most accurate rifle. 40x Remington 22-250 topped with an Unertl Programmer 24x (I like the old scopes). The best the rifle has shot was a 0.081 5 shot off of bags. That is not to be expected and I'm sure was luck. Today was 15 degrees with 15 mph winds (or more it seemed). I shot the rifle for 10 rounds using the rest and picked the best of the 2 groups. I then shot off my bags, typical fashion to make sure the rifle was not the issue. I then shot in a hybrid redneck form. Removed the front fire control and sat my box and bags on the sled. I had to do this as the rear is so high and I did not have a front rest that was high enough with me.
FCX with fire control= best was 0.616 top left picture
Bags alone = 0.210 middle picture
FCX with front bag = 0.126 bottom left picture
In the end, I like the design of the sled portion but will not be using the fire control. I had snugged up the fire control portion when going from the 7.62x51 to the 22-250. This did improve control but made it more stiff and hard to adjust a small amount and still felt it was drifting, as noted above. For hunting/scope setup/test fire it would be great and maybe I asking too much of the system. Of course this is not scientific and is based only on my rest and rifle, YMMV.
