Ok, here ya go boys, spent the morning at the range, only took two rifles, the 50-140 and 499HE. First of all, I reconsidered the Omega scope's weight and swapped it out for a Leupold Vari-XIIc 1-4x20 in low Burris Zee rings, it's not as clear as the Omega, but worked fine. I shot one round of my start load at 25yds and adjusted the scope accordingly, then moved the sled over to the 100yd range and shot two more of the same load, that's the first target below, the second load of 101gr opened up a lot, but I think that's because the barrel is new and was getting copper fouled, so I started cleaning after every other two shot group, groups kept up like that only not as tight as the first group, they varied from 1½" to 3". When I got to 110gr, I was rewarded with another ½" group at a shade over 2200fps.
As expected, the recoil is significant, when I was half way thru my loads I had to slide the PAST Magnum shoulder pad on, even with 25lbs of lead on the sled it was getting unbearable, at 110gr I quit still having 3 more loads up to 113gr to test, but decided I didn't really need or want to shoot em!
Tim
ps..... Primers still had rounded shoulders and the brass showed no sign of excess pressure, easily extracted, so there's room for improved velocity, but not by me any time soon.
EDIT: Primer pockets still nice and tight after cleaning the brass.
