Just ran a ladder with H 123 HPBT and BL-C(2). What next?

[jtaylor996]

...

[Bobke]

[Bobke]

[A5BLASTER]

The hornady american gunner ammunition shots amazingly well from my 18" satern barreled AR (and a Dead Air Nomad). Usually .5-.7moa, and when I'm having a bad day still .9moa at worst.

So I grabbed some of the bulk hornady 123 HPBT from midsouth to try and replicate the factory load. I haven't loaded for AR before, and now really isn't a time to start with shortages on everything, so I could only find BL-C(2) powder.

I ran a ladder from 28.5gr to 30.5gr (listed max in H's book). The OAL is set to the same as the factory ammo using this same bullet from a bullet comparator, so I'm not sure what the actual OAL is. Primers are CCI 450.

I did 2 round robin runs, and got this data:

28.5 2274
28.7 2308
28.9 2312
29.1 2339
29.3 2335
29.5 2357
29.7 2357
29.9 2378
30.1 2378
30.3 2391
30.5 2397

No pressure signs anywhere, either.

My guess is that I should load up some at 30.1 to hit a node. 30.1 also had lowest spread within that node. But is that really a node? The data wasn't super clear to me.

But looking at the vertical stringing, 29.5 seems to be in the middle of the vertically strung node.

What should I load up next? I was thinking 15 rounds at 30.1 and 15 29.5 and see which shoots a smaller group.

Any other ideas?

Here is what I would do.

Load 5 or 10 each at 30.1/30.3/30.5 and see what the average velocity/sd/es is for each charge.

Whatever load gives the tightest sd/es numbers would be the load I would then try some seating depth changes on to see if it will give me the groups I want.