Federal AE .223 accuracy?

[2ndtimer]

QUOTE]I've also heard the varmint tips are pretty good, I was shooting ordinary FMJs and my gun didn't like it very much[[/QUOTE]]

If you want accuracy, look for ammo with decent bullets. 55 gr fmj bullets are not designed for accuracy. Two inch groups for 5 shots at 100 yards from a rest is about as good as you can expect. If you want improved accuracy (and better performance on varmints) and don't want to spend $1.00 or more per round for match ammo, look at the Federal American Eagle Tipped Varmint ammo or the Fiocchi Extrema ammo with the 40 or 50 gr V-MAX bullets. I have had very good results with them in AR's, as well as bolt guns. You should be able to find them for around .50 per round, or even less on sale.

 

[Road_Clam]

Factory AE 556 ammo shoots about 2.7 moa from my WOA service rifle. My barrel is a 20" 1-7" twist. The AE 556 is some hot stuff (3075 from my 20" bbl) and my 1-7 is not the best match for this ammo.

 

[Mobuck]

"But, a 0.5" 5 shot groups doesn't mean it's a 1/2 MOA load. More data is necessary to determine that. Could in fact still be a 2MOA or 3 MOA load. "

Maybe so, but in 50 years of shooting I've not seen this happen. A small 3 or 5 shot group (from a hunting rifle) has always provided consistent performance by continuing to print small 3-5 shot groups on demand.

 

[NWPilgrim]

"But, a 0.5" 5 shot groups doesn't mean it's a 1/2 MOA load. More data is necessary to determine that. Could in fact still be a 2MOA or 3 MOA load. "

Maybe so, but in 50 years of shooting I've not seen this happen. A small 3 or 5 shot group (from a hunting rifle) has always provided consistent performance by continuing to print small 3-5 shot groups on demand.

And in my 50 years of shooting I have see it happen plenty of times. 3 shots that are .5" today can shoot 1" next week, or .3' or 1.25". Statistics is a mathematical science. 3 shots by it self is near meaningless. Out of the next 100 shots fired eventually, those three represent just a random sample that is too small to say anything about the accuracy of the load. If you get ten targets of 3 shots each and they are all .5" in the same area then, yes that becomes significant. But if you overlay those ten targets on the same aiming point then I wager your cumulative group size is at least twice the size of the tree shot group by itself.

You can believe whatever you want, but three shots is not enough data points to have any degree of meaning in terms of ACTUAL accuracy. No authority of any kind reporting on accuracy performance uses a three shot group. That is anecdotal and not data.

 

[azar92]

To further the discussion on group sizes to determine accuracy there is an interesting website, ballistipedia.com, that delves into this. One tidbit that I find interesting is when using extreme spread to determine the accuracy of a firearm/load how many shots is most efficient?

Efficient Estimators
"If our goal is to characterize a range statistic using the least number of shots then we should pick our group size carefully. Kolbe et. al. noted that for any desired error and confidence level it looked like 7-shot groups produced a significant estimate using the lowest number of total shots fired. Using our more extensive simulations of the coefficient of variation we can see now that 6-shot groups are actually the most efficient, and that 5-shot groups are practically as efficient (and for many scenarios identical).

4- and 8-shot groups are almost as efficient, but if you're shooting 3-shot groups or groups larger than 9 shots then you are wasting bullets." [Emphasis mine in 2nd paragraph]

 

[NWPilgrim]

The problem with that page is only is examining extreme spread. Different groups can be in different locations relative to the point of aim. The calculations that estimator page is doing does not include any factor for where the group lies from the point of aim. Also, it is not factoring in how close the shots are to each other. Did you have four shots very close and one outlier? That is statistically very different than four evenly distributed shots within the extreme spread. That is why measuring just extreme spread is almost meaningless and not surprising that you can estimate extreme spread with a few shots.

But as hunters or target shooters when we say "accuracy' it is always in reference to how close to the point of aim. That is why a proper analysis of accuracy ought to measure the distance each shot is from the point of aim and relative to each other. A couple of software programs make this easy using photos of your targets: OnTarget and Shooting Lab. They both capture each shot relative to the point of aim and each other and calculate the average mean radius (distance from POA) and standard deviation. The mean radius is really what we are interested in if we want to know the most likely distance from the POA our bullets will strike. Both SW programs also allow you to overlay multiple targets to create virtual groups with the same POA. The resulting mean average factors in whether you have an excellent group with an outlier, or an overall mediocre group.

So the above estimator only predicts the group size for any one group, but totally is incapable of telling you where any one of those groups will lie relative to the POA.

 

[Road_Clam]

I have see it happen plenty of times. 3 shots that are .5" today can shoot 1" next week, or .3' or 1.25".

A big +1. I've tested over 1000 loads spanning 9 different calibers and I've learned to trust my most repeatable handloads even at the expense of giving up measured MOA accuracy. So I will take a load that will shoot 1.2 moa all season long vs. a load that shot .2 moa in October but then the same exact load shot 2 moa in June. Temps and humidity play a substantial role in maintaining consistency and I have not yet mastered weather variables with my handloads.

 

[NWPilgrim]

Here is an example of OnTarget analysis graphic. The shot target was uploaded from a phone pic, then the bullet holes placed using OnTarget, a one inch distance was calibrated and the software calculates everything else such as: max distance C-to-C, mean radius, group center, offset from aiming point, maximum horizontal and vertical distance of bullet holes.

[Hopefully I can upload the image correctly]