Yeah but it's the high desert. I don't know why or when but I fell in love with desert country. I'd move there but all of the folks from way out west are buying up all the land around Terlingua (Big Bend country) and now it's crowded (more than 2 other people is a mob in my book). The new will wear off and they'll leave one day. But I still couldn't move out there because I'd never see my kids and grandkids. They don't feel the same way I do about the desert.
Baton Rouge... umm hmmm... there's the problem. Just kidding. I have two adopted states. NM and LA. My youngest daughter was born up in Minden, LA.. The company I work for has sites all over south LA. Even south of Venice about a 45m boat ride.
Sooo... I got to the range about 9:30. One guy showed up right after I did. He went down to the pistol range, donated lots of .40 and .45 brass to me, then left. Or maybe he shot at targets, idk. He might've lasted 20m. It was in the high 80's already and the winds were gusty and variable from the SE to SW. I'm glad I was testing powder charges and fire forming brass not doing a seating depth test. I left about 3. I probably would have finished 30 minutes sooner but someone else showed up around 1 and came down to introduce himself before he left. By then it was 104.
For the 7 mag I shot 3 shots, spaced out about a minute apart, start a timer for 5m after the 3 shot group was shot, check the barrel, wait if necessary (usually wasn't). Each target had 3 groups on it. So I would shoot those 3 groups, walk down to the target (100 yd), retrieve it, put a new one up, come back, feel the barrel, wait if necessary (never was). Rinse, repeat. The barrel never got so hot that I couldn't hold it in my hand but it was warm. I did that for all 10 groups except some of the delay tactics involved scrounging brass not walking to the target.
For the 100 rounds of 20PPC that I fire formed, that was tedious. I shot the first 20 with the La Radar collecting data just for fun. I shot 10, about 1 minute spacing between shots. Velocity was around 3,600fps. I shot the first 20 at targets at 300 yds. I should say I sprayed them at 300 but I was fire forming and didn't expect much. I walked down and marked hits after each 5 shot group. I was not getting sub moa that's for sure but it was no worse than 1.5 moa. Good enough to move to steel. I got dialed in on the 4" plate and beat it up as much as one can with a 39gr .20 bullet. Then I just switched between plates as I went, shooting 10 shots, 30s apart, then stopping to let the barrel cool. I got away with that for a couple of cycles but temps got over a hundred and I resorted to shooting 1, wait 1m (timer), shoot 2, wait 1m, shoot 3. Step away for 10m, scrounge brass. Talk to myself. Wave at the camera (the range has camera's. I have no idea if anyone watches them). Take a nap. Shooting 80 rounds at steel is not as fun as one might imagine but it was pretty easy to get hits. I was surprise. I figured that as much as the brass moves on firing I wouldn't be able to hit anything.
I sincerely hope I don't need to fire form brass again anytime soon (there are 200 rounds of Lapua .220 Russian in the cabinet).
I didn't have any cooling gizmos. Just time.
