Mk12 Mod0 (GWOT Clone) 🏁 Speedway [ Long Range On the Clock ] - Practical Accuracy

This video is brought to you by Slate Black Industries. For grips and accessories, visit slateblackindustries.com. Neutralize. Impact. I see it. Low. Right. Neutralize. Impact. Low. That was a neutralized, right? Short. That's it. All right. It was a struggle. I think at 500, I started having a little bit of struggles. That was a little bit me. So these are 700 yard impacts for 77 grains. The mark 12s. Yeah, pretty insignificant when you see it actually on the steel compared to, you know, up close you get a nice full splash. So this was an interesting run. We'll see you guys at the debrief and maybe we'll run the other ATAK or Equip to mark 12 that Josh has, just to see what type of difference we'll see with a change of technology. See you guys at the debrief. Welcome into the debrief for this run. On the Speedway runs, we break down our evaluations based on segmented categories. So we'll talk about the overall run and the shooter's performance, hitting on how the base firearm, the sighting system, the cartridge, and the environmentals all came into play during the course of the run. Now, unlike our regular Practical Accuracy series, the Speedway course challenges the shooter to shoot as fast as possible, while also accounting for constantly changing elevation and wind holds as needed. This presents a unique challenge that the shooter then has to overcome. So let's get into it. All right, I'd start by saying our expectations for this particular rifle were high, as in very high, as in probably too high. What would you say? It's a rifle that I'm eminently familiar with. I've shot for a long time. And so I agree, I think our expectations were too high, but that's not to say that the rifle is not capable. Well, where I go with this is your initial response to the run being completed was, man, that was a struggle. And looking back on the run, I actually really don't think it was a struggle. I mean, you had a couple misses at 500 and 650 that you self-corrected for, collected the hits. And then on the bonus target, yeah, like there were some misses. You probably could have hit that faster. But at the end of the day, you really didn't add any time to your overall score because you actually got the hit eventually and subtracts the time off. So was it the best run? No. But, and this is what the important part of this is, is I do think that it was a repeatable run. And we know that it was a repeatable run, because to be honest, we tried it a few times. Since we were thinking that, well, this wasn't probably the best representation of the rifle, but the results across were just about identical. Impact. Neutralize. Impact. Neutralize. Impact. Neutralize. Impact. Neutralize. Impact. Neutralize. Impact. I see it. Neutralize. Uh, 450? Yep. Impact. Neutralize. Impact. Neutralize. Impact. Neutralize. Bonus. Impact. Nothing. We won't find out until we go in a post. So there were different parts in each of those runs that we would struggle on. It's either the close range or the long range. Sometimes I would do, I would take my time a little bit too much up close and then out far, I would collect it back. And sometimes I would push through extremely fast up close and then out far, I was still pushing way too fast and I had to reel myself back in a little bit, which is I think the one that we finally used for record, which is like a second or two difference. Right. So again, repeatable. And that's an important piece of this. Is the rifle in and of itself capable of going one for one at extreme speed all the way out from a raw technical perspective? Probably. It probably can do it. It's a one to one and a half inch gun in its configuration and 10 power shooting 77s probably could. But again, part of what we're doing here is trying to balance that speed alongside the precision elements. You were pushing the speed. Obviously the advance. Oh, hello there. You must have caught me freshening up the Nine Hole Reviews Mark 12. Now, did you know the Nine Hole Reviews is largely supported by Slate Black Industries and the patrons of Patreon? That's true. All those 77 OTMs, all those heartbreaks and range fees that we experience. Behind us, we have the patrons of Patreon who support us not only financially and intellectually, but emotionally. So today I'd like to invite you to become one of us. Join us on Patreon and become a patron of Patreon. And if not, completely understand. We'd be just as happy to hear from you in the comments section down below. But for now, onwards we go. You were pushing the speed. Obviously the advantage of this system, a rifle length gas system on an 18 inch barrel is going to be the soft recoil impulse and your ability to fire very quickly. So how does that come into effect on a speed-based course? Because the odds of collecting the hit versus what happens if you don't, your ability to make a quick, fast correction because you're probably on target through the entire firing sequence probably affords you the capability of being a little bit faster on the trigger even if it means you're not perfectly set up for every single shot. So in your mind, did you think you were taking like really perfect sight pictures on every single shot or were you flexing that speed a little bit knowing that you could get your correction and then take follow-up shots quickly based on the setup? I was massively flexing the speed. Initially, the first ever run for Speedway, I think it was with the Mark 12 and I took my time way too much and I used a 20-round mag initially. I kind of thought to myself, why am I limiting myself to a 20-round magazine? Yeah, you clone correct boy over here, huh? Well, the good thing to 20-round mags is that it gives you your prone unlimited elevation at the tip. Then I just grabbed one of the 30-round GI mags and slapped it in. Honestly, off of the bag, you don't bottom it out. You would on a bipod, right? So I had 30 rounds to go. That gives me like a good 10 plus rounds that I could potentially miss. I mean, obviously, it's not good to miss 10 plus rounds. I mean, it's not a good strategy to just like continually miss and modify your firing solution to get on target. It's a strategy. That's not a good strategy, obviously. But yes, I mean, of course, that gives you a little bit more the low recoil, being able to spot your own hits, being able to get back on target very quickly. All of that, yeah, and having a higher mag capacity to where you don't risk running into a reload as quickly. All of that contributes to getting to basically play it a little faster and looser when it comes to the speedway. All right. So with that said, the decision to play it faster and looser, yeah, I mean, you were pretty darn good and you were able to get everything sort of sorted out. Even through the 650, I'd say even if you had a couple misses, you were able to correct on them. But shooting faster, shooting more rounds, shorter period of time, gets things hotter than they otherwise would. And so that's an interesting segue that I want to get into. One of your immediate takeaways after the Mark-12 run was, wow, I was seeing way more mirage than I thought I was going to, especially near the end of the run, which is, of course, where the targets are harder and harder to hit. So you're getting the introduction of the mirage coming off the AEM-5. I've never seen mirage that bad. Talk us through how that impacted your ability to make effective shots on those further targets. It was more difficult. I mean, bottom line, if you're shooting at a target and it looks like you're on a boat, but you're not actually on a boat because your platform is not moving with you. It's just the air that's traveling up from your suppressor that's making it move. It really looks like your crosshairs and the target are moving all over the place. I mean, that's a fair assessment, right, Henry? It basically looks like the target is moving around and flickering into different segments of your crosshairs, where your crosshairs themselves are moving within relation to the target. That gives you a massive margin of error. So at that point, it's sort of like when we're shooting Kalashnikovs on practical accuracy and figuring out the cone of fire, right? Trying to fight through it is the best way I can describe. Now, I mean, yes, that's a direct causality from pushing it really fast with a highly effective suppressor, but a suppressor that retains a lot of heat. And honestly, that's something that I did not experience as much previously because I haven't pushed the system this way as much. And so I think while suppressors in the tactical sense and the military sense gives you a definitive advantage on the offensive role, if, let's say, if we were to apply this to a military setting, this would probably be a very defensive role that you're taking. Agreed. In taking multiple shots in a target-rich environment, you would probably want to consider taking the suppressor off if you are already in a defensive position and your location is relatively known to enemy forces. I did not get a suppressor wrap for it because it is not clone boy looking. But still, even with a suppressor wrap, I mean, that would buy you, like, what? You might get another half a mag or mag out of it. Yeah, so that would be my estimation. I mean, I've seen Mirage in the desert before. That's not a thing. That's not a big deal. I've seen Mirage off of precision rifles, sniper rifles, when you cook the barrel a little bit more. But this was severe. Parts of the Mirage actually blurred the entire image and I couldn't really, I could only see colors. So maybe we could roll the video of when I shot really fast, but then cooked it so fast. Oh yeah, you were just cooking. Impact! Neutralized! I see it. And I simply, I could not see the 500-yard target at that point. And so Josh just told me, stop, stop, stop. And it's because he knew he, I think you saw, you saw what the, I didn't realize what the barrel looked like. I didn't, I just, when you told me to stop, I got off the rifle and I was like, oh, this thing is pouring smoke. That's enough. Yep. Well, I can see that what was happening was it was ineffective, right? At that point you're ineffective and it was not worth continuing. And we assessed thereafter that it was definitely a mirage-based issue. I did have trouble seeing from the mirage. I actually, I've never seen mirage that bad. A good rifle will generally perform about the same with or without the suppressor attached. In the case of this Mark 12 and my Mark 12 as well, we know that the addition of the AEM-5 actually tightens the group size. And we've proved that across numerous types of ammunition and numerous rifles. So with that said, in hindsight, looking back, what you're telling me is you would probably, for the purposes of this specific setup on Speedway, you would probably remove the suppressor to game the course as effectively as possible in spite of the fact that you might lose a half an inch or a quarter of an inch, quarter to a half an inch on the accuracy in terms of the group size loosening up. In this application, yes. I think shooting it, even though you get a slight penalty and get a looser grouping, the better heat dissipation is something that I absolutely would choose over its being suppressed. And that's probably a product because most of the time, most people are never shooting at this cadence with the level of accuracy we're attempting to secure, yourself included, as you say. So it is an interesting exercise to push suppressed rifles like that to see, you know, to get this type of data. Because it's not unique to this particular suppressor either. We do that with any of the cans. It's going to happen. I want to talk to you about the strategy you took on the run, which was to not dial at all throughout the duration until I think it was the last target. Now, the traditional mill dot is set up for ranging. It's not set up as a ballistic reference dot. Can it be used for that? Of course, yes. But it's set up for snipers to figure out the ranging distance and then for them to dial in the firing solution. So using it as a ballistic drop is not its primary function, of course. But, of course, it can be used that way, and it is a lot faster than dialing every single target. We do have rifles that we have to do that, that do not have any type of ballistic reference on the reticle. And you could tell when you watch those videos that it is actually slower. Because every single time after target X, you come up, you have to figure out your firing solution, continue on, and then hold over or hold under. This was not the case. Now, that said, it's still not a modern reticle. We've had a lot of reticle design changes since then. Initially, it was the Horus, and then a little more progressing towards where we are now, you had the ACSS. And then I feel like ever since then, the reticle designs kind of just exploded into a myriad of X companies' ballistic reticle with a grid underneath to do holdovers. And so I think that's an acknowledgement that holdovers are indeed effective and fast. Now, I decided to do holdovers, however, purely based off of speed. Especially when you're talking about your closer engagement targets, and specifically talking about the 100 to 400 meter targets or so. You can do holdovers and be a lot less affected by wind. You still have a lot of velocity out of the 556-77 gray. And so just holding off to the target left to the target right is no big deal. Using this sort of the center bar of the reticle along with the mil dots themselves as your reference points in that vertical plane, correct? Correct, yes. So using holdovers was specifically done for speed. Now, once I passed, once I went through the entire rack of mil dots, and I went to the very end and the 650 target, I was using the top or the bottom of the reticle where it starts turning into the thicker stadii. That was easy to reference. Obviously, it looks different. That's like around the five-ish mils hold. So I was holding that as kind of like a hat on top of the round gong out there, and, you know, shot that. Then past that, there's no reference. So I had to dial for the long shot. Now, the other advantage you get to dialing, especially with that 700-yard shot, 720-yard shot, that shot's going to be a little bit more affected by wind. So if you're talking about giving it a good firing solution, taking the elevation estimation out and just being able to use your horizontal mil grid to push wind, if you do have anything, if you do then spot splash and no impact, you're able to then adjust your horizontal impacts directly onto correcting the firing solution and collecting that impact. Okay, so a slight interjection here. There is a method called dialing negatives. If you're dialing a negative zero onto your scope, you could better use your elevation side of the mil dot scope for seven or eight mils worth of drop, which would cover the 720-yard type of distance with a Mark 12. This is not a Mark 12, it's an M24. But you run into a few issues. So rifle scopes from this era, like this M24, are not mil graduated turrets. So a lot of them are MOA. This one runs a pretty coarse MOA. Same thing with a Mark 12. So it would be difficult to figure out where your negative two mils are to draw a good zero On top of that, these turrets really, they're designed for you to zip your distance quickly. Let's say this M24 turret and the Mark 12 turret, they both have your yardage or meter range already put into the turret. So you don't look at how many MOA you're dialing up on, but rather you're looking at the distance that's etched onto the turret itself. And you use your mil dots for range, for ranging for the target, figuring out the range of the target. But the other thing too, when you're talking about using a fairly limited mil dot reticle, even if you dial it to where you have seven or eight mils of elevation drop, you're talking about shooting a lighter cartridge out of the Mark 12, 77 grains, which are less susceptible to wind than 55 grains or 62 grain ball ammunition, but still more susceptible to wind than let's say your M118LR or your 300 Win Mags or especially 338 Lapua. So as it goes down that grid, it is going to still become harder and harder to adjust on the windage side on how far you want to hold off if you're just looking at the open field with no grid reticle, which is again why I opted to dial to the 720 range and then use my horizontal grid to figure it out. Anyways, back to the show. Okay, so all of that was very optic and reticle centric conversation. The last thing I really want to wrap this up with is a conversation about the projectiles that we used. The 77 OTMs. Walk us through the choice of the 77s. Obviously, it's my favorite ammunition for shooting at distance. Talk us through why we opt to go with those. So first of all, the 77s are no stranger to optimizing a 5.56 rifle with a 1.7 twist barrel to shoot at a greater distance. And a part of that isn't just because of bullet drop, but better wind deflection as opposed to 55 or 62 grain ball ammunition, especially M855 because the non-concentric core does make the M855 fly a little worse than the M193s. Now the 77 specifically, even though as much as you optimize it, it is still a 5.56. You're giving it a much longer boat tail projectile. And so it is going to perform better against wind, but it is still a 5.56. I mean, that's something you cannot change. Compared to a 5.56, it is going to be as optimized as you can get for this type of course. But I mean, that's it. You know, that's the best case scenario in shooting this course as far as factory and non-purchased ammunition or a non-handloaded ammunition, I'd say. All right, not necessarily the tightest possible paper groups. Obviously, we know some of the viewers like to shoot 69, some like to shoot 75s, and those are great match loads as well. Even some of the lighter match loads work. But when we're talking about their ability to defeat the wind and push out at the distances that we're trying to shoot out to over 700, these are the ones we've had the most success with. And so speaking of that last element, Henry, the environmentals and the wind. Obviously, you've already talked through the use of the optic and the lack of wind hold-offs in this period correct optic, a clone correct optic. Do you recall what you were holding out at those further distances on the day? I appreciate it's been a week or so since you've shot it. No, I remember exactly. I was holding about one mil off to the right. So I was holding off one mil off. But the problem is one mil on your mil grid, while it may not be an issue when you're holding like a one, two, or even three mils on elevation, you start going lower and then without a grid, that's a lot of mind process. So it slows you down in trying to figure out where you're holding and it's still not very precise. If you miss, you don't exactly know how far you're missing off on because you don't have any type of a grid system. That's when dialing in turns into an advantage because then if you were to dial in, you still have your horizontal mil bar to figure out where you're holding. So I think there were actually a few shots at, you know, at distance when I was trying to observe where the misses were that I had trouble basically trying to correlate where the top one mil dot is and how far I can hold off. Especially when we then introduce the concept or the issue of dealing with mirage as well. So again, all of this comes back to a conversation about the challenges that we're trying to induce on this course. We're pushing accuracy, speed, the constant changing of elevation calls and wind calls as you move out on the course. And ultimately, this is what this course is designed to do to provide the data back therefrom. One thing though, as we sign off, I want to hearken back to the initial idea, initial feeling of, wow, that was a struggle going out. That's exactly why I said that is because I was struggling to correlate the mil holds and the wind holds and correlate it to how far I have to push it. And I said it was a struggle on top of that with the non-suppressed rifles. We typically know how we did on time. With a suppressed rifle, the timer's not getting anything. So I have no idea how well or how poorly I did. In my mind, space-time continuum goes a lot slower when you have to make a lot of those adjustments on the fly. And in my mind, I was just thinking, I really screwed that one up. All I remembered were the misses and trying to struggle to get that windage on correctly without dialing. Well, look, with that said, I think that's a great place to wrap this particular conversation up. Perhaps in the future, we might have an opportunity to shoot a similar platform and provide some of the advantages of some modern technology and use some of the details and data that we've learned from this run to execute even better. What do you say? A better scope, a lack of suppressor, and perhaps shooting with better traverse? That sounds good. Guys, till next time, we'll see you on the range. 716, this is 096, 4 vix, 8 pax, red con 1, green to green, time copy, over. 096, this is 716, roger, over. 096, 096, 1, 1 pax, green, green, over. 096, roger, over. 096, 15.2, 1 victor, 2 fax, red con 1, over.