Hornady press release - Long Range Match bullet, the Hornady A tip

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Better shooting through engineering. I believe it was Hornady that discovered that their
poly tips were melting in flight (radar data showed BC deteriorating in flight) and the went
to a polysulfide (high temp polymer) tip. Sounds like the next step up, looks like aluminum
alloy tip. Now that they can check how the projectile ACTUALLY flies with radar data, they
can do more to make it do what they want.

Cool!

Looks like a variation on the A-max that they have had for a while.

Holy cow, I just checked the BCs.......230gr .30 cal is 0.823. Since increasing BC is the ONLY
real input which helps wind drift significantly, and wind is THE uncontrolled variable in
LR shooting, this is definitely in the direction of goodness. Now, how much of a powder
chamber do you need behind a 230 or 250 gr .30 cal to get it up to 2800 or 3000 fps?
A LOT. .300 Win mag tops out at about 2700 fps with 230 gr. .30-378 will push a 220 to
3150 or so, so should do it if you can get one barreled with a 1:7 twist or whatever it takes
to stabilize these torpedoes.

Bill
 
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Rick

Moderator
Staff member
One of the video's talks about how they used the Doppler Radar to determine in flight numbers. They are also packaged sequentially, meaning one after the other off the machines into a box numbered 1 to 100. Not sure I want to know what they cost. They are billed as long range match bullets, 30 cal. had 230 grain and 250 grain offerings.
 

Ian

Notorious member
The title made me think of the melting tip discovery and using Doppler radar to detect long range bullet flight characteristics. Bill and I must be on the same wavelength. Doppler can detect helical flight patterns and trace them. These bullets look to be.a definite step forward in long-range ballistics, provided at least a .30-'06 is used. Might not be bad for subsonic 300 BLK too.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
YIKES! I would think $60-75 would be really high. But....accuracy costs, how much of it
do you want to buy?
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
I was not surprised by the melting tip deal. Years ago, I spent a couple of weeks at the
rocket sled test facility at Holoman AFB. They run big stuff up to Mach 4 and up and they
melt STEEL at those speeds. Sure, we are only at Mach 3 with most stuff, but nibbling at Mach
4, and air heating is a real thing.
It was always my theory that the 'too fast twist' varmint bullet in-flight blowups always happened
down range, and never real close to the muzzle because they took a few milliseconds to heat up
and that weakened the jacket JUST ENOUGH to let it fail when it was OK at room temp, but just
barely.

You ought to see what Mach 6 does to RR iron....which they use for mounting struts because it
is cheap and takes long enough to melt all the way that the test is over. But the front does
melt a good bit.

Bill
 
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Ian

Notorious member
Off topic, but Bill got me thinking on the heat/velocity thing and how I experience failures with cast bullets that I almost never see even mentioned, much less discussed. Lead alloy weakens drastically as the temperature is raised from room temperature to the point much of my shooting happens...over 100⁰F ambient. Factor in chamber and barrel temperature increases from long or rapid strings of shooting and some interesting things happen such as shots 7-8-9 missing the target backer. I'd love to know the actual bullet surface temperature of a cast .30-caliber leaving the muzzle of a 200⁰ barrel at 2400 fps and know how weak it has become in that instant. All I can do is push a good load to the thermal failure point and generate empirical data.

Hot glue doesn't make good cast bullet ballistic tips, that much I know for certain.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
it does if they are hollow and you want them to open at low velocity.

the heat issue sure makes you re-think alloys and why strength matters don't it.
 
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RBHarter

West Central AR
I have on a couple of occasions followed this line of discussion and air density vs muzzle ejecta in front of the bullet and what happens outside the muzzle in the first 20 ft of flight . I eventually gave up as air density , air/gas ejecta , air friction , and thermal dynamics just don't apply to bullets .

About 1959 when the shadow cameras became a shooting thing Speer discovered that their pointy boat tail 130 gr .277 bullet was becoming a RNBT someplace between the chamber and 20ft out of the muzzle . It was decided that it was the lead core re-forming the jacket .

There is also the infamous 220 Swift and 22-250 4000+ fps melting jacketed bullet often blamed on jacket failure .

The SR 71s airframe had a near infinite life span as it was annealed every or nearly every flight from high speed heat . I've seen a 250 mph airframe hit a wind shear at 200-210 mph and poof . So it seems completely reasonable that at some point the same thing happens to a cast bullet . Lead melts way cooler than titanium and is much more flexible than fiberglass , carbon fiber , or kevlar in polyester resins .