Getting Started in NRL-22 Matches pt. 3 of 3 [VIDEO]
- So everybody, Baron and Mark again with Arnzen Arms here, and we're doing the hot wash, the wrap-up to shooting base class NRL22 here.
- This is fun to watch.
- It was fun to shoot.
- I bet it was. Cool, so look I, we went out, we had a full day, you shot the match, I filmed the whole thing and kinda wandered around, checked everybody's gear out and everything. One thing I saw, I think this package was a pretty damn good choice.
- Yep, I have said that it was echoed by how many other RPRs, the very, very, very similar set up were on the shelf there.
- Yeah I've got a shot that we'll fly in right here. I think it was a third of the guns in the shelf, which was almost all of the non-open, the base, the thousand or less guns, right?
- I think there was only one guy shooting a Savage in base.
- Something like that, yeah. So it was obviously, this is a, you know, a well respected platform inside that, and we also have a lot of these Diamondback tactical scopes, even on some pretty high-end rifles.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So go ahead, let's walk through a little bit. So we figured out the match, basically, right? And then you went out. How many rounds did you expend getting this gun ready?
- Getting it set up and I did a bunch of shooting to figure out my holds and stuff too, so I went through and we'll have to do the actual math, but somewhere in the neighborhood of like 300 rounds.
- Okay, cool. 300 rounds getting ready for the match.
- 20 bucks worth of .22.
- Yeah and then he shot another 50 or so during the match, right?
- Yeah, it was 80, an 80 round match.
- Okay, this round's and I'm saying that because this gun's not for sale.
- Yup.
- Yeah, so we've got, for those of you that don't want to listen to the rest of the hot wash. This is normally a little over a thousand dollar package with all of the stuff we've got out, which includes, the rail section, the bipod, the front sling swivel, the Vortex Pro Series cantilever mount, Diamondback Tactical 6-24.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, and then the rifle of course. And so this is going to be up on the website from here for two for 795. So it's a one shot deal, get it and it's gone.
- And that literally we're losing like five dollars on this.
- Yup.
- Not to mention all of the time we invested in you. So this is a good deal. So if you're looking at getting into the sport or just want a really accurate, reasonably-priced rifle, this would be and awesome one to pick up with your Christmas monies.
- Absolutely.
- Cool. But for everybody else, let's talk a little bit about the rifle and the performance of the gun and what you learned, we'll start with the gun.
- Yeah. The gun, I honestly, personally wouldn't change a thing on it.
- Cool.
- I liked the trigger on it. I take that back. The one thing I would maybe change is the safety, but that's just because I roll my thumb over to the other side when I'm shooting more precisely.
- So you shoot the gun with your complete hand on this side of the firearm?
- Correct, yeah. So, I'm not wrapping my hand around the pistol grip, like it's a pistol, I roll my thumb over here, so having the safety right here would have been really convenient.
- And that is reversible it looks like.
- [Baron] I don't know. If it's set up just like an AR, it's not. But if it is just using an AR safety, which I'll double check, we can put that in the notes
- [Mark] We'll fly that into the notes right there.
- I mean you have an infinite number of safeties available, and it'll cost you like 40 bucks to change.
- Cool, not a problem.
- So if that's something that bothers you.
- I certainly didn't see inside of shooting NRL22 like that would have cost you the stage by any stretch of the imagination.
- No, it wouldn't of.
- Because it was all pretty much just points-based, right?
- Yup.
- You had to beat a par time, engage all the targets, get all the hits.
- Yup.
- Okay, cool.
- Yeah, it's not where fumbling your safety costing you seconds is necessarily gonna hurt your score, 'cause you know you have this allotted time to shoot the stage.
- Yeah, generally it looked like about two minutes.
- Yup, that was all of the stages there. It's not like USPSA where it's like, "I gotta do this as fast as I can."
- Yeah, no, that hundredth was the difference between second and third place. Cool, how did you find the rifle for comfort for building positions and all that kind of stuff? Let's leave out the toys for a second, but just the rifle itself as you see it with this bipod.
- Yeah, I mean it's awesome that you have as long a hand guard as you do. It's very easy to build multiple positions. Like a couple of the stages I shot were on like folding chairs and things like that. Really awkward things to build positions on, so having enough hand guard was really good. Also shooting it without a bag, which buy a bag if you wanna shoot the NRL22.
- Yeah that's what what we're gonna get to here in a second, is the extras, but yup.
- Building positions on like some of the barricades and stuff that we were on, I needed all that hand guard. It was really good to have all of that. Some other notes on the length of the hand guard I'll add in too later on but the stock adjustability was rock solid.
- Good.
- It locks in where you want it. It stays there. I think we've mentioned in past videos if you wanted to share this rifle at a match, you absolutely could. You paint mark it for the different people shooting it. You go out, you shoot your match, keep going on.
- Really simple.
- It would be, yeah.
- Yep.
- The other thing too is if you're using something that is cheaper to shoot that you're rolling over into like full centerfire rifle shooting, this clip that sits right here on the bolt is removable, and then it has a short action length of throw as opposed to just a little .22. So you could set it up if you're shooting a 6.5, .308, .260, any of those in your bolt gun. Or if you're shooting the centerfire Ruger Precision rifle, now you can have that same length of travel.
- Oh, that's cool.
- So now that motion is building into the rest of your shooting as well.
- That's really cool. I didn't know that, that's slick. All right, cool. Well, so it sounds like the gun was good to go. Let's talk about things that, there was nothing on here I saw that we didn't need except for maybe you did not ever pull a sling out of your bag.
- I used it in practice.
- Okay.
- I like using slings broadly speaking, for NRL22, I would skip it.
- Although, there were stages that had it in the description as using a sling.
- Yes, they did so--
- And we looked some of the, so you still might want it. So, but I don't, you might just have not run into it yet, but the match we did, the sling would not have cost you the match by any stretch of the imagination. So good. So is there anything, how'd did this bipod run for you?
- I love the Magpul Bipod, so I already have bias built in there. I acknowledge that, but as far as like cost and function at that match this was just perfect.
- Yeah, this was just good to go.
- Worked great for that.
- So, okay good. So that all works. What did we not get that we needed?
- I would, so the optic is something... Well I'll make two points here, I'll look at it two ways. One, staying inside of base class. I'd have probably gone to the four to 16. I never, I don't think I went passed 18 for the match. I might have dialed up past it once and been like, "Eh, that's too much." and then pulled it back to 18. I think that's what I, 16 or 18 is what I shot the whole match at anyway.
- Okay.
- The reason for that is because I found personally the eye box past 18 wasn't sufficient for your less well-built positions. So you know if I was laying prone, fine. Dial it up to 24, that's good. If I'm shooting off of a block of ice--
- Or the tank trap.
- Or the tank trap.
- Yeah, totally.
- I needed more eye box there, you know.
- Good. Now do you think though that if you had the four to 16 and you cranked it all the way up?
- Things I don't know.
- Yeah okay, so that's something to look at.
- Maybe, I think so.
- So you could definitely, the magnification would've been enough. The question is do you have enough, do you have enough eye box at the full power or more or less eye box at full power than you would've on this 18 over 24, right?
- Yeah.
- So that's interesting. We'll have to take a look at that. So but you could've, certainly in the world of magnification and if your budget was an issue and you wanted to save a hundred bones.
- Yup.
- That's one place you could definitely have done it.
- Absolutely.
- You could've gone to a four to 16 at 300 versus the, dollars, versus the six to 24 at 400 dollars, so cool. And then the only other thing I saw that was like a total miss is we didn't have a bag.
- Yeah, that was a total mess. Having a shooting bag from some place like Armageddon Gear or I think Shooters Source carries some of those too.
- [Mark] Shooters Source carries Wiebad, Armageddon Gear, yep.
- Any of those, what do they call them? Fortune cookie style shooting bags, vital.
- And we'll fly in some footage here of that. But it was like, you probably like, two thirds of the match were done in some sort of a bag position.
- Yeah, I mean, I turned it to the joke in my squad 'cause it's like everybody was trying to loan me their bag.
- Totally.
- 'Cause they're shooters.
- Everybody's cool.
- They're friendly, they're cool It's like, no, no, he's gotta only shoot what he brought along so struggle!
- We decided before the match when we were talking about how we were going to do this, it was like, no, no, no you gotta go like, because look, I mean part of these games is learning the curve, right? It's like figuring the whole thing out, and we looked and here's a couple guys who are, I have competed a lot in competition shooting and you are newer to competition shooting overall, but have a lot of experience in like long-range and all of that kind of stuff. It's like what can you figure out from the website without asking too many questions of friends and then show up. And, the bag thing was, I got there and it was like everybody was like--
- Everybody.
- Plumping their bag and I'm like uh-oh. We screwed up!
- There were guys that had like different bags that they were pulling out before the stage, like based on what they wanted.
- Yeah. From what I saw, you could get away with one good, medium sized fortune cookie. One thing that people did say though is the large ones especially with the 22s they sit so low in there that the cookie will come up over and block some of your field of view, so you gotta be a little careful of that. Now we don't carry any good bags here do we?
- We can get the Boyt ones.
- We can get the Boyt ones.
- Yup.
- Okay so Boyt, if you want Boyt, we can get those for you in the shop. If you want the other ones we sell a lot is Armageddon Gear and we didn't see any Wiebad out there but I know that precision guys love those W-I-E-B-A-D bags.
- I think one of the guys had one.
- One of the guys had them. Okay, cool. So and those are some options you can just Google those on the interwebs. Okay I would consider that a mandatory piece that we did not have.
- Yup Okay, now what would be something we wish we had? I think I know the answer.
- Oh man, I wanted a better scope. Not that this was bad, but--
- Supressor.
- Supressor too. I mean as far as like nice things they have, but any scope that I would've wanted though, add this scope alone would've put me in an open class.
- Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And that's just my normal match that I shoot regularly is a 300-meter match on centerfire rifle. Yeah, for that I've been using a Viper. It's just nice to have that nicer glass.
- It is.
- If you're standing in a store here, right under the nice fluorescent lights and whatever, and looking outside, like honestly, the Crossfire and the Razor kinda look the same.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- But as soon as you get on to an actual range, it's like, whoa!
- There's something about that high-end glass, as soon as you get to some level of distance where it almost appears that what you're looking at through the glass is more vibrant and more alive than it is to the naked eye at that distance.
- Yep.
- Not just that it's more magnified, it appears more like, it's like watching HDTV.
- Yep, absolutely.
- Okay cool, so let's not get into what we would've selected if we could have there but so you would have maybe upgraded this. What do you think about the suppressor? Probably a third of the guys were running cans, it sure was nice.
- Yeah, just from a pleasant match setting and even then, I mean everybody's shooting, almost I should say, almost everybody was shooting a Standard Velocity .22, so subsonic ammo anyway, which doesn't have that snap that supersonic does. So even if you're off line, if you're, back behind the line at the bench--
- It was really quiet.
- It was a really quiet match still, but with the suppressor, I mean you're all standing around, this guy shooting in the background.
- We're all making fun of him, at full, like you know, conversationally mocking the shooter.
- You don't need to yell over anything. Your electronic ear pro isn't cutting in and out as gun shots are going off, you carry on your conversation. That was really nice.
- Cool, did you fell like you needed more magazines, different roundage?
- No.
- Does this seem like a good overall...
- I don't know if it changes at other matches, talking to the shooters there, there have been some bonus stages that the match director put in that required a reload.
- Okay.
- But as far as I understand NRL22 is all 10 rounds.
- Okay, cool.
- No reloads.
- Perfect.
- So you can run absolutely just with a 15 round mag that comes with this gun. The other thing too that one of the guys there pointed out that would've been a really good idea, on the length of the hand guard, so the guys that are running an open class have what's called an Arca rail. It allows you basically to position whatever is on the bottom, your bipod. Wherever you want on the rail.
- Interesting. Okay.
- You can't run an Arca rail in base class as I understood it based on the rules.
- But you could probably run up.
- You could get one of the Kinetic development groups a quick release, Picatinny rail section.
- Interesting.
- So then what you do, instead of having an Arca rail, okay, I wanna move my bipod around, I just unclip it and clip it back in somewhere else. That would kosher because it's still standard M-LOK. The reason you would wanna do that is based on some of the platforms that you had to shoot on. So like one of the ones that I was on, it was an ice block, I mean they dumped out a five gallon bucket of ice.
- Literally, yeah.
- So if I had been able to pull this back a little bit, now when I set the gun down, it squeezes itself on there between the front of the receiver magazine here and the back of my bipod. That's still kosher by the rules, it's just how my gear is set up, squeezes around the match, or the stage equipment there.
- We should say that though, it was a beautiful day but it was cold.
- It was cold.
- Really cold, so and the gear ran fantastic in that which is great.
- Yeah.
- I mean I wouldn't expect anything less from a bolt but still at the same time, I mean it's nice, the guns ran really well.
- Which I saw too and talked to the match director there, he works for Federal. So I was asking him some things about 22 in the cold 'cause yeah, as I posted on our Instagram, I did have some issues with some loads in the cold. I don't know if it was specific to the cold, but talking to him, he said, "You might have ended up with gaps in that primer rim, "in your rimfire there."
- Interesting.
- Due to the cold, so the CCIs that I shot were absolutely perfect all three days that I shot that ammo.
- Cool.
- Magazine fed well.
- Yep.
- The gun was very consistent. Accuracy wise, there were no hiccups there.
- Yeah, you put up a good score. Okay cool.
- Yeah for just dive in and do it.
- So again, just to reiterate, this firearm right here, as you see it standing here, there's only one of them available. It's this one. It's got around 400 rounds on it and were doing it for $795. If you bought all these pieces, collectively, you'd be north of a thousand and that includes all the little bits and bobs we've got on here. And we'd love to have you come and pick that up. Now that is circa, this is literally Monday, 12/30 of 2019. If you're watching this video a year later, it's not available. Do not send me a note, okay? We're good to go and probably for a week or so.
- Okay.
- So we'll have this one available today for sale. And then let's see, what else? We've been getting a handful of inquiries checking out the open class.
- Yeah, which I mean I'm down to shoot open.
- Yeah, I got it. So the sooner this gun sells, the better case I can make, you and I can make for taking a hotter rig off the shelf, that's gonna cost a few grand, we'll do the same thing.
- Yep.
- So just to daydream a little, what do you think? What would you grab? Start with a gun.
- So looking at what the other open shooters there were using, a lot of them, actually all of them were still using bolt guns. And I don't know if there is particular reason for that. I asked a couple of 'em. Nobody gave me really definitive well, here's why I don't use a semi auto.
- Yeah.
- But saw couple Anschutzs, couple of Vudoos, and the CZs, which is pretty cool. I mean, that they're popping up.
- Yep.
- I mean, a couple other guys, like it was a CZ because they kept the action. They ripped everything else off of it, but still, that's what they built their open gun off of.
- Cool.
- Personally, I would really like to shoot it with Volquartsen 10/22.
- That'd be sweet.
- And, that would.
- I think it would be more than enough rifle for what I saw out there.
- Yeah.
- What about the scope?
- For the scope, I think a Viper, like three to 15 is where I would go.
- Really?
- One of the other open guys there was using that scope.
- Yeah, okay.
- And it would have an appropriate amount of reticle.
- Yeah.
- I know from, I already used that scope on another gun.
- Okay.
- It tracks well. Oh, there's another thing I should note. I did do some tracking out to 200 with this, which was my 200 yard hold was, or dial was 27 minutes or something like that. It tracked true.
- Cool, that's good.
- So that's awesome at the price.
- I'm impressed by that, that's amazing.
- Yeah, but yeah so having the Viper there, I don't, maybe a five to 25.
- Okay.
- Play around with that.
- Okay. But you wouldn't go up to raise your glass or any of that kinda stuff? Or switch over to Nightforce or Swaro or?
- You know you could, I don't know... For Swaro I would wanna run a second focal plane. I would want to keep a first.
- Okay.
- So maybe, like if you look at the cullets then would be cool. I don't know if... I don't know if there would be enough wind there to make that leap.
- The short little ranges.
- Pretty much. I mean, for the match we shot out to a 130 yards. That was as far as we shot. And as I understand there, you can shoot further, and there's other like--
- In those bays you don't, as far as a sportsman's club. You don't get a crosswind 'cause of the way they're designed, but you do get this weird like thing that comes down.
- Yep.
- And you'll watch your your bullet hits like back and forth a little bit across the center. Not a lot, it's like minor but there is wind.
- Yeah. And when you shooting .22, I mean, it doesn't take a lot to move it.
- Yeah.
- If you're getting into more, there's like, I don't know if it falls under NRL but there is like more niche rim fire competitions, like they call it, it was like the King of the Quarter Mile or something like that.
- Crazy.
- They're shooting really long distance with .22.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah, at that point maybe I would wanna.
- I think that's nuts, but that's good.
- Great. Here's King of the Eighth Mile, I don't know.
- Well we gotta throw a can on that one just because we got to.
- Right . Do some pictures anyway.
- Okay, we'll see if we can figure out, if we can figure out a can somehow from the shop so.
- Yeah.
- All right, very cool, well this was fun to watch. So what's your overall take on NRL22? Are you going back?
- Yeah, I would. It might not be this year 'cause I'm really hot on PRS Gas Gun, but, man it was good time and even then, if you are already a PRS shooter, like any discipline of like practical precision shooting, NRL22 I think is the perfect way to keep practicing that without, if you're hand loading, spending all that time to load ammo, for match, you do like I did here. You grab a box of CCIs and you just go shoot the match for fun and it builds those mechanics and you get more trigger time.
- Cool. Reps is reps.
- Reps is reps.
- Hey, I will say the one thing you did say that I thought was poignant when we were out at the range was that like if somebody was looking to get into, and I would echo this based on what I saw, if somebody's looking to get into a rifle match, never done it before, you wanna have some fun, I would send them to this for sure.
- Agreed.
- You can learn all the basic commands, all the basic safety.
- Yep.
- Get a sense of how the match flow goes, the whole thing. And when you show up to one of the bigger matches, this is like 15 people out there, just like buddies having a great time on three squads. Some matches don't feel like that.
- Yep.
- And you wanna have your eyes dotted and your Ts crossed a little maybe before you get there, so you don't get rubbed the wrong way, which happens every now and again. It's pretty rare but it does happen. This would be an awesome place to start.
- Yeah and your mileage may vary at different clubs but as far as like how safety was managed, obviously, we got footage of the safety brief beforehand.
- Yep.
- But you know, you didn't... At least at this match from what I saw, there wasn't anybody sitting there looking for the safety violator, like DQed!
- No, no no. Yeah, it was run really well. There was a little laissez faire about some things that I, whatever, it was pretty minor. I never got the sense that the match was unsafe by any stretch of the imagination. There were a few things that were a little lax for me personally, but that's what it is. I'm director, so you know.
- And that's where if you were to show up like three gun, USPSA, IBPA, like it is very... Phallic mans.
- 100%, there's too many moving parts to let it be.
- Absolutely.
- This was so quiet and conversational that you could easily be like, hey, knock that off.
- Exactly, yeah.
- At the three gun match or USPSA match, things are moving way too fast. It would take some balance to actually stop the action or to stop the play.
- And that's part of it too. Things will go wrong a lot faster at those type of action shooting matches. For this, you're not doing 180 degree transitions or anything.
- Correct, correct. How do you think about for somebody's who's a little, maybe got busted up knees, a little older, do you see any issues with them getting around at these matches?
- I don't think so. I mean, a couple of the guys there were complaining about their joints. And I think if you had like... My knees are beyond me being able to build a kneeling position, I really think that at least definitely at this match, the guys would be like okay. I mean, modify the position so that it works for you. It's not gonna be like well, that sucks. I guess you don't get a score for this thing.
- Yeah, no, no. I've never seen anybody not score 'em, but maybe a penalty or something for--
- Yeah.
- It depends on how good the advantage is for not having to do that thing. Well this was awesome man, this was really fun. And thank you all for the comments and the questions you had over the last couple of weeks and we'll certainly answer any more we have. I don't know if we'll do open right away, but I think we should definitely put it on the calendar this year to see if we can check it out, because it's a fun game, it's cool.
- It is.
- All right guys. Questions, comments. We'll answer 'em as fast as we can. See you on the next one.