Anderson AR15 checks out

Mike Branson behind the rifle.

I replaced the solid forend on the Anderson Mfg. 20″ rifle with a lighter ventilated Midewest Industries part. Today, I re-zeroed the rifle with the new Primary Arms 4-14x FFP scope.  All four shooters took turns with this rifle.

Today, I managed to forget the box containing almost all the ammo, the spotting scope and the chronograph. So no range report with SSG69 or Henry Big Boy. I did have 75 rounds of 32CP, enough to discover that Star S “mini 1911” shoots amazingly well. I borrowed .22 ammo to zero a few new rifles and shot what little .223 I had on hand. When I say “forgot all 223 ammo” that means “except for one 30rd magazine I had in the car and eight 20rd boxed stowed with the rifle, plus one 20 rd magazine Mike had in his range bag”. So forgetting to bring ammo yielded 210 rounds. A lot of it came from Remington rep (thanks, Robert!)

I am not a great rifleman, so this 75-yard target is fairly good for me. This was shot with Remington 69-grain match. I did a few better groups but always pulled at least one shot far to the side.

My friend Glenn left several of these targets with me and I am a fan.

The PA scope is sharp and clear. Zoom and parallax rings are a bit too tight, but that’s ok. The mount is exactly the right height for an AR15. Close focus is excellent. It’s a little less bright than the Nightforce 3.5-15x and lacks reticle illumination. The eyebox is fairly small. I am not used to working with FFP scopes, but given my preference for hold-overs vs. adjusting turrets, it should work better than RFP versions. For the 1/8 of the Nightforce price, it looks like a pretty good buy.

The rifle ran 100% with all ammo except Tula. I had to cycle 24 of 30 rounds of that manually. Tula 45ACP and 308Win ran fine for me, but their 223 seems pretty weak. Remington match ammo (62/69/75gr) and Mike’s 77gr handloads gave groups about half as big as 55gr ball.