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Question about zero’ing combat rifles

Porter Rockwell

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I understand it’s a good idea to sight your AR in at 50 yards and with the flat shooting 5.56 you will be dead on at 50, about an inch high at 100 and about 2 inches slow at 200 generally. Is that how you guys set up your iron sights and red dots? What about a 1-4x scope - same things zero at 50?

How about AK’s and the 7.62?

Thanks in advance for the advice.
 
I understand it’s a good idea to sight your AR in at 50 yards and with the flat shooting 5.56 you will be dead on at 50, about an inch high at 100 and about 2 inches slow at 200 generally. Is that how you guys set up your iron sights and red dots? What about a 1-4x scope - same things zero at 50?

How about AK’s and the 7.62?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

I use a 7.62x39 ar with a 1-4 scope. Zero it at 50. I check it at 100 to ensure the ballistics are correct. If you know what the ammo does it really doesn't matter what yardage you sight it in at.
 
I battle sight my AK by zeroing at 25y. Set rear sight to "P" . POI should 1″ higher than POA.
Drop is -
(yd) (in)
0 -1.5
25 1
50 3.1
75 4.8
100 6
150 7
200 5.7
225 4.1
250 1.8
275 -1.2
300 -5

I have easy access to a 25y range if I had a 100y range I'd zero differently.

Battle sight is so you don't have to adjust the rear sight in "combat scenarios" leave the rear sight on the Battle Sight designation and your drops are listed above.

AR has a lot of different techniques I just do it Army style still, except I Zero the ACOG correctly where the Army was jacked up for years on.
 
I battle sight my AK by zeroing at 25y. Set rear sight to "P" . POI should 1″ higher than POA.
Drop is -
(yd) (in)
0 -1.5
25 1
50 3.1
75 4.8
100 6
150 7
200 5.7
225 4.1
250 1.8
275 -1.2
300 -5

I have easy access to a 25y range if I had a 100y range I'd zero differently.

Battle sight is so you don't have to adjust the rear sight in "combat scenarios" leave the rear sight on the Battle Sight designation and your drops are listed above.

AR has a lot of different techniques I just do it Army style still, except I Zero the ACOG correctly where the Army was jacked up for years on.
How are you generating these numbers? The trajectory seems very high for this round with only 1 inch high at 25 with sights 1.5 inches above the bore.
 
How are you generating these numbers? The trajectory seems very high for this round with only 1 inch high at 25 with sights 1.5 inches above the bore.
I did not generate these numbers. I've zeroed my AKM variants based off of AK Operators Union suggestions for awhile now. They are very well informed and I've left the science to them.
Old school Russian method is at 100m with the rear sight set to 300m and some crazy *** 25cm POA/POI visual adjustment. Interesting to say the least but I struggled with that concept so I defaulted to their suggestions at 25y seeing as Ski has been behind an AKM for quite some time.
 
How are you generating these numbers? The trajectory seems very high for this round with only 1 inch high at 25 with sights 1.5 inches above the bore.
The 7.62 round falls off at 300 hard. This is well known. Even a 23" barreled RPK on a bi-pods maximum effective range as a support by fire weapon is 500m per the soviets.
 
I'll typically zero my AR (and any other relatively flat shooting rifle) at 200 yards. This means you can hold dead on out to around 250 yards and never be more that 2 to 2.75 high or low to your line of sight. Further than that and it's a matter of understanding the trajectory for each rifle and load you shoot.

If the rifle has preset come ups on the rear sight it's important to try and match the load you are shooting to the load the sights were calibrated for and then confirm it all by actually shooting at those ranges in matching conditions. If you can't match the conditions it's time to get a good ballistics calculator involved and see if the POI is the same as predicted my the calculator.
 
If a bullet starts out 1.5” below the bore, but intersects it (first zero) at less than 25 yards, that’s going to put the bullet several inches high at mid-Range, and it won’t fall into the second zero spot until 250+ yards.

That seems reasonable to me. Aim dead-on at O-75 yards. Remember to aim a few inches low at 100 or 150 yard targets “IF” precision is important. Aim dead-on at 200 or 250. Aim a few inches high at 300 yards (I’m not sure I could see what a few inches of hold-over looks like at 300y, with my bare eyeballs and no optics.)
 
I did not generate these numbers. I've zeroed my AKM variants based off of AK Operators Union suggestions for awhile now. They are very well informed and I've left the science to them.
Old school Russian method is at 100m with the rear sight set to 300m and some crazy *** 25cm POA/POI visual adjustment. Interesting to say the least but I struggled with that concept so I defaulted to their suggestions at 25y seeing as Ski has been behind an AKM for quite some time.
I just ran the numbers and that trajectory is right. I got to tell you, I could never be comfortable with a round that's zeroed to be 7 inches high at 150 yards. :shocked:
 
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