[Bart B.]

Jimro, all the teams shooting the Palma matches in 1992 at the Whittington Center used that ammo headstamped PALMA 92 that I referred to in post 52 in this thread. That's the rule in international Palma matches; everyone shoots the same ammo issued by the host country's team. Bob Jensen and his two sons use a pair of Dillon 1050 progressives to load many thousands of rounds of that stuff. I helped cart those 500-round boxes of it from the van to the ammo issue table.

For most of the regular fullbore long range matches in Great Britian, they do use ammo from Radway Green Arsenal. They ain't allowed to use handloads.

One interesting thing about ammo was the 1997 South Africa Nationals and 1999 World Palma Matches in South Africa. The US government did not allow ammunition nor components to be shipped to South Africa. So the South African Bisley Union (Their version of our NRA) arranged for a company in Canada to buy thousands of Sierra's 155-gr. Palma bullets then ship them to South Africa. I was there in 1997 and the Africaaners I knew from being there the year before told me they were very pleased to get bullets a lot better than the best their own arsenal made. Their arsenal ammo loaded with Sierra's shot as accurate as anything made in the USA.

Old Roper, those Rugers were the worst example of factory made match rifles the US Palma Team's ever seen. Horrible trigger, poor stock design without proper cheek support for the sights and rough barrels made by a Vermont company who makes only black powder and rimfire barrels. Nobody at Ruger knew anything about a Palma rifle, what it had to be able to do and well as being easy to shoot accurately from prone. They went to their regualar barrel supplier. Half of them had 4 grooves the other half had 6. The 4 groove ones shot a bit better, but 15 out of the 16 proved in accuracy tests to be wash tub guns; that's the size of the groups they shot at 1000 yards. One person on the US Team used the best one (least worse?) because his own rifle broke and nobody else had a spare for him. I gave my rifle to another team member 'cause his broke a firing pin. Everyone else used their own rifles that shot that ammo very well as tested.

And for the rest of the readers, note the US Palma Team last year didn't do so well as the head coach did not want each of the four line coaches doping wind for their four shooters. He tried to dope it for all four firing points and he couldn't see the conditions for each one from his position. He caught the dickens from the line coaches after the match was over.