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sundog, I like your point of using regular bullets for shorter ranges. My first service rifle is my '40's Springfield M1 Garand. I shot that quite a bit and when I had Douglas barrel installed I learned it could shoot 125 grain spitzers very good and that was all I used for shorter ranges. With the Garand and my .308 bolt action I would search for good loads with lighter bullets to keep recoil down at 200 and 300 and reduced 100 yards.
It is pretty nice when all 4 stages come together for a good score. Something would usually happen to mess me up. We would always have a scorer and would have less to do with our own scoring.
With the AR I had seperate zeros for the standing and sitting stage because of canting the rifle. For standing I would turn it to the left a little to keep ears level to the ground and sitting I would go to the right because it seemed more comfortable and repeatable when I would get into the sitting position.
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Like others said, just buy a NM RRA and it will be ready to shoot right out of the box.
I built mine from a Bushmaster A3 20" model that I shot for a few years first- replaced the trigger (RRA NM), added a float tube (Fulton Armory) which required a steady hand on the dremel tool to clearance the handguards, d/t's the FSB for windage set screws, D/T the bottom of the front sight post and added set screw to take up play in front sight. Filed the profile of the front sight to a narrower 0.050" profile, rebarrelled, Cut the bottom stop out of the rear sight elevation screw to give a larger range of adjustment, added smaller rear aperture. Added a ziplock bag of lead shot to buttrap to balance the rifle. Its unique and its mine, but it would have cost about the same as buying a RRA NM in the first place, but I like to tinker....
You will eventually need to learn to rebarrel it- the barrels are about good for 3500-5000 rounds, then they can **** out at any time.