Not quite ready for the SHOT Show, the Hornady folks waited for this year’s NRA Convention that convened April 24 to introduce their new A-Tip Match Bullet. The “A” stands for aluminum, and according to Joe Thielen, Asst. Director of Engineering, it’s what the Hornady design team has wanted use for bullet tips for quite some time, but had been too expensive.
Now, however, Thielen says “…we’ve developed a cost-effective process for manufacturing these aluminum tips to where they’re now affordable for serious match shooters.” Aluminum allows for a longer tip (meplat) than Polycarbonate, says Thielen, and that in turn moves the center of gravity further toward the base of the bullet. The result, he says, is enhanced in-flight stability, which means the bullet stabilizes (falls asleep) sooner in its travel, and that reduces dispersion on target.
Not only do these new bullets feature precision machined AMP® jackets, but extremely aggressive profiles and optimized boattail geometry. The tips themselves are machined caliber-specific rather than using the same tip for a wide range of calibers as is common practice. That’s a first. Needless to say, in addition to these A-Tips yielding extremely high ballistic coefficients (BC), Thielen says they are not “finicky” with regard to different chambers, twist rates, seating depths and barrels, and therefore should produce superior accuracy in any rifle.
As a final step in A-Tip production, these bullets are packaged sequentially in 100-rd. boxes as they come off the presses, without being handled or tumbled. In other words, each of those 100 rounds was produced either before or after the round next to it. That, sports fans, is unheard of, even under the most stringent match bullet production standards. It’s no wonder that Hornady claims these are the most accurate bullets on the planet!
Initially, only three calibers are being offered: a 6mm 110-grain; two 6.5s in 135 and 153-grain, and two .30s in 230 and 250 grains. Obviously, all are relatively heavy-for-the caliber and designed for extreme range competition. When Thielen says “extremely high ballistic coefficients, he means it! The lightest bullet — the 6mm/110, has a G1 BC of .604, and the 250-grain .30 is an almost unbelievable .878!–Jon R. Sundra