DESERT TACTICAL ARMS DTA REVIEW
Thoughts on the gun Bench Grade Brands, the DTA importer, loaned me a chassis and two calibre-conversion kits to give a run down and push the limits. I won’t re-iterate the points that Mike made in his article but rather expand on what he found in his brief encounter.
The two calibres I was able to test side by side were the short 20 inch barrelled 308 Win and a longer 24 inch 338 Lapua magnum. As well as offering two ends of the target spectrum, from a well loved and long adored `jack of all trades` to the modern and increasingly popular long range benchmark - if not for benchrest and f-class use - certainly in ultra-long range and tactical niche.
As well as sharing military origins, they share comparatively good barrel lives and, although the 308 is these days showing it age in terms of pure ballistic potential, the 338 is realistically on the upper edge of commonly available factory cartridges. Using bullets into the 0.7-0.8 G1 Ballistic coefficient regions, you need to start playing with barnstormers like 408 Cheytac and its ultra slippery little brother, the 375 Cheytac before you supersede it. Although large and well above some ranges’ energy limits, the 338 is realistically as big as you need to go and all these ballistic ‘pencil’ bullets are heavyweights, generating serious recoil. Don’t forget, we target shooters don’t need to put ‘energy’ on target - just a neat hole! Having said all that, the two Cheytacs are soon to become available in the UK spec DTA rifle, albeit a ‘Hard Target Interdiction’ (HTI) model and well, if I am offered one to test, I doubt I will turn it down.
What I got up to
The gun arrived with one barrel, pre-built in its 308 format. The outer box was damaged in shipping and the test started with a huge smile as I watched the face on the lady in the queue at my local TNT depot go white as I unpacked the gun to check it was un- damaged, I hasten to say, at the request of TNT staff who were warned!
Apart from a torque wrench and DTA’s own one piece, 20MOA scope mount, no paperwork or instructions arrived with the gun so in a nice way, I had to figure it all out myself which, if nothing else, is a true test of design simplicity if everything works intuitively. I’m pleased to say that within five minutes, everything
was worked out from the usual controls, to the total barrel change procedure, with enough certainty that I was willing to pull the trigger on 50,000 PSI just under my right ear the following day.
I mounted a Schmidt & Bender 12.5-50x56 PMII scope, supplied courtesy of York Guns for the test and as usual, it did not disappoint when it came to optical quality and adjustability. The DTA scope mount supplied was the rewired 34mm spec. and, as the picatinny rail that is part of the gun is flat, the one-piece mount incorporates 20 MOA inclination. 30 and 40MOA versions are also available from DTA. Although the 308 would be getting marginal past 800 yards and at that, well within the 64minutes normally available on two turns of the S&B turret, I planned to really stretch the 338’s legs when the barrel arrived and wanted all the available scope inclination I could get for that job.
Zeroing and initial testing was done with 168gr Remington (Sierra Matchking bullet) and Hornady Match (A-Max) ammunition kindly supplied by Edgar Brothers. The gun arrived only two days before the Diggle egg shoot and I didn’t have the chance to work up handloads. Five-shot groups with both loads were floating around the 0.6-0.8 MOA mark at 100 yards prone and I was happy with that for now. Chronograph testing revealed the expected low velocity attributable to the short barrel but a slightly worrying extreme spread of around 40-50 fps on both loads. 100 yard accuracy didn’t bother me but as I rushed to get data to calculate some come ups for both 300 and 500 yards I wasn’t too optimistic.
The weather at the Egg shoot was horrendous and, as all the F-class and benchrest boys don’t like to get their shiny guns wet, we shot it benchrest-style under cover instead of prone outdoors. I don’t enjoy this, or rule changes at the best of times. I struggled to control the gun’s jumpy, unbraked muzzle off a concrete bench and although I started to share Mike’s previously mentioned balance concerns, it wasn’t the guns fault, just me and a concrete bench with no available soft mat. After a clean score at 100 yards and the overall win last year, I wasn’t too pleased with three low-scoring shots at 100 yards and three very vertically-strung hits at 300 yards (probably attributable to ES) for what was probably last place (not quite! Ed) and I didn’t even score a hit at 500. Is this the reason benchrests were designed?
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