Out of the box precision

[jkp]

https://www.howausa.com/hera-h7-series/

Interesting. Priced around $600-700 for the 22 and 24" barrel configs.

[Centermass]

At checkout MDT stock, and 20 inch Howa I was 767.

I thought about going with the 6.5. It is the new hotness for long range shooting and honestly it does offer a better coefficient. But honestly, I don’t think that outlet be shooting as far as that round goes to offer the needs to start another caliber 500 m is perfectly acceptable to me.

[jkp]

Excuse my ignorance, but do you have to buy another part to use AICS mags on the Howa 1500 barreled action as provided from Brownells?

[CPJ 2.0]

Excuse my ignorance, but do you have to buy another part to use AICS mags on the Howa 1500 barreled action as provided from Brownells?

Yes. And that’s STUPID on Howas part. Why make a magazine of your own when there are superior mags already made?

[jkp]

Let me ask the question another way. If I remove the bottom metal that it comes with and mount it in a stock like the MDT stock. Will the AICS mag insert and work from there?

[CPJ 2.0]

Let me ask the question another way. If I remove the bottom metal that it comes with and mount it in a stock like the MDT stock. Will the AICS mag insert and work from there?

No.
Not without adding an adapter dingus from MDT.
Which, if I recall correctly, costs about the same as a factory replacement magazine from Howa.
So it’s dumb, but worth it to buy the adapter to use AICS mags.

I’ll let the French Model confirm this, he just bought the MDT stock

[Jay]

So, the issue CPJ is mentioning with the factory mag seems to only apply to the mini actions like I got. The regular short actions with the MDT stock use AICS mags. So CM should be good to go there.

The factory “bottom metal” on all the Howa actions is plastic. MDT sells replacement bottom metal for them. Which is what I have to get for the mini action to convert it to AICS. That bottom metal doesn’t cost much more than a replacement magazine. So it will make sense to do that rather than keep buying expensive proprietary magazines. Since mine came with a factory mag, I’ll get started using it. I plan to put a Timney trigger in mine, so I’ll do that and the bottom metal at the same time.

[Jay]

MDT doesn’t list the Field stock for the Howa 1500 on their website. Might have been discontinued. Brownells still has it in stock. At $300, that’s a hell of a deal. I paid $430 for my chassis.

This is the magazine my mini action uses.
https://mdttac.com/mdt-howa-mini-straig ... ine-10-rnd

And now that I look at it, the MDT bottom metal says it still uses the Howa mini action mags… So that won’t really accomplish anything. I swear I didn’t make that up, though… gonna have to do some more looking…

[Jay]

After looking at it a little more, the chassis I got appears to not use the factory bottom metal. It’s part of the chassis. So it looks like I’m stuck with the factory style magazines. I’ll find out more when I get the chassis. Which is what I’ve been waiting on before making any decisions anyway.

The 308 short action in the Field chassis uses AICS, according to Brownells.

[Jay]

So, just to summarize a little more clearly, the Howa 1500 Mini and Youth actions use Howa’s magazines. The MDT chassis use those factory style magazines.

For regular Howa 1500 actions, MDT chassis convert them to AICS.