Random Airgun stuff….

Just a little write up of what I did over the weekend…. Mods, I cannot see pics here at work so I improvised on the tags. Please correct if they do not show. Thanks

Had a spot of rain off and on throughout the weekend and made for some hard to come by shooting. Friday, I spent a little time with the Talon and the S400. I had both dialed in at right at 700fps with .22 Premiers.

I shot at 15 yards and 40 yards. The results were interesting. The S400 has the scope quite a bit lower, and the crosshairs to center of bore measured in at 1.75 inch. The Talon is, of course, up a bit higher at 3.5 inches.

My groups at 15 yards….Note that at this point, I am not trying for stellar groups, just needed to shoot some reasonable groups and be fairly quick about it as the threat of rain was hovering in the form of a dark cloud.

I also did not adjust the S400 to have it hit dead center at 15 yards. One can estimate the relative distances of groups at the different ranges.

And the Talon at 15 yards.

I then moved the target out to 45 yards.

The S400 shot just a bit low…

While the Talon was quite high.

knowing that minor adjustments at longer ranges would have little effect at closer ranges, I then adjusted to get the group a little closer to center on the Talon…..

and then shot at 15 yards again. This time, I was around ½ inch low at 15 yards. I still need to move a shade over to the right for longer range, but that will likely have no effect at the shorter range.

So draw your own conclusions as far as scope height, but it really opened my eyes. As of note, I do find that scope cant is by FAR more critical with the scope higher over the bore. At longer ranges, if you don’t have the scope level, your groups will go all to hell.

All in all, a fun little experiment.

…..and while I was at it, I decided to tinker a bit on the Talon as I noticed that it wasn’t as consistent as I’d like. A bit of tinkering with the Tophat and I filled to 205 Bar. After about 6 shots in the 680-700fps range, my shots bumped up to 715…. Then up to 730 by shot number 20…. Then at shot number 50, I was back at 715. I’ll have to admit that I was quite bummed by this. Not because the shots were erratic; they were not…. There was a very, very tight shot to shot deviation throughout the curve, but I figured for a large bottle, I should get more than 55 shots on a fill, especially at a rather neutered 16fpe.

I went to fill the gun again and found that I was only down to 175 bar. 30 bar for those 55 shots, not counting the 6 soft shots. 72 pumps later from the FX 4 Stage pump and I was back to 205 bar… well, just about a needle width below that to compensate for the soft shots. Felt much better at that point about my shot count and was quite elated to find that my Talon was being so sparing with air. I have a restrictive spring retainer in this from Tony at http://www.talontunes.com and it no doubt has helped.

I got to thinking that I should be able to bump up the preload by the Power Wheel to get more shots at the end of my 55 shot string… so I started shooting…. by shot number 56, I was at 709fps. I turned the power wheel from 4-8 to 6-2. My velocity rose to 732fps. 40 shots later, I was back down to 710fps. I bumped up the power wheel to 9-0 and my first shot chronied at 729fps. 15 shots later, I was at 707fps. Of course when I went to fill, I was at around 115 bar and so I got out the carbon fiber tank, as I didn’t want to manually pump up that much.

So the end result is that I know I can either shoot 50 very consistent shots at 16fpe and have an easy time filling the run, of if I need to, I get get over 100 shots on a fill by adjusting the power wheel after 55 and then 40 shots. While I am quite happy with this arrangement, I would love to see more shots out of the Talon. I no doubt would be able to see many more shots out of it with a longer barrel at those power levels, but I like the compactness of the 12 inch barrel….and it’s very quiet thanks to a Fishbone insert by YN.

By this time, my daylight was fading and I needed to wait for the following day.

Saturday was quite rainy but in between the yard work and the rain, I managed to shoot a little bit. I got out the Kodiak in .25 just to make sure I could still shoot it fair. I shot a single group with it at 50 yards….not FT worthy, but for a 29fpe magnum .25 caliber spring gun, not too bad.

I also got out the HW97LK to see what it would do. This is holding over one mil dot at 50 yards…. The pellet? Believe it or not, RWS Hollow Point. Those and Beeman FTS are the only pellets this gun will shoot well.

Shown here in an older pic with my S400C, BSA Hornet, and Falcon PF25

I then played around with the FWB 300 a bit. We all know that it was a top notch 10M gun and to this day is used in competition. It’s accuracy is legendary and it’s classic looks have an appeal that many guns simply cannot match.

When scoping the FWB 300, one must take scope selection into consideration. While the gun is recoilless to the shooter, it does have the standard spring piston recoil…though not a lot of it. Typically, folks either choose a longer scope that the bell is beyond the loading port, or they choose a shorter scope that does not cover the loading port. I found that a Bushnell Banner 6-24×44 gives enough clearance to load pellets, and is a fitting scope for the accuracy that this gun is capable of.

Offhand, she handles like a dream, if not a bit heavy. One thing of note when shooting using a tree, or any other object to lean against, is that this gun will move backward about an inch. You don’t want to mar the finish on the stock so when using a tree in the field, one must use their hand to cushion the stock from ‘rubbing’ against the tree upon recoil. Long-time springer shooters know this already, but given the PCP-like feel to this gun, it’s easy to forget.

My FWB 300 has been tuned by me using a new bumper piston, a blue breech seal, and a Macarri spring. Velocity is 635fps using 7.9gr Crosman Premiers or around 620fps using JSB Exacts 8.44gr. A little hotter than most R7’s out there, I feel that given the pin-point accuracy of this gun, it should suffice for squirrel and rabbit work at reasonable ranges and easily for any pest bird work.

Accuracy at range is on par with any other quality spring gun, which is to say very good.

Happy with my results from the Talon, on Sunday I decided to shoot my Talon Tuned Condor a bit. About 5 minutes into the session, I’d wished I had just left it in the case. 5 shot groups at 40 yards were about the size of a pellet tin lid… quite miserable. I tried Kodiaks, Eun Jins, and some of Jerry’s slugs… which I have affectionately dubbed ‘Rebar Slugs’. All were producing crap groups for me. A quick chrony string revealed that my Condor was consistent and powerful. I removed the shroud, wondering if that might be the issue and was met with the same results.
I then though of what I would have someone else do if they presented those problems on a forum. I’d ask them to check the crown, make sure there was no damage. I’d ask them to check their mount and scope…and I’d have them try JB Bore paste…. So I did.
10 minutes later, I was ready to try to group the Condor again. Tony tuned the gun to give the first shot the most powerful at 2900psi. I typically fill to 3000psi to get a bit more of a curve and give myself a few more shots.
I fired out a quick group at 30 yards to see how it was doing and it was one holing it at that range so I moved the target out to 60 yards. Since I didn’t have the shroud on, the POI was a bit higher, but my group size was great. I’m going to do a little something different with the scope and mount and plot out trajectory at 15, 30, and 60 yards to decide on where exactly I want to have the intersections. Personally, I find it easier to remember to hold under a little bit at ranges inside of 50 yards and then just a tad of hold over at the longer ranges, but we’ll see.

Between some yard work and family obligations, that was about all the shooting I got to do Sunday.

Was off work on Monday so I got to enjoy a long weekend. Went to see a friend for a bit and despite the rain, we had a fun and productive outing. I had found a front sight that I thought would work well on his .20 RWS 34 and so brought it and my R9, which had been giving me a little trouble with low velocity. I Also brought the Air Arms MPR FT just because it’s such a cool gun.
We shot at spinner spoons at ranges from 20-40 yards and I was quite impressed with myself with my offhand shooting with the MPR, but I have to admit it felt a bit like cheating. The gun is just too easy to shoot and will cancel out plenty of user error…or so it seems.

After a bit of fiddling around with various guns and shooting, we tore into the R9. I had gotten a factory seal courtesy of Jim from the Yellow and had it with me but I did not have a spare spring.
I installed Macarri parts in my R9 some time back and while I cannot readily remember what velocity it was, I know it was within ‘normal’ limits of the R9. My velocity recently plummeted to around 760fps with 7.9gr pellets.

When I got inside the gun, I was relieved…and somewhat perplexed… to find that the spring was good and the seal appeared to be good. I went ahead and replaced the seal and put a touch of moly behind it and installed in the R9.

After an uneventful assembly, it was time to test it out again. My velocity was erratic for about 5-7 shots and then settled in at 850fps with 7.9gr pellets. While certainly not as hot as Vince’s R9 shooting at 920fps with the same pellet, I am happy with 850 and will consider the gun now fixed. If I find it goes back to shooting slow, perhaps I can persuade (beg, plead) for Jim to take a peek at it and show me what I am doing wrong on her, but for now…. All appears fine.

After heading home, I was ready to shoot the Condor again a bit and got a call from DH. While yakking with him, I noticed a rabbit at an estimated 90 yards out past my backstop. I told DH to hold on that I was going to take a shot. I know that the edge of the woods past my backstop is 100 yards and I estimated the rabbit at 90. I leveled down just about the mid point up his ears and touched one off. Walked out there and told DH that I almost dotted his eyeball. After a quick chat, I got out the rangefinder and found that I was a bit off, but an 83 yard head shot isnt bad. Skinned and cleaned him up and in the freezer he went. Will hit the BBQ next weekend.

Despite the rainy weekend, seemed to be quite productive and got in a fair amount of both tinkering and shooting. Looking forward to next weekend to do even more. [/img]