Got my chrony back today and ran some lead over it

My repaired Chrony with a new crystal came yesterday, but it was late and rainy so I waited until today to try it out.

I always wanted to see the difference in velocity between the Talon tank and the Condor tank, so that is what I did in todays session.

I took two tanks down and five different pellets to try, one tank was a Condor with Tagdaggers Airarcher spring and retainer in it and the other a stock Talon with a etac. Both were filled to 2600, this was the pressure in my topping off scuba tank, on my cascading tank system.

The rifle was equiped with the 12 inch 22 barrel, I did not group when using the Chrony, I just shot into duct seal. I had the Condor spring and hammer/weight in, both top hats are set at .900 to touch the breech when closed. The PW was at 9/5.

I shot just two pellets each of CP’s then the 16 grain exacts, 18 gr Jumbo Exacts, 25 grain Monsters and 32 grain EJ’s.

With the Talon tank the velocities were:

CP’s -770
16 grain Exacts -745
18 gr Jumbo Exacts -710
25 gr Monsters -630
32 gr EJ’s -575

Then I put on the Condor tank with the Airarcher spring and retainer.

CP- 940
16 gr Exacts-900
18 gr Jumbo Heavies-850
25 gr Monsters-740
32 gr EJ’s-665

On the first shot with the Ej’s I experienced partial valve dump, I checked the bore and the chrony and saw that it had shot out the EJ, so I dry fired and it emptied the rest of the air in the Condor tank.

I put the Talon tank back on and shot an additional 10 shots for a total of 20 shots thru the SS with 16 gr Exacts until the velocity dropped to 700 FPs. I noticed that the velocity dropped about 2 fps each for the last 10 shots.

I finished out the day grouping both Exacts and the EJ’s at 25 yards, the 16’s went into .5 the 18’s into .6 and the EJ’s were at .69. That left the air in the talon tank at 2100 when I refilled, so I used 500 PSI to shoot 35 pellets. All those groups were strung up and down indicating velocity decay as pressure lowered. I used 14.3 PSI with each shot with the Talon tank.

When I got done shooting, I broke down the Valve/Condor tank to check it, and I found that the retainer had screwed inself in fully and snuggly, I suppose from firing? When I put that spring and retainer in a few months ago, the old retainer was loose.

I replaced the spring and retainer with the stock Condor spring and retainer, but for the life of me I could find no teflon tape so I blue locktited it, just as it touched the spring. Hopefully I will not live to regret the descion to use locktite vrs a trip to town for teflon tape.

I will replace the spring and retainer with Tagdaggers Airarcher unit when I get my Talon SS I ordered next week and make it a dedicated Airarcher. With the Airarcher and shooting arrows, I never experienced tank/valve dump. It shot the Gold tip carbon arrows at 400FPS and the aluminum 2413’s at 375 FPS.

Looking back it appears the heavier pellet and the lower pressure of the partially emptied tank, that spring/retainer combo of the Airarcher really goes thru air, would not allow the valve to seat/close after firing, but maybe not, because it did it a second time dry firing. The top hat is seated all the way out to touch the breech on that valve, per Tagdaggers advice.

I will have to refill my scuba tanks to get strings and experiment with tophat settings/fill pressure/PW settings, I am sure I have the tophats seated too far out at the present time to efficiently shoot pellets in a 12 inch barrel.

Roachcreek