More on the FX Royale 500 magazine
I put on some 5 dioper close-work magnifying glasses for this. They’re a pain because the focal length is not far from nose length. But, real handy for this kind of stuff.
First, it looks like the spring tension in the mag is not much of an issue at all. After filling the mag, I used a hard wooden rod, about the size of the Royale’s to push out the pellets, cycle through the mag and watch the motions inside the mag. The black fins of the mag absorb the vast majority of the impact as the mag advances. In other words, as a pellet is pushed out, the “click” you hear is actually the plastic fin, around the next pellet, striking the loading rod.
As the rod backs out, the mag advances a tiny bit, 1-2 mm, as the pellet lines up (fin passes by). This short travel doesn’t allow time/distance for significant acceleration under spring tension. I ran the same group of JSB Kings, twice, through the mag and found no sign of damage. This should be good news to those of us worried/curious about the mag. It was good to see the plastic fin whacking the loading rod instead of the pellet skirt.
To reduce the tight fit while loading, rather than taking the mag apart, I used a very sharp, small X-acto knife, under magnification, through the clear cover hole, to shave a little off the black chambers, where needed. Load the first “jam” pellet and move the cover to each chamber. You need to move the cover back and forth to give greater access, and pulling the blade helped drag out plastic slivers. Tapping and blowing from the back/black side with canned air gets rid of most of the remaining bits. Frankly, A tiny bit of plastic dust going down the barrel isn’t worrisome; it’ll blow out. A more thorough air blasting would likely get the thing plenty clean.
Unlike a Dremel, the knife makes small curls which are easier to get out. The blade was sharpened on an Arkansas stone-super sharp. This won’t work with a dull blade. We’re also talking about tiny amounts of plastic getting shaved on maybe 4-5 of the chambers, generally opposite the first “jam” pellet. It’s also possible that other pellets don’t require any mag tinkering.
Finally got a ProChrono, so plan on using it this weekend to generate some numbers.
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Yeah winds are terrible.
I once stood on the steps of a girly bar in Chang Mai during a typhoon and got sucked off. 😆
It was really scary.
Regards,
Roachcreek
RC, the clip is easier to load now; most of the pellets drop in or just need a little tapping/vibration on the mag to settle. I had to leave for work, so didn’t finish. Two of the chambers need a little more plastic removal, but even those required much less effort to seat properly in the mag.
I’m hoping the winds die down for the weekend, frequent blasts of 50 mph, maybe more at the vineyard. A lady opened a side door yesterday to the on-site restaurant, the wind pushed inside the room and blew a pretty heavy glass door 7 feet away off the hinges. Broke to pieces. I checked the top hinge and it was bent up pretty bad. Not good shooting or chrony weather.
I’ll check actual function/accuracy in the rifle asap. Today, pellets don’t stand a chance beyond 10 feet.
There has not been a problem w/ accuracy, so far. The only pain previously was having to keep a flattened toothpick or stiff grass stem handy to get some of the pellets properly into the mag.
It’s really nice to know how fast your pellets are really going. You may be surprised by some of your guns performance. You are going to appreciate the up to 99 shot string capability of the ProChrono especially with the FX gun. Good Luck! 😀
IS it working smoother?
RC
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Bet it wasn’t scary enough to keep you off the steps 😉
Still got one chamber where the pellet won’t drop in, but it’s close. Shot a few mags worth before dark yesterday; the winds died down. Everything worked great, fine accuracy. Waiting to see if any of the three Ballistic and friends got had any issues. Mine might be a fluke or “older” model.