Which pellet for .25 extreme valve?
I’m still trying to get my .25 condor 24″ lw barrel, extreme valve and r&l shroud to group.
I’ve tried eun jins 43 and 35’s with little to no luck. The H&N 31 gr has gotten the closest with 3″ groups at 50 yds. I’ve also tried various pw and pressure combos.
Is there anyone on the board with the extreme valve in .25 cal and if so what pellets are you shooting.
I’ll be trying the kings next but I was really trying to shoot some heavier pellets which is why I went with the extreme valve.
Thanks,
Rick
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There is only 1 .25 mold and it doesn’t work for .25 airguns. Just wanted to let you know if you were thinking about casting for .25. You have to go .257 if you want to cast your own stuff.
Thanks wildfire,
Your’s and everyone else’s input is greatly appreciated due to your experience and the sometimes overwhelming aspect pcp’s can bring to the air rifle field.
I have tried to resist the ‘call of the slug’ 🙂 but just as pcp’s find a place in our lives when possible, getting slug bit is almost inevitable.
I have to wait for more to be cast and I have to say I am as excited as I was waiting on the gun itself.
The extra weight slug adds to the confidence factor for my hog hunting, hopefully soon I’ll be posting a success story as well as some meat on the table :-$.
Hi Rick;
Glad to see in your post that you took your gun apart to ” look and lube”! The Air Force line of guns are a very simple and elegant set up and IMO , one of the first things a new owner should learn how to do( besides filling and shooting) is to learn how to tear down and re-assemble their gun. By doing this, you tend to get a better understanding of “what makes it tick”!
I think you will be very impressed with Jerry’s slugs when you shoot them. I do not have an extreme valve in my gun and only an 18″ barrel. His ammo is very accurate from my gun and hits like a friggin freight train.
Keep a nice “fresh” set of allen wrenches on hand along with a well lit work area and don’t be afraid to dive in and explore the workings of your gun from time to time.
Wildfire
Ahhhh, fantastic information and drawings on the valve and tophat out there. I even found a great cutaway pic that walkon put out there from 2007 (thanks Walkon).
I’ll take off my bottle and double check my tophat just to be on the safe side.
Rick 1500 –
Yeah, from looking/learning on the web, it seems that a lower power wheel setting is desirable. Setting the top hat between .080 and .090 seems to be the correct setting range as well, mine is set at .85 currently. I simply measured some differing thickness flat washers to get the right ones for several adjustment ranges instead of trying to measure the actual top hat x valve face.
I think the reason I was having loosening issues is I was not opening the breech and threading the tank on, I have to thread it on after transport due to my hard-case being too short for the entire rifle with the tank installed. My assumption is that from threading the tank on with the breech closed, the top hat would ‘adjust itself’ by friction from the breech ‘O’-RIng. Maybe not, but that’s all I could come up with. This actually tightens the top hat creating a much closer tolerance between the top hat and the valve face causing a low power shoot situation. So, you figure that while threading in tightened the top hat, threading out loosened it. My groups were all over the place until I noticed a VERY light report, which finally led me to look at the top hat. I also installed the recommended ‘O’-RIng behind that top hat and that helped too.
With this set up, I get close to 40 decent shoots from the Condor SS in 25, with an 18″ barrel and the stock AF valve/top hat. All this within the pre-stated pressure range. It just doesn’t seem to use much air. YMMV.
Socal,
I need to get a string up for the jsb’s. I chronyed them but I didn’t record them, I’ll do that next time.
I remember staying at pw of 4 and starting with 2600# which was giving me 1100 or more, I remember being surprised that accuracy was doing well.
I kept shooting because I wanted to get the fps down. I went down to around 1200 and was still shooting 900. I was thinking this was going to be awesome for air usage.
Side note; I have a paintball adapter ordered from Joe so I can get the army navy surplus place to fill with N2 to the 4350# my luxfer tank is rated at, the 3200# from the dive shop goes way too fast shooting the heavier pellets.
I was glad to see a wide variety of pellets in the 26-28 gr range, I’ll be testing them as time goes on, maybe I’ll try the H&N’s next since they are shooting good for you.
I’m still a newb with the condor, I took it apart the other day just to look and lube. So I’m not sure right now how a top hat and an extreme valve relate to each other. I have the spin lock setup and I haven’t taken it off yet.
Maybe someone has a quick explanation to help me understand the extreme valve. I would email Randy for some info but he’s very busy. I’ll do some looking on the forum and internet to see if coming loose is possible.
I have had relatively decent groups at 50 yards using H&N 27.47gr hollow points. Knowing that isn’t truly a target pellet, but groupings are excellent. Power wheel is set at about 3.2 and the best pressure spot is between 1850-2150 ish.
I have not chronied though, that’s up next just so I know. I have simply been going for the sweet spot accuracy so far.
I had some trouble with the tophat loosening and fixed it with some blue loc-tite, you may wanna check that as well, really a frustrating thing having large groups….until you figure out that it’s not the pellets or a loose scope mount and start checking other things, which led to the tophat.
Resizing the .43’s helped quite a bit, 2″ to 3″ groups at 50 yds but still not what I want, I’ll play more with them later. Previous groups were 8.5″ x 11 🙂
I’ve got an email in to Jerry for some slugs 🙂
I was able to shoot the jsb kings and was very pleased.
Some groups were cloverleaf, some were 3/4″ at 50 yds, now for some fine tuning. I’ll be ready for rabbits and squirrels, I just need to get going for the hogs my bait is more than ready :O
Remember that with ANY air gun, pellet preference ( the guns,not the shooters) plays a big part in accuracy. You may need to play with many before you find that “ultimate” pellet. I mainly shoot JSB’s for smaller game but if I want to shoot at coyote, the first thing that will go into my breech is one of Jerry’s slugs. My setup will put his slugs “hole in hole” at 80yds but then my groups will open to about 1.5″ at 100yds.Still enough to drop a song doggie. My buddy’s gun will cloverleaf them at 150yards.
Try out those JSB’s when you get a chance. I think you will like them.
I drilled a piece of metal today, and put a hole the size of the kodiak 31 gr and pushed some 43 gr pellets through it. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I am pleasantly surprised.
I was not successful at getting the picture off my phone to post it but I have to say that the three pellets I altered gave me the best group from the 43 gr’s so far.
I wasn’t sure if I was even going to hit the target so I started at 30 yds since I only did three pellets. I was extremely happy to see all three hit in the same area, this has not happened prior and was becoming very frustrating.
I did as was recommended and started at 2800 and the pw was already set on 4 so that’s where I left it. I think I may have been more excited that they loaded so much easier, I know my thumbs were very happy 😀
The shots were 3/4″ apart which gave me a 1.5″ group at 30 yds.
I’m going to keep playing with these and see if I can get better groups. After I do more testing with this setup I’ll be necking down the rings a touch more in a smaller hole, I was concerned how they were going to shoot with how the rings were flattened.
Anyway, it’s good to finally be seeing some kind of organization on the target now.
Edit 7/11…. I met to put started at 2600 (not 2800)
Thanks Jerry,
I guess my first question comes from the trouble I’ve had with all of my shooting so far. When I bought the gun I was expecting to go outside and start shooting and be happy, that didn’t happen due to me wanting the eun jins to work and they didn’t at the time.
So that’s all I have to compare anything to right now ( I did get some jsb kings in today and I’m excited about those:) )
I’m not used to putting a pellet in and it hitting the center of the target yet so I guess it was just a random question.
That is very interesting about the heavier slugs retaining energy longer, great information. I knew the heavier pellets held more for longer but I’ve never put it into that comparison, puts it into a better perspective.
I’m not sure I understand the first question. If the gun is set to enough power output and isn’t clipping, the slugs will shoot where you point them. I don’t know how much time people have spent fiddling with tuning and sighting before they were satisfied.
Your holdover depends entirely on where you have set your scope before you shoot the slugs. There is no simple table for drop compared to random pellets. Remember, any pellet you can accelerate faster than the slugs will also slow down faster. I’ve often shot a heavier round in a particular setup and found it hit Higher than a lighter faster MV round, particularly at long range.
Jerry,
Do your slugs require a long time to get to shoot accurate or do they shoot great in most of the condor .25’s right off the bat.
What kind of holdover inches wise would I be looking at with the extreme valve at 50 yds.
Thanks
Hopefully you can find a pellet sweet spot for lower power and inexpensive plinking. When you get back to optimizing a high power setting, send me an email. We’ve got several hundred 9 ring slugs ready to ship and right now, we can turn around orders for 6 and 7 ring slugs pretty quick.
Once you get the eun jins into the transonic velocity range, you’re going to have more trouble with accuracy. I think part of the problem is that at those speeds, nose drag starts to get closer to tail drag and pellets depend on tail drag as well as spin for stability.
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Not any time soon Dyotat,
I’ve got enough work and projects going on that there is no way I’ll be casting any.
If Jerry ever stops I’ll just have to make do with what I can. Maybe he’ll be able to give us plenty of notice and we can stock up, I need to stock up anyways before that event ever happens 🙂