Well, this afternoon my wife and I headed out to the new gun club property to give AirBenchrest a whirl. ACTP (Asociación Colombiana de Tiro de Precisión) was doing their first "simultaneo", with folks participating in various departments around Colombia. I tried to get different people to come, but only one of the other members was able to come and participate.

My wife and I arrived and carried the equipment downhill about 100-150 yards or so to the space that eventually will become the 50 meter range. We set up a folding table, a couple of chairs, the chronograph and a couple of PVC target stands I built. I then proceeded to record info on my two rifles as I didn't know for sure which one I'd be shooting for record. Both are running in the sub-12 FPE category, the Hatsan Nova surprising me as I wasn't sure how much it had been turned down from the original factory tune that was above the speed of sound.

After some initial putzing around I put up some practice targets and proceeded to check them out. The Hatsan was not grouping well at all with the heavier pellets, but didn't improve very much with the lighter "standard weight" either... but the Air Arms did not take to shooting off the bags so the Hatsan was decided on. About that time Jaime showed up so we proceeded to check his rifle - and found that his fill station would NOT hook up to the SCUBA tank a friend had loaned me. So he ended up shooting the 2 year old air in his Hammerli AR20FT without topping up.

Once we got the preliminaries taken care of we settled down to business. After taping an official target apiece up on the frame my wife called "TIME!" and we were off with a "pfft". Well, the Hatsan sounds more like "boingfft" and his Hammerli had a bit more bite to it, but it's real fun to shoot without needing ear muffs or plugs.

By the time we'd run through all three cards for the match (25 rounds for score on each one) he was WAYdown into the yellow zone of his air tank - but the Hatsan still has another 100 or more shots in it, judging by the gauge.

Something's not right with my setup. In spite of a consistent sight picture, no flinching and fairly consistent trigger pull, this rifle was throwing some weird fliers. This cost me a lot of points as there was no way to judge when it would throw them nor in which direction. If I tried to compensate because it appeared to be walking in a certain direction and I'd hold off for the next anticipated change - it was sure to put the shot where the crosshairs were, not where it "should" have been according to the previous three or so shots. I soon learned to hold on and let 'er walk where she would.

Now to go over the rifle, check for any clipping in the QE guts, go over the pellets to see if there's inconsistencies in weight, pull the barrel, give it a good cleaning and then perhaps clean up the crown. This rifle's a HOOT to shoot at 12 FPE off the bags - but it'd be a lot more funner if it would shoot consistently in the accuracy department.

We had a great day at the range. Need to get out and relax like that more often.

A day at the range is good. A challenge before you with the rifle, keeps you growing and makes the sport interesting.

Are you "treating" your pellets in any way? Washing or lubing? I know folks use different techniques for pellets when used in different power plants (spring piston, co2, pcp) and just wonder if you've tried any of that.

What pellets are you using, BTW? Are you sorting or weighing?

Are you cleaning your barrels?

Lots of things can make a difference......

Otony

Crossman Premiers were the pellet of choice for target & field target shooting when I was messing around with air guns.

They are not the best for knocking down any live targets. I found that a flat faced pellet would anchor live game much more quickly.

My RWS spring piston rifle broke the cross hairs loose on a few scopes that were supposedly designed to handle the abuse from a springer. Even after smoothing it out by installing a Maccari spring kit & tune. Check your scope mounts & the scope.

~JM~

Haven't gone the wash/lube route yet. I DO have some that are weight sorted to try one of these days. Just haven't had a place where I could do any serious testing of them. Part of the problem yesterday was the wind, but some of the worst fliers were fired when it died down.

Yesterday I tried the AirArms 10.3's (made by JSB for AirArms) and the JSB 8.44's. Both have a good reputation for consistency and accuracy, but plans are in the works to sort some by size and weight. All it takes is time and the right equipment...

I've hesitated to pull the barrel as there are no replacements for the barrel o-rings in the parts box yet. With the narrow magazine gap on the Hatsan action, the cleaning of the barrel has been limited to pull through patches on a piece of trimmer line. Not the best method for spic and span cleaning. First step should probably be to pull the barrel, clean thoroughly, polish it up with some JB Borepaste then shoot it a bit to season it well. If I DO go that route, I'll see if I can get a friend to polish the crown for me as well, just on general purposes. It didn't look too bad when I inspected it a while back, but didn't use any magnification to check for burrs.

Crosman's pellets have had a good reputation in the past, but the canned versions tend to not meet up to the same level of quality as the single die boxes did. Each rifle is a law to itself as to what they like and I've not had the opportunity to shoot a lot of different pellets through this rifle yet. There are some extra heavy ones on order to try and see if the power available on this platform can launch them to interesting levels of power - accurately. This rifle's got a lot of potential for power, but first it needs to show me if it can bring accuracy to the table or not. A powerful inaccurate rifle is not much use. Eventually I hope to run it out to 100+ meters just for grins and to show the naysayers that a pellet rifle CAN reach out that far - even in a puny 4.5 mm presentation.

The scope mounts are tight, I need to try a different scope, or try this one on less magnification just in case. Some folks have complained about the Leapers 6-24X56 scope on the higher magnifications. All it takes is time to work through the variables!

Yes, indeed! This is a challenge that should keep me occupied sorting it out for a while yet. Next to try this rifle at Field Target. Since it's currently set at sub-12 FPE it's "good to go" for that sport. Although I'm tempted to tweak it up to around 20 FPE and play at the US level of power instead of the more anemic WFTF level.