Time for another sub 12 in my life.

[philpot 4,957]

Well for some time I have been wanting a sub12 for close shooting on ferals, corvids and rats but as this type of shooting is not a big part of my shooting, I was not keen on spending too much money on this gun and as I have been renewing a fair bit of my fishing gear, the pension will not go very far so the search began a week ago.  I had an HMR 17 rifle that was not getting used at all so a deal was required in order to secure a sub 12 for me.

First gun on test was a rather nice Zbroia straight pull gun in .177 with a really nice stained black stock.  One of my Airmax Compact scopes was fitted but after trying around 6 different types of pellet at 25mt (indoor range) I was not 100% happy with a number of fliers and whilst not really bad, I want pellet on pellet at 25mt indoors and as much as I really liked the gun, it was not able to give me the result I wanted.

Today I was back in the rfd to try a couple more guns, one being a Kral NP-02 which was as new complete with scope in fact 2 scopes, neither of which interested me but the one fitted would be fine for testing the gun. I found the gun to be pretty accurate with good clover leaf groups but that bloody air bottle stock with the crappy plastic overwrap 'stock' for want of another name which was way too long for me making the scope miles away and simply not comfortable.  We did remove part of the adjustable recoil pad system which took approx 1'' off the length of this stock which brought it down to a level that was fine for me. That balance of this gun is crap with a steel air bottle at my face, I simply could not love this outfit no matter what I did with it so it was out.......

Now I do have a love/hate affair with Air Arms S200 rifles,  I love the Mk1 and 2 with the split stock but finding one that is just right is not so easy as was the case today. It had a single shot operation so there was a cost to fit a magazine and that is not so cheap plus it had no air gauge which when I used them for 'bell target shooting' some years ago, it didn't matter as we only shot perhaps 20ish shots all night in the pub league competition. Having owned one for vermin shooting, it has it's limitations whereas the later one piece stock versions were much better with magazines rather than single shot but I just found the stock on these later models to be uncomfortable. No I decided not to go that route again although had it been a .177 I could have been more interested but at £500, I thought that was way too much for this Mk1 rifle.

I did have a serious look at the Kral Puncher which I did like until I had it in the shoulder, long and front end heavy. This is an issue when most of my shooting is with a Mk3 Wildcat fac, compact and light so longer guns just don't sit well with me and I decided to give it a miss.

With a limited budget my options were a little limited so time to go in the back rooms to rummage through all the stock that had not yet found it's way onto the shelves. In the back I found half a dozen rifles that had just come in from someone's collection and in amongst them was a well used plastic stocked BSA Ultra SE in .22 in good condition although the stock is that nasty black plastic version and unlike the HW110 or my Wildcat would still do the job.  The mod, like all BSA mods are not very effective so a l found a suitable one again in the back room, now quiet, I fitted the Airmax Compact scope and popped into their 25mt range. I had some AA Field pellets, after setting zero it was producing pellet on pellet groups with a couple of stray holes no more than 4mm away so it was good enough to do what I want. A good clean in the barrel soon had a mag full of pellets producing a near perfect single hole group not much bigger than the pellet which put a smile on my face.  I normally use JSB  RS pellets so I need to lead the barrel up then go back and run some more tests with those and AA field to see what it prefers and I really want to work out optimum fill pressure as I am advised that some run perfect at 230bar and others are better at 210bar then run a sequence of shots to see what number of shots before it starts  to fall off zero. I may well look into getting an extended air cylinder and reg as time goes by but for now it will do the job I want it to do.

No photos as everyone knows what a plastic stocked Ultra looks like.

Phil

 

[BrumBatMan 2]

Good read.

[philpot 4,957]

This morning, after giving the barrel a final clean I decided to  run a string of shots to see how many were on zero before starting to drop off zero. Now my garden is only 15mt which is not strictly ideal but nevertheless I thought it a worthwhile task, not that it was a task and that I have to tell you it blew me away, 6 mags in and still on point of aim, that is 60 shots, I then put up individual spot targets with a 4mm spot..................... 7 mags and just on point. I filled the gun to 230bar and it is now just about on 100bar so now I started to see the drop off and at 78 shots point of impact had dropped to 8mm so time to refill and again at 230bar it was bang on the money.

I remember having an Ultra some years ago, not the SE version and the shot count was not good at around 35 shots then the drop off so I had thought this would be the same and certainly did not expect double the shots before dropping off.  This thing, whilst not the a stunner to look at is a tack driver so much so that it is boring, sooooooo accurate and with this shot count, I will not be fitting a reg or longer air tube.

I am going to the rfd tomorrow in their 25mt range to carry out the same test again as the drop off ( I think ) will be more noticable at the longer range. I have only tried AA Fields and JSB RS and the results from AAF are so good that I am not bothering to rest any others. 

We will see what tomorrow brings.

Phil

[j j m 6,525]

interesting read

[forest of dean redneck 11,438]

I keep looking at HW100KT  and this is after I’ve sold off all my air guns .lol wondering how hard it would be to get rat and squirrel permission .