Shooting two airguns at the same time to guage wind effect on different calibers

22, 25 or 30? What is best to shoot on a windy day. I think it is probably the gun you know best.

Robert and I shot a TM1000 25 caliber rifle and a 30 cal Bobcat at 100 yards. We did not start out with wind flags, just shot at the same time so we could see how much the wind pushed out pellets. Eventually we developed a Hillbilly Windflag with electrical tape, a stick, 6 sheets of Charmin, and some electrical tape put on the bottom of the Charmin to give it some weight.


TM1000 25 cal first group in light winds.




Bobcat 30 cal first group


TM1000 2nd and 3rd groups (8 shots), with some mixed winds



Bobcat groups 2

Bobcat group 3




Now we started getting some wind and then it would die. We shot it at the worst times and it showed!

TM1000 spread (about 6 inches)


Bobcat spread (about 7 inches)



Image through the camera and my night force scope.

Indoor shooting with the TM1000

Getting to shoot indoors to reduce environmental factors is a great way to find out how well you gun is shooting the pellets and at the settings you have established. Using a 12-42x Benchrest Nightforce scoped TM1000 (the reticle is NP-2DD), a 25 cal TM1000, Benchmark barrel (3 groove), Rempel Bipod, and JSB 25 caliber pellets (25.4 grain Kings) we tested to see how different head size pellets shoot out of this gun. The 25.4 grain pellets with 6.35 mm head size seemed to be the favorite version with a sub ) 1/2 moa group at 46 yards.

Youtube video of some of the shooting may be found on my YouTube channel.

http://youtu.be/c17q9wfOqOM

More shooting to do to really validate this. I only had a handful (like 10) pellets of the smallest size. After I finish size sorting the remaining 7 tins I will have enough for a more complete evaluation.

These were NOT lubed. So I will be comparing "as is" vs lubes in the future.

Just a reminder here were the statistics on the head size for than tin of pellets:



And then by weight (25.2 and 25.1 are combined in 25.2)



And here is the indoor target which from this limited data set indicates that head size of 6.35 mm seems to be preferred. More shooting is required!

MRPC Air Gun Competition

The weather man was wrong. Who knew. The day warmed up, but the wind continued to blow. Left, right, to us, away from us... Tough conditions to sort out changing a scope at 90 yards as I switched back to the Viper PST for 24X magnification and a first focal plane (FFP) view of the MOA reticle (switching it off the 30 caliber FX Bobcat of George's onto the TM1000 25 cal). Thankfully left to right was good, just a 20 MOA holdover to get to 90 yards. While the club rules allow 25's to shoot at 80 (while the 30's shoot at 90), I chose to shoot at 90 yards. No excuses!

In addition to the wind the shooters at one end (the 30 cal section, including me) had to shoot without the benefit of the cover. The high winds on the 14th tore off the tarp completely.

After (from the other end)

So, scope change. Wind. Missing tarp. Well why not try to use the camera and collect video of the shots. Bad idea. The sun made seeing the screen difficult, and the angle of the targets actually created shadows.

My next mistake (which I corrected when I shot targets 3 and 4) was I should have pulled a patch through the barrel before I got started. The intense wind made it hard to verify the source of larger groups. Was I missing the conditions that bad? Well I went from shooting a groups which were not good to getting 90 out of 100 and 4 bulls eyes after cleaning the barrel. Almost everyone else went down in score because the conditions worsened.

So I tried to do too many things. But had a lot of fun, the chile was great, and I got a lot of good wind reading experience.

Check out the very short You Tube video to see if you prefer side by side or Movie-in-Movie formats from the dual video I captured.

Gun I was shooting:
-TM1000 with 3 groove benchmark barrel
-JSB 25 cal Kings (head size sorted with a Lead Head), HBN coated
-Vortex Viper PST (next time you see me it will have my Nightforce on it)
-Rempel bipod with angled adapter

Sam

Lead Head pellet sorter introduction

Take a look at my introduction to the Lead Head pellet sorter. It is a handy tool to help you sort pellets by head size in a repeatable and accurate fashion. A You Tube video introducing the sizer can be found at:

http://youtu.be/ZExncnGdhN8

Pellet sized relative to a 6.35 mm calibration set point. So, -0.01 means a head size of 6.34 mm.

Ray Pratt says he has 4 more of these 80% of the way to completion (as of March 16, 2014). Ray may be contacted at rayburn11@netins.net

Camera mounted airgun shooting at 90 yards

George's first experience shooting with a camera mounted on an FX Bobcat. 30 caliber.

This You Tube video is a bit over two minutes long, editing out the waiting times. The three targets show a rapid improvement in using the equipment and reading conditions as they apply to shooting this gun! Equipment information is supplied in the video (I have to update it to have all the information, but it is coming along).

You can see the video by going to my You Tube channel, Sam's Research Bench or by using the following video link: http://youtu.be/QSmcPFGKECE

A shortened version of just the last 5 shot group may be found at: http://youtu.be/c6DbcapberQ

Shooting shotgun shells with an airgun

After shooting at 90 yards, we pulled in some targets to see the corrections need at 55 yards. It was a windy day! We ended with an impromptu match! A group of about 10 shooters showed up to check out our first test of camera mounted shooting. So we shot 12 ga shells at 45 and 55 yards (55 for 30 cal) as a group. Each shooter had 30 seconds to shoot, then move to the next person. So you don't get to wait on a specific condition. George shot Dave's Bobcat (so he could continue to use the camera mount, my Bobcat does not quite have enough clearance yet). Dave shot a Bobcat on a Rempel Bipod, and I shot a 3 groove Benchmark barreled 25 cal TM1000. While several of us hit 4 out of 5, Dave and Robert each had 5 and went into a shoot off, which Dave ended up winning.

George's camera work can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/r9UKSv9j9iU