My adventure using a RAW HM1000X for NRL22

Welp, that was a thing that happened. My PRS match went pretty much how I thought it would. I came in first and last place in air rifle division. Actually, it went better than expected, most of the misses were dope issues rather than accuracy issues.

Started out hot with basically low wind. Stage 1 was 175 yard KYL, hit 8 of 10.

Stage 2 was a PRS barricade with targets at 101 and 120. Would have been clean but I forgot to hold on one of the far shots, so 9/10.

Then the wind started to pick up and the scores started to go down.

7/12 on targets at 89, 125 and 165 yards. Dialed the near and middle targets, held the far target. Elevation was off.

3/10 on targets at 132 and 264 yards. Held too much wind on the near, elevation was off on the far. But I did hit a .8 mil target at 264 yards 4 times in a row (unfortunately 2 of the hit were off the clock).

5/10 on an easy stage at 145 yards. Wind was swirly and I held too much of it.

5/10 on a KYL at 217 yards. Held too much wind, I was hammering the smaller targets once I got the wind call.

3/10 on a 60 yard KYL and an easy 100 yard target. I wrote down my holds as .4 and 2.2, so I decided I would dial .4 and hold 1.8 for the far. It was a decent size target at 100 yards, so I got lazy and held 2 mil. But, at 100 yards with the heat it should have been 2.0 mil at 100, not 2.2. So by holding 2 mil with .4 dialed in, I was effectively holding .4 mils too high. The real kicker is I would have had plenty of time to just dial it.

8/12 on a 90 yard KYL. Wind switched halfway through, I made a good adjustment. 8 was actually a good score on this stage.


I had some elevation issues as expected. When I sighted in, I was getting a 2.1 mil hold at 100 yards and 9 mil at 217. According to the Kestrel, these can't both be true. So I need to go out and set a custom curve past 150 yards, I just didn't have a chance to do that before this match.

I was also holding too much wind pretty consistently. Most of my misses during that bad stretch of stages were bad wind holds, so I need to mess around with the BC value once I get my custom curve set up to get better wind holds. Or I might just need to reduce my wind call by 10% every time. I'll figure it out, this is the first time shooting this rifle in any real wind past 100 yards. But other shooters would say they held .5 for wind, and it would be .3 or .4 for me.

The upside is that my score percentage based on the high overall score was the exact same as the last time I shot at this location (70.5%). So if I would have had better elevation and wind data, I would have outperformed my rimfire score from last month.

Other positives:
I discovered that when I put the Tract Toric back on, I had it one slot too far forward on the pic rail. Fixed it.
I discovered that my 7 liter tank has more than enough air for a full match.
I found a way to make my shooting cart more stable.
I discovered that beating rimfire guys with an air rifle feels really good. The "BB gun" jokes really started to fade after the first couple of stages.

I went ahead and ordered the MPA chassis, hopefully it will arrive in about a month. I also pre-ordered the new SG Pulse Pro, this looks even cooler than the unit they demoed a few months ago.

I'll share my method for truing my Kestrel once I figure out what that method is. I'll post some photos in a bit.

I might get lucky with tweaking the BC, but I'm pretty comfortable with DSF, so I'll keep that in my back pocket. I'm planning to tweak BC to get better wind values, if it happens to line up elevation-wise, that would be a bonus. But if not, I'm ready to hit it with the DSF stick.

Playing around in Strelok and the Kestrel with MV and BC at known good dope for 90 yards (1.7 mil) and 217 yards (9.0 mil), I got good numbers with an MV of 981 and a BC of .18. Cloud told me he was getting .18 BC with these slugs in his RAW but I had it set at .16 for whatever reason. So this might be a good starting point for my next range session. Oddly enough, with a 9 o'clock 3mph wind at 217 yards, I'm getting .5 wind with RA4, .6 with G1 and .3 with G7. So switching to G7 might fix my wind issues. However, changing to G7 made my elevation drop from 9 mil to 8.2 mil at 217 yards. If I calculate MV for 9 mils at 217 yards, my MV drops to 938.

I need to go put paper out at a bunch of yardages and get some real world dope, then I can figure out how to make the numbers work. I'll see if G1 or G7 gives me better wind values, then I can make my curve based on that.

Yes, but just randomly. I'll set it to half and see what it looks like.

In case there was any question, zer0dev is a genius. I had a little range sesh to try using G7 in my Kestrel, it worked perfectly. I think the wind values are still high, playing around with the wind and yardages from my match on Saturday I'm getting a bigger wind hold and I was expecting a smaller wind hold.

I think I'm just going to have to do some wind testing and figure out if there is a constant modifier to reduce either the wind input or the wind call output. I don't think I'll have time to shoot in the wind until the Abilene NRL22 match on Sunday, but there will definitely be wind there.

I also put a 700cc tank on the gun. Looks a little crazy, but I think it will look better once I get the MPA chassis. It does add a little heft and moved the balance point forward about an inch, so that's a bonus. Shot count went up to about 22 shots on a 250 bar fill.

156 yard at 5.3 mil


200 yard at 8 mil


B.A.T.


Not crazy about the SD, but I adjusted the hammer spring a bit and sometimes it need to settle in.


These numbers worked in Strelok as well, as long as you remember all of the decimal places for the BC.

drsquall said:

I'm waiting for you to get it all figured out. So I can order mine. Lol.

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Good lord, if you are waiting for me to figure something out you are going to be too old to shoot. You'll have to go back to field target.

Hah! I just wrote out a novel explaining a bunch of stuff that doesn't need to be explained, and to back up my argument I did a little test that was completely counter to everything I wrote.

I took a COF from a couple of weeks ago that I shot with my rimfire rifle. I took a stage that had a target distance of 213 yards. I had written down a wind of 2-5 mph from 10 o'clock, with a wind bracket of .6 to 1.2 mils. (I chose this stage because I did well on it so the wind call must have been good).
Plugging the same wind into the Kestrel gives me the same .6 to 1.2 wind bracket for the rifle and ammo I was using for that match. When I change to the profile for the RAW shooting the Corbin slugs, the wind bracket is .4 to .7 mils. I spot checked a few other stages and I'm getting the same result, with the Corbins using less wind than the rimfire ammo. This is in line with how much I was over-holding for wind on Saturday, so I think I can trust the G7 wind values until they prove otherwise.

It will take some trigger time, but I feel more confident than I did an hour ago.

And the reason you don't hear rimfire shooters talk about truing their windage is because they don't need to. They have thousands and thousands of data points for their ammo in Applied Ballistics, while we are constantly using different slugs that didn't exist a year ago.

This is exactly why I wanted to switch to air rifle for PRS. I've been in a slump with my rimfire rifle and I was starting to burn out. Now I'm re-invigorated and excited about shooting my next match.

I had some time this morning so I went to the range to shoot some confirmation groups. I started at full hammer spring and went down a half turn every group until I bottomed out.

Here are some things I learned:
1. Don't take your bipod off of your main gun. Luckily I had a couple of bags in my truck to shoot off of, so dumb disaster averted.
2. Always budget enough time for the possibility of running into an overly friendly range officer that hasn't seen a real air rifle before. That's 20 minutes I'm never getting back.
3. JSB MRD pellets produce a shotgun pattern when shot at 1094. I'm talking skeet choke, not full choke.
4. Never adjust your trigger in a place where you can't live test it. I adjusted it at home and I had it set to where I couldn't cock the gun, then I had a tense moment of trying to adjust the trigger with a slug in the chamber. I took the bottle off, but it was still dumb. But I got the trigger set great now.

Here' what I learned from the groups.
From full hammer spring to 1 1/2 turns out I was getting the same velocities but very different groups. Setting the hammer spring to the minimum setting within this range gave me the best groups (.29 at 50 yards shooting 960 FPS). And shooting slower than 954 FPS gave diminishing returns.

Here's the groups. Sorry that they are sideways. The shots with a "P" were JSB MRDs at the slowest setting I could manage with this reg pressure.



The group with the 2 at the top was my last good setting. The group with the 3 is the best group, 1 turn out from the previous setting.


The group that says 960 at the top left is the 10 shot group with my new setting (.53"), the group at the bottom left is a 10 shot group with my old setting (.7")

Cloud9AG said:

Are you liking that Tract Toric scope? BTW, I have anxiety after trying to figure out your groups.

Click to expand...

Very much so. To both.

I shot another PRS match today and I made two big errors.
Error 1 - I never got a chance to set my DSF.
Error 2 - I got the gun shooting how I wanted and then I tweaked it at the sight in range before the match.

I went to the range a couple of days ago and got things shooting really nice at about 960 fps. When I went to the match, it was about 75 degrees (at 7:45 am) and it was shooting about 951 fps. So I gave the hammer spring a few clicks to get it up to 960 fps.

The way this match was setup was they had 4 stages up on top of a hill and 4 stages at the bottom of the hill, so all four squads started up top, shot four stages, then went to the bottom. The first 4 stages had pretty light wind, maybe 3 to 5 mph, about 10:30.
First stage was a standard PRS barricade with targets at 100 and 122 yards. I shot over the targets , when I finally quit being stubborn and held low I got 3 hits.

I went to another area and found a tree at 50 yards to re-zero, it was .3 mil off. I'm pretty sure when I goosed the rifle at the sight in, the rifle heated up walking to the first stage and it shot a little hotter and higher. So I re-zeroed and told myself to not do that next time.

The next stage was a troop line with targets from 79 to 206 yards. I cleaned it except for 2 misses at the 175 yard target, which were low. (Actually, I just checked practiscore and I was given a 7, but I know it was an 8. Check your scores before you leave a stage.)

Then I shot a stage with a gate, 2 positions, targets from 108 to 141 yards in a very wide pan. A hit 5 of 10 targets, according to my notes I held too much wind. I also had a mag failure that caused my to time out. One of the QD Fox mags didn't advance after the first shot. Luckily I felt it load without a slug so I popped out the mag and put in another.

The last stage on top of the hill was a 12 round tank trap stage with a 141 yard target and a 190 yard target. I hit 5 of 12. The closer target was a tall, skinny prairie dog. Every time I shot at it, the wind would change. Both targets I shot .2 mil high. After I got done with the stage, I stayed on the prop and shot another shot at each target to get good dope. The I set DSF values for those two yardages in my Kestrel. At this point, I wasn't too concerned about ruining my match by tweaking the Kestrel data, that ship had sailed.

Then we headed to the bottom of the hill and the wind started cranking. 15-20 mph, switching, gusting, lulling. This is where I decided to go ahead and shoot better. We shot a pipe stage with a 90 degree pan with targets at 70 and 150 yards. I got 10 out of 12, I forgot to dial on one close target and I didn't get the call on an edge hit.

Just when I was building some momentum, the mover stage happened. the mover was at 103 yards and there was a 150 yard KYL target, shots alternated between the two. I only got 1 hit on the mover and 3 on the KYL. In the past, I've shot this mover with a 1 mil hold on the leading edge. I didn't account for the fact that with the RAW I'm shooting over 100 fps slower than with the Bergara, I should have used a 1.2 mil lead. Oh well, failure is a good teacher.

Then I shot a stage with two KYLs at 75 and 100 yards, alternating between the two. Wind got a little switchy but I got 7 out of 10. Squad high was 8, so that was ok.

Last stage was shooting a wide array of targets from two benches from 117 to 196 yards. This was the open part of the range, so the wind hold was different for each target. I started in a lull and hit the first 5 targets holding straight up for wind. Then, restarting the target order the wind picked up. I missed the first 2 shots off the right so I held left edge and hot the rest for an 8. This turned out to be the hardest stage due to the wind and only 2 shooters in the match out shot me. Nice way to finish.

When I got home, there was a box on the porch that looked like it might be my MPA chassis. It wasn't. Not sure if I'll recover from that disappointment.

Take aways-
Don't fuss with your gun at the match. Get it zeroed and shoot, if it was good a couple of days ago, it's still good. Especially if you are shooting a clean barrel, get some lead down that thing before changing stuff.

Get your dope right before the match. Lack of confidence in your equipment is a terrible feeling, especially given the time and money used to shoot a match.

I think that's it. I was pleased with how I shot and the rifle shot, I just need to get the dope dialed in and get more trigger time to figure out my wind holds.

Just a quick note in case I'm over-estimating the fact that DSF is common knowledge.
DSF stands for Drop Scale Factor (I think) and it's basically a way to create a custom drag curve instead of relying on stock calculations based on BC, velocity, drag model, etc.
In the Kestrel 5700 Elite, you can add DSF values for a rifle profile. Basically, you pick a distance to start adding values (I typically start at 200 yards for rimfire ammo) and you shoot a group at the distance and enter the elevation setting that you used. This is assuming a good zero and a good velocity number. Then you go out further and repeat as desired. So with a rimfire rifle and ammo, I would typically zero at 50 yards, confirm my velocity by shooting at 100 yards, then set DSF at 200, 225, 250, 275, 300, 325, 350 yards. Then your curve is set. If your velocity changes due to environmental factors, the curve will adjust to the velocity, so for a particular rifle and ammo you should only need to do this once.

In my previous post, I realized that my RAW was shooting .2 high at 141 yards and 190 yards and a little low at 175 yards, so I set the DSF in the Kestrel profile to be .2 lower at 141 yards and 190 yards. It was actually a little more complicated than that. For this stage, my Kestrel values were 4.6 mils at 141 yards and 7.5 mils at 190 yards. Because it was a tank trap stage with a lot of movement, I dialed 4.6 for the close target and held 3 mils for the far target. I missed high on both targets so I came down 2 clicks on the elevation turret and that worked. So I set the DSF for 141 yards from 4.6 to 4.4. Because I was hitting the far target by holding 3 mil, I set the DSF for 190 yards to 7.4 from 7.5 (4.4 + 3 mils).

When I go set this for realz, I will be setting DSF values in 25 yard increments starting at 125 yards. I'll probably go to my club to set everything out to 200 yards because it's sheltered from the wind. Then I can add values for 225+ yards at the other club on a day with minimal wind.

The only rule with DSF is you have to set values near to far. If you try to go back and add a value closer than another value you have added, it will jack up the curve and you have to start over.

As zer0dev pointed out, sometimes you can jump up your own bunghole with this, but I set DSF with all of my rimfire ammo and it really gives me confidence in my dope.