About twice each year, I force myself to find time over a period of a couple of weeks to perform maintenance and scrutinize the condition of all of the air rifles within my collection.
While I strategically rotate the shooting of my rifles to be certain they get "exercised," as I believe sitting in a vault for long periods of time without shooting is hard on both pcps and springers, and while when shooting them routinely every couple of weeks and fixing any poi or other issue that might surface, I find them to perform better and last longer if periodically I really take a serious look at their condition.
So I pull them out of the vault, and in the case of pcps be certain there are no leaks, and for all the rifles lubricate any pivot points, clean the barrels, check to be certain all screws are tight, that the cocking strokes of my springers are smooth and quiet, and clean the scope lenses, etc.
I then proceed to shoot each rifle and compare the performance statistics to the last maintenance interval, generally plus or minus six months previous. This provides a trend indication should minor power losses be happening, indicating the need to explore further maintenance activities.
Each of my springers has been carefully tuned with Vortek kits. Most of them have 1/2 to 1 1/2 coils cut from the way they are specified and shipped, whatever it takes to get them to perform very accurately while retaining as much velocity as practical. Thus my Vortek spring kits as specified below may not be producing the velocity advertised by Vortek. However, I find these kits to provide incredibly smooth and consistent power levels and performance.
Also, every one of my rifles has been tested with a wide array of pellets to find the most optimum pellet performance. You will notice in the attached that I am shooting slugs out of my Rapid Air Weapons rifles. I don't find they are generally any more accurate than pellets, especially under 60 yards or so. But once I get out to 90 yards plus, especially with any significant wind speed, the slugs really begin to outshine the pellets. And with NSAs mass produced pricing structure, they don't really cost any more than pellets.
While some of you will be skeptical as my maintenance groups are shot indoors at 18 yards for convenience, I generally find that if I get a really great and consistent performance at 18 yards, they will hold at the longer distances. And all of pcps listed have been shot out to 100 yards, and the springers tested extensively at 50, so the pellet combinations as shown did not rely simply on 18 yard data.
Perhaps some of you will enjoy the data as found below. It seemed as though there might be some benefit of sharing with others.
While I strategically rotate the shooting of my rifles to be certain they get "exercised," as I believe sitting in a vault for long periods of time without shooting is hard on both pcps and springers, and while when shooting them routinely every couple of weeks and fixing any poi or other issue that might surface, I find them to perform better and last longer if periodically I really take a serious look at their condition.
So I pull them out of the vault, and in the case of pcps be certain there are no leaks, and for all the rifles lubricate any pivot points, clean the barrels, check to be certain all screws are tight, that the cocking strokes of my springers are smooth and quiet, and clean the scope lenses, etc.
I then proceed to shoot each rifle and compare the performance statistics to the last maintenance interval, generally plus or minus six months previous. This provides a trend indication should minor power losses be happening, indicating the need to explore further maintenance activities.
Each of my springers has been carefully tuned with Vortek kits. Most of them have 1/2 to 1 1/2 coils cut from the way they are specified and shipped, whatever it takes to get them to perform very accurately while retaining as much velocity as practical. Thus my Vortek spring kits as specified below may not be producing the velocity advertised by Vortek. However, I find these kits to provide incredibly smooth and consistent power levels and performance.
Also, every one of my rifles has been tested with a wide array of pellets to find the most optimum pellet performance. You will notice in the attached that I am shooting slugs out of my Rapid Air Weapons rifles. I don't find they are generally any more accurate than pellets, especially under 60 yards or so. But once I get out to 90 yards plus, especially with any significant wind speed, the slugs really begin to outshine the pellets. And with NSAs mass produced pricing structure, they don't really cost any more than pellets.
While some of you will be skeptical as my maintenance groups are shot indoors at 18 yards for convenience, I generally find that if I get a really great and consistent performance at 18 yards, they will hold at the longer distances. And all of pcps listed have been shot out to 100 yards, and the springers tested extensively at 50, so the pellet combinations as shown did not rely simply on 18 yard data.
Perhaps some of you will enjoy the data as found below. It seemed as though there might be some benefit of sharing with others.
