Pellet Report: .177 AEA 13.7g
Shot these cards with testing a new pellet - the AEA .177 13.7g. The pellet seems identical in shape to the 13.4g FX/JSB/AA soft lead pellet.
The AEA .177 pellets (8.72g, 10.3g and 13.7g) load smoothly like JSB pellets. Much smoother than JTS pellets seem to load.
Nothing for the leaderboard, but really solid scores - especially the 197 Masters card today. The 199 14X 30-Challenge card was an "adventure" - shot over two days with drastically different conditions - I actually got chased into the house by a thunderstorm yesterday with #7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 still to go. I had to bump the power wheel up one click today to get similar velocity to what I had yesterday - as today its about 15 degrees cooler.
I always feel that I do best with 10.3g pellets in .177. I've had some great scores with .177 13.4g JSB/FX/AA - but I feel that I get more "fliers" with the 13.4g (even keeping velocity in the "optimum" 800-820fps range for this particular pellet). The "fliers" I get are typically "droppers" - the shots will drop way lower - at the edge of the 9 and sometimes into the 8 ring.
It could just be in my head.
In any case, my initial testing with these AEA 13.7s did have a few "droppers" - but not very many. At this point I can't say for sure whether the 13.7 AEAs are more consistent than the 13.4 JSBs, but they have done at least as well. My tune on this Crown is probably sub-optimal for .177 - as I'm running a reg pressure of 120bar (at least that's what the FX gauge is saying). Probably could have a better extreme spread with a reg pressure of about 100bar.
To date, I've only tested the .177 AEAs in FX barrels. I will try to see how they do in the Akela at a later time.
Since 13.x grain pellets seem to be the main pellet for Field Target shooters, I hope you find this mini-review helpful.