What causes flyers in airguns? I was shooting some groups through my Uragan 2 700mm using JSB Exact pellets (25gr and 34gr MKII). Overall, the groups are tight, but every 5 shot group would get a flyer. I tried sorting by weight, same result. What other variables are there? Head size? Skirt damage? Any ideas are welcome.
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Flyers.
- Thread starter muradtexas
- Start date
I’ve had this problem on one gun. The issue ended up being the alignment of the pellet to the chamber was off just enough to shave the skirt. Replaced the pellet mag.
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I have thought about it a lot as a benchrest shooter. In my opinion it is when a few factors act together. Your gun might have small percentage difference in speed if you shoot over a chrony, then your pellets might differ a small amount in weight, then there might be light gush of wind just as you shoot, and when all these factors fall together, you will get inconsistencies. Those are just factors that you cannot control, then there is the human factor......
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Murad,
During a manufacturing run of any specific pellet size, JSB utilizes a number of machines and dies. Due to varying ages of dies, machines and changing environmental conditions, pellet variation is unavoidable. To address, JSB blends all together which explains considerable size and weight differences when pellets happen to be sorted by purchaser. The majority of pellets fall into a range, that an airgun will shoot well, however, there are some outliers, on the extreme fringe, that some airguns won't. I suspect "flyers" are the result. WM
During a manufacturing run of any specific pellet size, JSB utilizes a number of machines and dies. Due to varying ages of dies, machines and changing environmental conditions, pellet variation is unavoidable. To address, JSB blends all together which explains considerable size and weight differences when pellets happen to be sorted by purchaser. The majority of pellets fall into a range, that an airgun will shoot well, however, there are some outliers, on the extreme fringe, that some airguns won't. I suspect "flyers" are the result. WM
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Are there more consistent pellets on the market? I want to try out some other options to see if it is, indeed the pellets.
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My U2 700 .25 does not like JSB Mk1 or Mk2. I've tried them at all the usual velocities (reg. & hammer adjustments) and my CZ barrel does not like those pellets. The most accurate pellet I have found for my rifle is the JTS 29.63gr. One ragged hole and no flyers like I get with the JSB 33.95s
I am working with slugs right now so pellets are on the 'back burner' for now.
Good luck, hope ya get it sorted to your liking.
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The first thing you do after you’re done scratching your head with pellet fliers is switch to single loading.
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I agree trying single loading is worth a try. Making sure your scope rings are tight is worth a try too. Could be lots of things.
I've been messing with my P35-177 trying to get it to shoot more consistently - smaller 5 shot groups at 30 yards. I've checked all the "normal stuff" so I've been retuning it. Changing the regulator in small increments and then testing with small hammer spring changes at each new regulator setting. I got some interesting groups at my last test. The first 5 shot group was about 0.1 inches center to center. Second was about 0.2 and third about 0.3. No real fliers but the groups were opening up. The fourth and 5th group had a single flier. The other 4 in the 4th group was a tight group but the fifth was a little worse. Overall a pretty steady progression from what I'm looking for to where it has shot historically. I started shooting immediately after getting set up. The gun thus started at about 70 degrees F and gradually cooled to about 40 degrees F. I'm hoping to get some warmer weather with still air to do some more testing. I'm hoping I've found a good tune for reasonably warm weather and maybe a slight hammer spring change can "fix it" for cooler weather (a slight increase is what I'll try first). The progression could also have been me or it could have been due to wind gradually increasing or I might just have been lucky on the first few groups.
Long story to say I think fliers can be an indication more work on the tune is appropriate. My P35-25 also has historically had mediocre accuracy with some 3 shot groups that were pretty good but 5 shot groups were always ruined by a flier or two. But I added a power plenum and retuned it to about the maximum I can get out of it and it shoots a lot better now. Fliers seem to have gone away, at least for the most part. Best 30 yard challenge with the "old tune" on the P35-25 was a 155. Best of the few I've shot with the new tune is a 192. I think it will do better.
I've been messing with my P35-177 trying to get it to shoot more consistently - smaller 5 shot groups at 30 yards. I've checked all the "normal stuff" so I've been retuning it. Changing the regulator in small increments and then testing with small hammer spring changes at each new regulator setting. I got some interesting groups at my last test. The first 5 shot group was about 0.1 inches center to center. Second was about 0.2 and third about 0.3. No real fliers but the groups were opening up. The fourth and 5th group had a single flier. The other 4 in the 4th group was a tight group but the fifth was a little worse. Overall a pretty steady progression from what I'm looking for to where it has shot historically. I started shooting immediately after getting set up. The gun thus started at about 70 degrees F and gradually cooled to about 40 degrees F. I'm hoping to get some warmer weather with still air to do some more testing. I'm hoping I've found a good tune for reasonably warm weather and maybe a slight hammer spring change can "fix it" for cooler weather (a slight increase is what I'll try first). The progression could also have been me or it could have been due to wind gradually increasing or I might just have been lucky on the first few groups.
Long story to say I think fliers can be an indication more work on the tune is appropriate. My P35-25 also has historically had mediocre accuracy with some 3 shot groups that were pretty good but 5 shot groups were always ruined by a flier or two. But I added a power plenum and retuned it to about the maximum I can get out of it and it shoots a lot better now. Fliers seem to have gone away, at least for the most part. Best 30 yard challenge with the "old tune" on the P35-25 was a 155. Best of the few I've shot with the new tune is a 192. I think it will do better.
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Looking at an individual's view on flyers is an interesting insight into the way that person's brain works.
Some say flyers don't exist, and that any errant impact point is a misread wind call. This field of thought isn't willing to accept that the flyer might simply be a bad pellet. My opinion is that they do this because they can't reconcile that flyers just exist and are completely out of our control. These guys will often focus more on barrel prep or barrel swapping, things they CAN control.
Another camp thinks pellet scrutinizing is the cure. They'll spend hours weighing and sorting and sizing and generally trying to homogenize their projectiles. It's possible to spend more time homogenizing than shooting if we let these OCD tendencies loose inside our minds.
Personally I've seen benefit from sorting, but STILL had flyers from sorted pellets. So I fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.....
As @Vetmx suggested, make sure your magazines aren't a problem. Check the other end too, to make sure you're not clipping the shroud/moderator. Other potential areas are the transfer port or even a bad crown. Barrel optimizing through lapping even just polishing is another potential way to minimize flyers.
Even after all of the potential sources are resolved, airguns will still have occasional flyers. Don't let it drive you crazy and you can still enjoy the hobby.
I'm pretty happy if flyers are rare, and the rarer the better.
Some say flyers don't exist, and that any errant impact point is a misread wind call. This field of thought isn't willing to accept that the flyer might simply be a bad pellet. My opinion is that they do this because they can't reconcile that flyers just exist and are completely out of our control. These guys will often focus more on barrel prep or barrel swapping, things they CAN control.
Another camp thinks pellet scrutinizing is the cure. They'll spend hours weighing and sorting and sizing and generally trying to homogenize their projectiles. It's possible to spend more time homogenizing than shooting if we let these OCD tendencies loose inside our minds.
Personally I've seen benefit from sorting, but STILL had flyers from sorted pellets. So I fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.....
As @Vetmx suggested, make sure your magazines aren't a problem. Check the other end too, to make sure you're not clipping the shroud/moderator. Other potential areas are the transfer port or even a bad crown. Barrel optimizing through lapping even just polishing is another potential way to minimize flyers.
Even after all of the potential sources are resolved, airguns will still have occasional flyers. Don't let it drive you crazy and you can still enjoy the hobby.
I'm pretty happy if flyers are rare, and the rarer the better.
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What Franklink said is spot on. The reason we lose our minds over fliers is because of how good these guns shoot. When your gun is capable of putting multiple projectiles in the same hole, anything even more than slightly outside that causes us to lose our minds. The next factor is the gun itself. When you can stand up from the bench and wander off into the woods to hunt all day with the same gun, well you might be expecting too much from the bench. I‘m currently testing a barrel I just built for one of my squirrel guns. I immediately started packing the pounds on that gun. Mounted the heaviest scope I had, and added weight to the bipod for testing. It’s not that you can’t shoot consistent groups with a field gun, it just takes way more stars to line up. But ironically, if our guns were only capable of one inch groups at 30 or 1.5” groups at 50, we would never notice the fliers.
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Varying ideas of what constitutes a flyer too. Some are thrilled with 2-3" groups @ 100, some want MOA or better.
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JSB is pretty tops in the pellet world, some competition guys size and weigh JSBs, to cull out the "fringe" outliers, but most of the rest of us shoot as is. During the same production run mentioned previously, JSB also produce pellets for FX, a different collection process, however, improves uniformity. After all machines and dies are set up, JSB designates one machine/die combo, from which all pellets produced will be FX product, thus eliminating the wide variations from multiple dies and machines that impact JSB brand pellets. FX pellets will have variations just not as extreme as JSBs, might try that brand. The Pellet Shop and Airgun Depot have FX pellets on sale, not sure how long. WM
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To me, it's not about the size of the group, but rather the outlier. When one shot doubles or triples the size of your group, that's a significant enough deviation for me.
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When I carried out some modelling of errors at the target with different pellet defects and different twist rates, I modelled pellets which had the centre of gravity just slightly off the pellet centre line, and some with an external defect, such as a flat spot on the nose of the pellet. One thing which came out of it was the size of the error at the target was a large function of the orientation between the two errors. For example, if the defects are aligned with each other, the error at the target is completely different as to when they are at 90 degrees to each other. Thus, if you happen to have a pellet with the two defects in the wrong place relative to each other, then you will suddenly get a much larger error at the target.
This is in addition to all the other things mentioned, such as magazine defects etc.
This is in addition to all the other things mentioned, such as magazine defects etc.
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I like to blame everything but me ( it's everything else's fault but your own excuses) , but I know I tend to get " hold lazy" and blow it ... ( Stupid wind
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Those who suggest flyers don’t exist simply haven’t shot enough in a controlled (indoor) situation. Or they have one of those magically flyer-free barrels, the one-in-a-hundred or -thousand that most of us will never get our hands on. On the other hand, some barrels just aren’t that accurate and they will shoot flyers.
It’s likely that all of these things are true:
- flyers happen due to wind, flaws or inconsistencies in the pellets, and internal ballistics in the airgun.
- solving flyers is therefore never done with addressing just one root cause, and even still it’s very hard to eliminate a root cause so much as reduce it. Sorting can help but it will never eliminate internal flaws that cause imbalance, for example. Single loading helps because it avoids creating external flaws.
- gun handling and aiming is always a factor. Parallax error can generally be eliminated and shot cycle variation can be controlled but often is worse than assumed. Trigger control is always relevant.
- even if the airgun has perfect propulsion, the barrel surface is always changing from shot to shot. Tiny bits of lead or lint or lubricant can cause successive pellets to accelerate and release differently. Cleaning matters but sometimes seasoning matters more.
The downside is there is just so much at hand and every airgun responds best to different solutions. No one philosophy works for all airguns.
The upside is there so much to experiment with and develop the most effective solution to your airgun and shooting situation.
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I don't have an answer to share regarding slugs. I've only had this rifle since Dec 27th. I worked with pellets to start with and have only just started with slugs.
The slugs I have been trying are Zan 38gr. .253" diameter. I have tried them at various velocities and have not been able to find a setting that has them settling into a consistent grouping. They act much like the JSB 33.95s in that a small majority go into a ragged hole but there is always a couple outliers/flyers.
I have some AVS slugs in the mail to me now. I'm trying to find something around 38gr. so the AVS I have coming are 38gr. in .254" & .2553" diameter.
If I cannot get slugs to shoot as well as I expect, I'll revert back to the JTS 29.63s that shoot well from MY barrel and get out coyote calling with this new U2.
Hope ya get to some consistency from your rifle.
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Remembered an instance where an expertly machined barrel threw frequent flyers from the same tin of pellets that a different barrel shot with nearly zero flyers.
No visible or observable defects on the flyer producing barrel.
I guess I'm saying that neither the barrel optimizing nor the pellet sorting crowds are "wrong" as there seems to be some merit to both methods.
And truth be told, I've got a stack of homeless barrels, and a pellet weighing scale that hardly ever gets used.
No visible or observable defects on the flyer producing barrel.
I guess I'm saying that neither the barrel optimizing nor the pellet sorting crowds are "wrong" as there seems to be some merit to both methods.
And truth be told, I've got a stack of homeless barrels, and a pellet weighing scale that hardly ever gets used.
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