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FX Panthera 500

My 500mm in 30 cal arrived today. Bought it from Talon Tunes. Very smooth and good experience. Tony was great to deal with.
Gun came with the reg set 135-140ish. And the Hammer was on max. I haven't touched this tune. Wanted to see what it did out of the box.
Didn't have a lot of time. Scoped it, zeroed it, changed the cocking lever and cheek riser over to the left, put a 300 bar bottle on, and installed a carbon fiber sleeve for the barrel liner. I ran a few mags of Hades pellets and a couple of mags of Hybrids. I ran my LabRadar for all shots.
The Hades were crazy good. Almost same hole accurate. Avg speed was 911.2 fps. Extreme Spread was 10.54 and the standard deviation was only 2.67fps.
Plugged everything into JBM ballistics coefficient calculator and got a bc of 0.033. So, with some tweaking and tuning, the 500mm 30 LOVES pellets.
On to hybrids. While the LabRadar data was good, Avg 904fps, ES of 5 fps, stand dev of only 1.81 !!!, the grouping however was terrible.
I suspect the speed was a little anemic for the hybrids. My 30 cal impact shoots them like lasers around 945fps.
This weekend, weather permitting, I plan on really putting it through its paces. Going to install the 8mm hammer, bump the reg up a bit and dropping the hammer tension and see if I can get a better universal hybrid/pellet tune. My initial opinion is that I'm optimistic that this gun has the potential to become a perfect hunting gun. I'll post up better data and targets soon.

Panthera.JPG
 
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Do NOT put the 8mm hammer weight in. My Lord it was bad. Like not grouping anything bad. Hybrids might have grouped at 4" at best. It was that bad. Tried speeds from 850 to 960 and never got it to group with the hybrids. Going back in and putting the 4mm hammer and I guess this will be a Pellet only Panthera since it will stack them around 900fps.
 
I put the 4mm hammer back in my 500mm 30 cal and came up with some impressive results with 44.75 grain Hades pellets. Reg set at 135, Macro set at 13, Micro at 3.75.
18 shot spread, the LabRadar showed an average velocity of 902 fps. Extreme spread of 6.28 fps. Standard deviation was 1.73!
Zeroed and then shot a 10 shot group at 50 yards. This will work for my hunting needs for sure, but I'm perplexed at how this gun HATES hybrids.


panthera labradar hades.jpg
panthera grouping.jpg
 
I put the 4mm hammer back in my 500mm 30 cal and came up with some impressive results with 44.75 grain Hades pellets. Reg set at 135, Macro set at 13, Micro at 3.75.
18 shot spread, the LabRadar showed an average velocity of 902 fps. Extreme spread of 6.28 fps. Standard deviation was 1.73!
Zeroed and then shot a 10 shot group at 50 yards. This will work for my hunting needs for sure, but I'm perplexed at how this gun HATES hybrids.


View attachment 341487View attachment 341488
You should try the Zan slugs. They seem to be less fussy with speed in my experience
 
Hi everyone. Newbie from Kenya, but my rifles are in the UK at the moment. Long term FX Crown Mk1 and Mk2 owner and just picked up a 0.177” Panthera 500 in sub-12 power. Watching with interest, as I can up the power once I get my rifles here.
Excellent! Curious to see what the 177's do.
 
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