After seeing some of the reports on the Hades pellets I decided to pick up a tin of 500 from Utah Airguns, as I'm running low on JSB 18's and will need to place an order soon. My S510 does very well with the JSB 18's and based on some of the feedback I've seen I was hoping I'd get the same kind of accuracy, as I've been shooting a lot of Starlings this year and would like something that delivers more energy on the target before exiting. I've been playing around with them for a few days now, and here's my initial feedback based on two sessions out to 80 yards:
1) Velocity: I'm getting an average of around 925 FPS out of these from an S510 Extra FAC Superlight. I made the mistake of not setting the chrony up when I was shooting to determine drop/accuracy, and ran a couple groups through it after the fact, so there's room for improvement of course on the data.
2) Accuracy: These are repeatedly one-hole accurate in my S510 out to 40 yards, and depending on the wind group somewhat reliably into one large, ragged hole out to 70. However, with these longer groups I start to notice fliers high/low. Integrating the chrony in the future may help determine if this are related to spikes/drops on fps, but I don't see this behavior with my 18's, or with some JSB 15's I tried. I would say though that they are headshot accurate to 40, and Minute-of-Starling accurate out to 80 yards, albeit with some wilder fliers as the range progresses.
3) Wind effects: From the first couple days of shooting, I'd say these seem to be much more susceptible to wind than even the JSB 15's I run in my Wildcat. YMMV, but what seemed like small changes in the wind had greater-than-expected effects downrange (wilder fliers referenced above). I did run some of the 15's through it for grouping at the same ranges and they didn't display the same level of quirkiness.
4) Power: Here is what's going to drive me to continue testing with these with determination to make them work; I did manage to nail a Starling on a branch at around 75 yards with the Hades, and it hit with an even more pronounced "pop" than the 18's do. The Starling dropped dead from the tree, and upon inspection, the pellet entered from the side and produced significantly more damage than the 18's as it exited the chest, including splitting the skin vertically for around 2.5". This really impressed me and I definitely want to see if I can figure out how to get more consistency out of these based on this terminal performance.
5) Ballistic Coefficient: After all was said and done shooting to determine drop on these, twice, and after the afterthought of getting chrony results to plug into Chairgun, I massaged the parameters and determined I was getting something around .034 as the BC for these out to 80 yards. This seemed to get me POI drop curve that most aligned to where the pellets were hitting so I'll make up a dope sheet out to 140 and play around with the assorted dirt clods in the field over this weekend to see how it holds up.
So in summary, I see a lot of potential out of these pellets. I was a little too eager to get the dope determined because the Starlings are fledging and I really want to use these, so I can see more/better testing is in my future, but I would wholeheartedly recommend you buy a tin of 500 and play around with these if you're tempted.
1) Velocity: I'm getting an average of around 925 FPS out of these from an S510 Extra FAC Superlight. I made the mistake of not setting the chrony up when I was shooting to determine drop/accuracy, and ran a couple groups through it after the fact, so there's room for improvement of course on the data.
2) Accuracy: These are repeatedly one-hole accurate in my S510 out to 40 yards, and depending on the wind group somewhat reliably into one large, ragged hole out to 70. However, with these longer groups I start to notice fliers high/low. Integrating the chrony in the future may help determine if this are related to spikes/drops on fps, but I don't see this behavior with my 18's, or with some JSB 15's I tried. I would say though that they are headshot accurate to 40, and Minute-of-Starling accurate out to 80 yards, albeit with some wilder fliers as the range progresses.
3) Wind effects: From the first couple days of shooting, I'd say these seem to be much more susceptible to wind than even the JSB 15's I run in my Wildcat. YMMV, but what seemed like small changes in the wind had greater-than-expected effects downrange (wilder fliers referenced above). I did run some of the 15's through it for grouping at the same ranges and they didn't display the same level of quirkiness.
4) Power: Here is what's going to drive me to continue testing with these with determination to make them work; I did manage to nail a Starling on a branch at around 75 yards with the Hades, and it hit with an even more pronounced "pop" than the 18's do. The Starling dropped dead from the tree, and upon inspection, the pellet entered from the side and produced significantly more damage than the 18's as it exited the chest, including splitting the skin vertically for around 2.5". This really impressed me and I definitely want to see if I can figure out how to get more consistency out of these based on this terminal performance.
5) Ballistic Coefficient: After all was said and done shooting to determine drop on these, twice, and after the afterthought of getting chrony results to plug into Chairgun, I massaged the parameters and determined I was getting something around .034 as the BC for these out to 80 yards. This seemed to get me POI drop curve that most aligned to where the pellets were hitting so I'll make up a dope sheet out to 140 and play around with the assorted dirt clods in the field over this weekend to see how it holds up.
So in summary, I see a lot of potential out of these pellets. I was a little too eager to get the dope determined because the Starlings are fledging and I really want to use these, so I can see more/better testing is in my future, but I would wholeheartedly recommend you buy a tin of 500 and play around with these if you're tempted.
