Marginal gains and barrel/projectile choice

[Franklink]

In our FT game, the ability to address the wind at the time of trigger break is usually what separates out the field. BUT starting with a combination that minimizes the effects the wind has on the pellet in flight makes perfect wind reads much less critical.

As I've worked through various calibers, projectiles, and rifling profiles since starting in FT in 2017, I've settled on two that seem to give the highest BC, and therefore resistance to wind drift. I'd posit that there's a third projectile option, but I've personally not gone down that road, although many find success with it. That would be the .177/13.4gr JSB.
The other two, the ones I've shot many thousands of, from various rifling profiles (at least in the case of the 10.34) would be the JSB .177/10.34, and the JSB .20/13.73.
Those three pellets are the typical choices of the sub20 fpe crowd, and I'd hazard a guess, they account for nearly all the field target wins in that power level.

So, this is a comparison of the .177/10.34 and the .20/13.73, from two outstanding barrels. Both of these barrels have accounted for FT match wins, and clean scores.

The .177 is a 1:36, polygonal rifled, with a slight choke.
The .20 is a 1:17.7, standard 12 land a groove, with a fairly tight choke.

The .177/10.34s seem best from this barrel when averaging 915fps.

The .20/13.73s are at 800fps.

And both of these barrels fit the same rifle, and I only own one, so I've never been able to do a head-to-head comparison in the same conditions to see if there's a clear winner between them.

Until now.

I offered to reseal a friend's gun, and troubleshoot some accuracy problems he's been having. Got it resealed over the last few days, and now the fun part; the shooting.

In addition to the ability to compare my two exemplar barrels against each other, this process serves as a control for my friend's gun. If it won't shoot well with my "magic" .177 barrel, it won't shoot well with anything.

So here are the two competitors....
Red and black is the friend's gun (.177 in the comparison)
Black and black is my personal gun (.20 for now).

I wanted this comparison to be on a windy day, and that's what we had. Local weather station data below. The 200 shots were taken from about 5-7:30pm. At my house we had an occasional gust coming in from the east that they weren't getting at the weather station.

I concluded that not timing shots between gusts, nor holding off for wind would give me the best comparison. I also realized that it needed to be a rather large sample size to hold water.

So, I made 4 circles, 1 and 3/8" diameter. Two above the dividjng black line, and two below. Five shots with each gun, then switch guns. I took a picture after each "round" of 20 shots. Ie, 5 shots at the top circle with .177, 5 shots at 3rd down circle with .20, 5 shots with .177 at second circle, 5 shots at fourth circle, then walk out for a photo.
This was all done at 55 yards.
All from stool and shooting sticks.
16x magnification, although I did dial in the elevation versus typical "Hunter class" holdover.

I verified zero @ 30 yards prior to starting the comparison.

Pictures shared will be in order of how they were shot (first shows 5 shots per bull, tenth shows 50 shots per bull).
I had the barrel specs backwards when I printed the target (in the fine print on the target).

This last one has a nickel added, for a size perspective.

This was not an experiment to see how well I can shoot, but rather to compare how far from poi each pellet, fired specifically from these two barrels, would drift.

Having shot both of these barrels a fair amount, I know them to be close in performance, as measured by resistance to wind deflection, but I was hoping one would be more clearly in the lead. I've analyzed the data in various ways, like which has more shots outside of the circle, or which has the average poi shifted more to the right, which is what the predominant winds were doing. And Ive concluded that neither is "better" by any sort of clear margin. If counting shots inside the circle, the .177 barrel might take a slight lead. They're both fairly comparable in overall width of the groups.

It was somewhat interesting to see how rogue gusts, either in intensity or direction, would really take an individual pellet for a ride.

I'm a huge .20 fanboy. And thats based on many tens of thousands of shots taken from MANY sub20 fpe .177 guns, I am of the strong opinion that an average .177 barrel firing 10.34s wil absolutely NOT hold its own against a .20/13.73 in the wind the way this one does.

Can't rightly say if my personal USFT is gonna stay a .20, or go back to the magic .177/1:36 barrel. Was hoping for more convincing data of the superiority of one of these over the other.

Just an interesting experiment that I wanted to share.

 

[HunterWhiteHead]

Nice work Franklin. I wish I could shoot that well.
The 20 cal seems a bit to the right, If you checked zero at 30 yards do you think that the pellets were pushed by the wind more than the 177 polygonal barrel? Or do you attribute that to something else?
I have had a rifle zeroed at 25 yards that was off right close but left far out.(scope cant?, it was long ago)

Hunter

 

[Franklink]

Nice work Franklin. I wish I could shoot that well.
The 20 cal seems a bit to the right, If you checked zero at 30 yards do you think that the pellets were pushed by the wind more than the 177 polygonal barrel? Or do you attribute that to something else?
I have had a rifle zeroed at 25 yards that was off right close but left far out.(scope cant?, it was long ago)

Hunter

About the .20 seeming to be a bit to the right....hard to say. The predominant wind was certainly right to left. And one of the neat things about the slightly bigger .20 is being able to see them in flight better and/or more often. Watching them track into the paper, I'd say they seemed to be curving to the right, most of the time. It was also interesting that it seemed like every time I came around to the top .20 bull, the wind would really pick up. I noted in the OP, but again feel the need to point out that this .177 is anything but a standard barrel. It is a stand-out, simply exceptional barrel, both in accuracy and resistance to wind deflection. Some barrels are accurate, but only if the wind isn't blowing, this particular .177 is special in that it is above the curve for accuracy potential, but hangs onto that accuracy even when the wind is blowing. I referred to it as my "magic" barrel above, because that's how it shoots. Many of my ft friends that have shot it or otherwise seen it in action have made comments to the same effect. I've had offers to buy it, which I have politely declined. A run-of-the mill .177 barrel would not fair so well against the .20, and I might even run this same experiment with one of them at some future point.

 

[JW.]

Very interesting!!

Was it you that posted the BC test link? I think the only barrel in 177 that is going to beat the 20 cal for BC is that slow twist poly and it seems your tests have concluded this as well. I know a bunch of people who just love the slow polys and swear they are the secret weapon for wind.

I have one of these in a batch of barrels i'm testing currently...

I'd like to see either barrel against a 1:17 12 groove regular twist 177 with 10.34's and 13.43's.

 

[JW.]

For a second I thought you had a slow twist poly 20 cal...

I almost had my banker on the phone! LOL

 

[Franklink]

Very interesting!!

Was it you that posted the BC test link? I think the only barrel in 177 that is going to beat the 20 cal for BC is that slow twist poly and it seems your tests have concluded this as well. I know a bunch of people who just love the slow polys and swear they are the secret weapon for wind.

I have one of these in a batch of barrels i'm testing currently...

I'd like to see either barrel against a 1:17 12 groove regular twist 177 with 10.34's and 13.43's.

Yes, it was me that shared some of the data from my few guns and @Arzrover's extensive testing of his larger collection.

Funny that you say that about seeing a comparison against a 12 land and groove .177, cuz about an hr ago I sent him a text saying I might do just that.

For a second I thought you had a slow twist poly 20 cal...

I almost had my banker on the phone! LOL

Yes, a slow twist poly in .20 should be simply amazing, if only they existed.

 

[Franklink]

Have shot a couple more comparisons in the last few days, similar premise as my original post, comparison of wind drift at 55 yards. Stool and sticks, Hunter class @ 16x. No holding for wind or timing for gusts.

This first one is a comparison of three barrels.

Wind was similar to that of the op here.
Top is the "magic" 1:36 with 10.34s.
Middle is a 12 land and groove 1.17.7 with .20/13.73
Bottom is a 12 land and groove, 1:17.7 with .177/10.34s.

First is 30 yard zero, 5 shot groups from the top and middle guns, 10 shot group from the bottom.

Next is after moving it out to 55 yards. 30-35 shots per groups, lost count, just kept doing 5 shot cycles and trading guns for each 5 shots. Circled the two shots I felt myself pull.

Conclusion: widest horizontal dispersion was, as expected, from the 1:17.7.

The next one is on a different day, much less wind, so it was more of an accuracy test than a wind deflection test.
Just went straight to 55 yards here, 30 shot groups.
Top is the magic 1:36 .177
Middle is the standard .20.
Bottom is a special .20.

Group from the bottom gun got messed up by me not paying attention to pressure, at least the second half of that group was shot WAY below the reg pressure. This gun is better than this group makes it look.

Conclusion...the magic 1:36 barrel is incredible. They just keep dropping into a roughly the same hole. It'd put all of them into the same 0.5-0.75" hole if I could hold that steady.

So, my ranking stands...
I'll take the .177 slow poly with 10.34s first.
.20/13.73s as a close second.
.177/10.34s with a standard barrel as a distant third.

And not sure where the .177/13.4s fall into that mix sinc I've personally shot them very little. The handful of barrels I've tried the 13.4s from were utterly underwhelming.

(I have shot matches with .22/13.34s and .22/14.35s and I'd put them at an even further, 4th, 5th and 6th, etc choice of projectile for sub20 field target. I'd take any decently shooting .177/10.34s, regardless of rifling profile, before the .22 options....at least if being competitive is the goal.)

 

[Aimright]

It would be interesting to see how the 13.4’s compare in your two .177 barrels. Several of the long time members in our FT club (you know them all Cole) swear by the 13.4’s and tell me the higher bc’s are superior enough to warrant their use over the 10.3’s. My BRK Sniper has always shot the 10.3’s accurately and I always felt the higher FPS would be more forgiving of my ranging errors, so I have never bothered giving the 13.4’s a real try. More recently in swapping a .177 LW barrel (factory LW barrel from Crosman) into a Marauder that I built for the grandkids to shoot in FT, I found that the 13.4’s shoot with so much greater accuracy over the 10.3’s that it was not even close. Maybe I should revisit using the 13.4s with my Sniper

 

[AirNGasman]

Thanks for the post, FL. You obviously took a deep dive into the DEEP end of the wind drift pool. If I'm not mistaken, your testing revealed what many of my deeper dives do, that being inconclusive. "Was hoping for more convincing data of the superiority of one of these over the other."

FWIW, I've avoided the deep waters after an accuracy-testing comparison of unsorted pellets versus pellets sorted by head size. The unsorted pellets outshot every sorted head-size.

Perhaps the deep end of the pool should have a sign that reads 'Warning- Deep Water/INCONCLUSIVE'.

.