Today was brilliant! ~62F / 17C with a refreshing breeze. I was late driving out to one of my alternate shooting spots, and I was prepared for not getting a decent spot to shoot. To my surprise, I had an entire area along a side road to myself. There are usually no less than a dozen "tacticool" types along this particular hillside stretch - I setup quickly to make the most of the remaining daylight so I could test out 18gr JSBs at longer distances.
My first order of business was to re-zero my 5-20 SHV for the 350mm / .22 barrel. I had made some Huma reg adjustments and settled on 137bar, and the HST set for 930fps. I chose ~50m / ~55y for zeroing:
I locked in the ZeroSet (no nearly as good as the ZeroStop on my NXS!), and prepared to send a more precise group..
Needless to say, 50m became boring with the quickness! Happy with my zeroing, I proceeded to test the HST at lower settings. For 930fps @137bar, I had to dial 21 CCW clicks (22-24 would give me 945 at the top curve). 18 clicks at this reg config lays down ~835fps (255m/s).
When I tested the lower speeds, the JSBs had very loopy trajectories! I played around with the HST for a while, and come to the conclusion that 930fps was an absolute laser beam. I cannot say whether or not the results would be different at lower reg settings to achieve the same speed of ~255m/s, but I didn't want to do any field surgery to my Huma our there with the wind and dust.
After punching the 50m and 80m targets on the 16 degree uphill incline, I had my elevation turret clicks mapped out well enough to make the most out of the last paper target that I had with me (I had only brought 3 with me, derp!). I set the last one out at a -5 degree angle, and my rangefinder ranged it out to 153y / 142m:
I spent a little time fine tuning the elevation turret, and shot my first couple groups..
In all seriousness, I wasn't expecting to see anything better than ~8" at best!!! I refilled the gun and laid down another group. One after another - stacked less than an inch and a half!
I never even swapped my .25 barrel in today. Now that I have found a sweet spot for these 18gr pellets, I'm going to have some fun with it
My first order of business was to re-zero my 5-20 SHV for the 350mm / .22 barrel. I had made some Huma reg adjustments and settled on 137bar, and the HST set for 930fps. I chose ~50m / ~55y for zeroing:
I locked in the ZeroSet (no nearly as good as the ZeroStop on my NXS!), and prepared to send a more precise group..
Needless to say, 50m became boring with the quickness! Happy with my zeroing, I proceeded to test the HST at lower settings. For 930fps @137bar, I had to dial 21 CCW clicks (22-24 would give me 945 at the top curve). 18 clicks at this reg config lays down ~835fps (255m/s).
When I tested the lower speeds, the JSBs had very loopy trajectories! I played around with the HST for a while, and come to the conclusion that 930fps was an absolute laser beam. I cannot say whether or not the results would be different at lower reg settings to achieve the same speed of ~255m/s, but I didn't want to do any field surgery to my Huma our there with the wind and dust.
After punching the 50m and 80m targets on the 16 degree uphill incline, I had my elevation turret clicks mapped out well enough to make the most out of the last paper target that I had with me (I had only brought 3 with me, derp!). I set the last one out at a -5 degree angle, and my rangefinder ranged it out to 153y / 142m:
I spent a little time fine tuning the elevation turret, and shot my first couple groups..
In all seriousness, I wasn't expecting to see anything better than ~8" at best!!! I refilled the gun and laid down another group. One after another - stacked less than an inch and a half!
I never even swapped my .25 barrel in today. Now that I have found a sweet spot for these 18gr pellets, I'm going to have some fun with it
