I've read all the comments and appreciate the feedback. I don't even own an good air rifle yet. I'm recently disabled and have been looking for something I can physically do while spending time with my 9 year old daughter. She loves plinking with me but quickly gets bored waiting for me to pump the gun and reload for her. I live in WV and grew up hunting but can't shoot anything that has recoil if I want to be able to walk the next day. I've been overwhelmed by all the PCP options out there and as soon as I think I know what I want to get as a starter gun, I see another model to compare. It might take me a long time to acquire all the components needed but this is definitely a hobby I plan to get into. I competed in three position pellet in High School and would love to send my daughter to WVU on a shooting scholarship one day.
After doing some math I've come to the conclusion that we are actually a lot closer to achieving my main goal than we might think. Especially on "overpowered" air guns designed to shoot slugs. My degree is in EE but i've never worked as an Engineer so my math is beyond rusty.
I'm also having a hard time finding the minimum fps a .17hmr remains stable. If someone knows that value, please fill me in. I need it to calculate the end target fps so we can work backwards to get the minimum barrel fps. Mass will obviously affect it as well but at least it's a starting point.
When I was first thinking about this, I was considering why won't don't shoot a standard .17HMR round with air. After looking at the data, that round simply has too much mass, not enough surface area/caliber and the target 2800 fps just wouldn't be possible without complicating the process, as several of you have said.
However, a 15.5g .17hmr round fired from a gun will only be traveling at 1070 fps at 200 yards and still fully stable. So if we forget about 2800 fps and forget about matching the ballistic properties of a firearm. Can we simply create a gyroscopic and dynamic stabilized round from PCP?
What if lightweight alloy was used to minimize the mass of the round, but used the shape of a gun projectile and the appropriate twist rate was used on the barrel?
What FPS could we get?
Would it be stable and accurate?
How much range would it have?
Would it out perform a .177 pellet?
Would we be able to scale the design to .22, .25 etc?
Would a heavy slug out perform it?
Would a different shape be more effective?(fins, sabot, etc)
We all know pellets use drag to create stability. While they work great, I consider the diablo or hourglass shape to be inferior to a gyroscopic and dynamic stabilized round. For those of you asking "Why", it was because today there are air rifles powerful enough to blast pellets far beyond the stability of the diablo shape. FPS is limited by the pellet shape and I'm confident there will be new projectiles created to take advantage of all that power.
For me, the .17hrm was the obvious choice to start exploring this further and again I thank you all for the feedback. I wish I had the tools to further develop the concept but I'm positive there are lots of people more capable than myself who will figure it all out. It's probably a lot closer than anyone knows because if someone were to develop such a round, they wouldn't want to advertise it until it went to market or patents were approved.
I don't think it's if, but when. Higher FPS from air is coming.