Wildcat MK3 BT Compact .22

[kd7rsrrze]

I thought this might be of benefit to some of the Wildcat BT fence sitters out there as well as any of you who may be frustrated with inconsistency.
After attempting to tune and harmonic tune my new Wildcat BT to the JSB Hades as well as other pellets I was ready to send it back and get a new one - until I watched Ted's video (Ted's Holdover), and heard him say something about keep shooting and shooting and at some point your ES/SD will shrink and become crazy consistent. I've watched more than one of Ted's videos and if nothing else I believe him when he says he's done something with X result. So I've put approximately 600 pellets down stream and ya know what??? Ted was right! Yesterday afternoon I sat down and ran my pellet selection over the FX radar again with some astonishing results. I shot 10 shot groups after several fowlers till it settled in - no more than 4 shots were needed. My settings are irrelevant to anyone else but I will share my chrony data with respect to each projectile tested.

JSB Redesigns Power wheel 7 - AVG FPS 854, ES 7, SD 2.3 NOTE: last week with the same settings my lowest ES was in the high 30's.
JSB heavy 18.13 Power wheel 5 - AVG FPS 939, ES 3, SD 1.1 I ran this 3 times throughout my testing yesterday with almost the exact results. 8@939fps and 2@937fps.
JSB Hades Power wheel 2 - AVG FPS 846, ES 14, SD 4.4 / Power wheel 3 - AVG FPS 902, ES 23, SD 8.3 second set just for a comparison.
FX Hybrid Power wheel 7 - AVG FPS 878, ES 9, SD 2.8 NOTE: last week my ES was no less than 23.

Now, I have not as yet harmonic tuned any of these however I was tuning for the Hades with MOA ish results out to 58 yards. The 18.13 Heavies were always the best with the Hybrids giving intermittent best groups. I hope that the harmonic tuning will now go much better.
As a side note; I was concentrating on the Hades because I had 2 occasions to use them within 30 yards at around 950 ish with absolutely devastating results. One chicken house raider was 21 lbs and the other was closer to 15 lbs.
I will now second Ted's advice, if you have a Wildcat BT and it seems like its all over the place and is inconsistent, shoot it, shoot it, shoot it and shoot it some more. I believe it will settle in, mine did.

 

[Mg616]

Good advice, My .177 Impact improved after a few tins and a lot of other voodoo. Nothing like the mechanics of a springer, but still a few moving parts that need to settle in.

 

[darylm]

Sounds like a really long break-in period. But it’ll probably shoot flawlessly for the next 5,000 shots. My Brocock Sniper XR did the same thing. Kinda sucked for about the first 200 shots (I also thought about returning it). But ever since it’s been an absolute laser beam.

 

[JungleShooter]

Seriously?!
$1500 and $2000 guns need 200 shots to start getting broken in?

The ES went from:
30's / 23 / 23
to:
7/ 9/ 14

I'm not doubting your experience, I am thankful you are sharing it with us!
Maybe you could show us how the precision of the gun was "before the break in" and "after" — to see the actual effects on target of this seeminly very long process.

Thanks!
Matthias

 

[qball]

Seriously?!
$1500 and $2000 guns need 200 shots to start getting broken in?

The ES went from:
30's / 23 / 23
to:
7/ 9/ 14

I'm not doubting your experience, I am thankful you are sharing it with us!
Maybe you could show us how the precision of the gun was "before the break in" and "after" — to see the actual effects on target of this seeminly very long process.

Thanks!
Matthias

Just about all air guns need a little time to settle in, even in unregulated guns the springs would take a bit to settle too. Nothing too unusual, 200 shots go by super fast when you are testing and get numbers through chrono. I burn through 200 rounds in an afternoon just messing around and go through 300-400 rounds during any normal range session.

 

[kd7rsrrze]

qball, thanks for your reply. I will shoot groups this weekend or sooner and share them. With the Hades at 58 yards I would usually get half the shots around 3/4" and the others would be what I would call flyers - except there were so many of them. The Redesigns were never better than an 1 1/4". The 18.13 JSB were right at MOA, so less than 3/4". The Hybrids would group in two groups and almost always one hole each or at least touching, most of the time. The total group for them was an inch or so.
My MK2 Impact .22 700 mm only took half a tin or so to settle in and has been fine ever since.

 

[JungleShooter]

OK, thanks for the explain, and the group sizes. That sounds quite reasonable, thanks for clearing this up for me.

Matthias