109 yards with .20 and .22

Yeah, 109 yards or 100meters. Sub-heading for this new section says 101+ yards so my fun from yesterday qualifies by about 24 feet (figured we needed another unit of measurement in here just for keeping it complicated).

The "platform" is the deck on the backside of my house. This photo gives you a better idea of the shooting platform. It's about 30 feet wide, 10 feet deep. The floor of the deck is probably about 16 feet off the ground. 





This house had a rickety old super sketchy deck here when we bought it. The wooden vertical supports and main crossbeam were all warped. Could stand on the deck and shift your weight and the whole thing would move like a boat in water. It was dangerous. The ledger on the wall for the previous deck hadn't been done right and allowed a bunch of water to run down inside the wall. Had to replace a bunch of structural stuff inside the wall from all that, as well as the OSB sheathing. So we had the death trap rebuilt and I wanted a roof over it too, so had that added, keeping the same pitch as the existing roof. Overhung the roof enough to keep all but the worst storms blowing rain from getting in underneath, and the roof is a two-for-one by keeping the ground level "porch" (concrete slab) under overhead cover too. We considered adding exterior stair access but I work a lot of nights and my wife didn't like the thought of being worried about a creeper coming up the stairs and looking in the master bedroom windows when I'm gone to work. So, access through master bedroom is about the only negative. 

As for shooting, I could really use either a higher table or have the rails be lower, as the top rail is just about in line with the muzzle unless I extend the bipod legs out quite a ways. the safer and easier option would be a table about 6 inches higher. But it's overall very enjoyable, it's on the north side of the house so nice and cool even on hot summer day. Perpetual shade (might make it a bit chilly in the winter I suppose). Our prevailing wind usually comes from the southwest so no direct wind blowing in my face. Bathroom within twenty feet. Refrigerated drinks and/or snacks pretty close too. Pretty relaxing place to spend the day, or a few hours, shooting. Targets are a bit of a pain to replace though, as it requires going down the main stairs, down another two steps to the split lower level of the house, and then another 3 steps from that down to ground level, and then 109 yards of distance to cover. With the steel support beams and the 6x6x6ft chunks of concrete they're set in (under the concrete slab), and trex decking with 16inch on center joists, it's as stable as shooting from solid ground. I was shooting on and off throughout the day and it was kind of nice to able to leave the guns and all the gear up there all day, knowing it wouldn't get rained on or have any chance of walking away if somebody happened to visit my house and see it left out. 

As previously stated, I'm way up in the air so I'd think that makes the pellet be exposed to greater air speed winds than if most of it's flight path was down under 5 or 6 feet like it would be if shooting from the ground.

As a shooting platform, a little on the pricey side. I sure wouldn't go out and build one of these specifically to shoot from, but it needed rebuilt as part of the remodel anyway. But I don't regret it and dang sure enjoy it when I get the chance to shoot off it. 

Nice shooting! Have you tried slugs?

Click to expand...

Thanks. 

Yes I have tried slugs and I can't say that my experience with them has me thinking the slug coolaid tastes very good. 

Nearly all of my slug testing has been with .22 barrels, with the gun's being the RTI Prophet, JSAR Raptor, Daystate Redwolf Standard, Taipan Veteran Long and Short. Between OEM barrels and those I had machined for some of those guns, I've tested with: Korean Career barrels (Raptor) the slower twist LW in the Prophet, regular 12 land and groove LWs, ART approved polys, ART approved 12 land and groove LWs, (Redwolf Standard), CZ barrel (Ukraine Vet Short), choked OEM 12 l&g LW in the Vet Long (Czech version), and unchoked 12 l&g LWs from LW in Georgia. With most of the slugs tested being under 25grains. 

The standouts from all that .22 testing were:

• the Daystate Redwolf Standard (12 land and groove choked LW) shooting 17.5 and 20.2 NSAs, with the slight nod going to the 20.2s. 
• the JSAR Raptor with the Career barrels (had two if I remember right) shooting any of the NSA from 17.5 to the 23.? weight range. 

Much less testing with .177 but my Brocock Concept Elite (older version of the Concept with thumbhole walnut stock and choked 12 land and groove LW) does quite well with the 12.5grain NSAs. 

For the .22, the only barrel in all that mess that shot slugs better than the 25.4grain Monster RD was one of the Career barrels in the JSAR Raptor. Even the other "good" slug shooter (the Daystate Redwolf Standard, shot the MRDs as good as the slugs. 

The unchoked 12 land and groove LW that I had machined for my Vet Long SHOULD like slugs, considering no choke, but even it shoots the MRDs better.

All of the above testing was 100 or more yards. 

No, you could say that I've not bought into the slug agenda that the industry has been pushing for awhile. I don't deny that some guns probably shoot them very well, but from the guns and barrels that I've played with, I've simply not seen the "slugs are better" effect. 

how much hold over at that distance?

Click to expand...

Dialing the elevation turret....

Upped the speed by about 15fps in the .22 since I was shooting last week, but current Strelok data shows 45 clicks .1/10 mil per click so 4.5mil holdover with the .22. 35 yard zero. 25.4gr Monster RDs at 865fps (would have probably been about 50 clicks/5mil holdover last week when I was shooting at 850). 

The .20 is 36 clicks, so 3.6 mils of holdover. That's with a 50 yard zero though. 15.89 JSB Heavy @ 910fps. 

I shot some .22 slugs on Weds and those 17.5 NSAs were only 30 clicks. Didn't shoot them over the chrono but Strelok says they were going about 1000fps. They get to the target FAST. There's a bit of a delay with the MRDs, but with the 17.5gr NSAs a hole appears in the paper nearly instantly. 

Nice Shooting!!! Good info! How many fills can you do before your tank is to low?

Click to expand...

I shot off and on for most of that day last week with the 80cf scuba tethered. It was at about 2900psi when I started, and down around 2700 when I was done. Just guessing, I'd say I probably took 300-400 shots? 

I usually use that black SCUBA as the lower fill pressure tank in a sort of cascade system. A 60 min SCBA is the higher pressure fill portion. They're "Y"ed together with a contraption from Air Tanks Plus. Hook up to the gun, open the valve on the SCUBA to get the gun as high as it'll go, then close that valve and open the valve on the SCBA to get it up to 250. Then close that valve and bleed the whole system. All microbore hoses so doesn't seem to waste much air. So the 3000 SCUBA takes the Vets from 140 bar (a little over 2000psi and where I usually stop to refill them) up to 2500-2900 and then the 4500 SCBA takes it from there all the way up to full @ 250 bar (about 3600psi).

Once the SCUBA gets down around 2500, I'll usually bring it back up to 2900 or 3000 by transferring air from the SCBA to the SCUBA and then I hook up the SCBA and fill it back up to 4200-4300 and start it all over again. 

By using both, I can keep more air on tap at any given moment, and by using the black SCUBA I can get a lot more full fills up to 250bar out of each full SCBA tank. The principle being that each fill doesn't bring the SCBA down as far when using both tanks as it would if I was just using the SCBA. I ran the numbers through some online airgun calculators one time and by using the SCUBA as the air source for the lower pressure portion of each fill in the gun, I can get about double the amount of full fills to 250 bar as I could if I was only using the SCBA. 

Using the above system, most months I can get by with running the Shoebox F10 compressor for about 2 hours. 

Y connector link: https://airtanksplus.com/product/tman-pcp-tee-block-air-splitter-female-foster-to-2-male-foster-fittings/