BSA Gold Star "Union Jack" in .177, ongoing review

Nice pics and good info , What power is the gun running ,is it .177 or .22 ?? The muzzle flip does not actually do much sadly, I have tried loads and loads of them and they never really did anything, An aftermarket one from Rowan would make a whole bunch of difference for sure . 





Rog

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It is a .177. AOA ran it over the chrono but the printout looks like it needs the ink replaced (kinda washed out and hard to read). They did 10 shots with 10.34gr and had a couple no-reads. The 7 or 8 fps they captured either say 860s or 880s, so something like 17-18fpe. I'll eventually post some more accurate fps with various pellets when I have some time. 

Looking forward to your review!

Man I wish I would have bought a Gold Star for FT in 12fpe rather than the FWB800 basic I got instead of. Darn FWB was doomed by POI shifts.

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Hey Steve. 

I haven't spent much time with it yet, but so far I'm pretty excited about the whole prospect. Hopefully won't have any shift poi like the FWB800 you mentioned. That unreliable from one day to the next can ruin an otherwise really cool airgun.

I made a single shot "tray" for the gun this evening. I recently purchased a bar of acetal to make a single shot tray for a different gun, and that bar happened to be just right for what I needed for the Gold Star. 

Rough shape cut off bar.....



Locating pin.....



Beveled the edges of the hole for the pin to seat easier.....



Front......



Back......



The edges of the hole where the pellet goes were also beveled. I may eventually round the edges off and/or streamline the sharp 90 angles, at least the ones not inside the magazine slot in the breech. 

I wanted the option of single load. Accuracy and consistency will be tested with both the factory mag, and the single shot contraption I made. 

While I was up close and personal with the slot for the mag, I noticed the pellet probe is a flow-through design. Interesting. You can just make out the hole on the bottom of the probe in this picture.



One of the UK guys with experience with this gun was wondering about the barrel length. Apparently they come in both 12 and 18.5 inches. This one is 18.5inches long.





The overall length of the gun, without the air stripper or a moderator is 37 inches. Really a cute little gun. 

A close up of the crown....



The barrel diameter is 0.615 inches, or about 15.6mm. 

The needle on the gauge is exactly where I left it 24hrs ago, so it looks like either no leak, or such a small one that it's not noticeable in a 24hr period. With these PCPs, I always cross my fingers that they won't leak from the get-go. Nice to see that's the apparent situation with this one. 

I'm off work tomorrow and hope to do a bunch of shooting and testing. 

Magazine

Today was pellet testing (which I'll address also). After having run somewhere between 500-1000 pellets through the gun today, I want to first talk about the magazine.

It's a robust little unit!

Like most magazines, it is primarily made from some sort of polymer (plastic), but has a metal plate on the flat side that the probe would first see during it's travel for each cycling of the gun. I like that. I'm not a huge magazine fan so haven't run enough pellets to see any mag wear on any of my personal guns, but the idea of a METAL probe going through a plastic magazine, repeatedly, many thousands of times through the life of a gun, makes me think wear. This metal face plate should help in that regard. 



The mag engineering has two locating pins. A fixed pin on the right side in the above pic, that mates with this hole in the gun (on the right side of gun when held in shooting position).....



The other pin is actually a slider that extends from the gun into the mag slot to a hole milled into the front of the mag. The control for that sliding pin is here, on the left side of the gun. 



That pin slides into these holes in the dead center of the mag and single shot adapter I made:



These two alignment pins equates to a pretty repeatable lock-up. I own and have shot magazine guns that require a little jiggle or a nudge or some other sort of assistance to get rounds to feed, none of that bull here. As long as that sliding pin is seated, pellets feed perfectly. 

There is a pellet retaining oring that encircles the rotating cylinder in which the pellets are placed, I didn't have any fall-throughs. 

Each of the slots is numbered, 10 shot magazine. 

Probably the coolest feature, last shot indicator. Upon feeding the last pellet, a little yellow indicator pops into view. The lighting is bad in this video, it is much more visible when not poorly filmed. When if flashed yellow on that first mag, I wasn't ready for it or even knew about it, but thought to myself, "dang, that's neat!"

https://youtu.be/QRSSmWO3tKU

I'm not a fan of the pre-wind magazines like on the Marauder. This one doesn't require any pre-winding, or tensioning, which I like. A pellet is placed in the "1" slot first, then turned and a pellet is placed in the "2" slot, repeat 8 more times. When full, it won't rotate any more. The tension does increase as pellets are loaded, which is what drives the mag during shooting. 

While loading, it is possible to crush a skirt. If the pellet isn't pushed deep enough to be held by the oring, this happens when rotated to the next slot (mashed skirt on the left side of the pellet:



This wasn't a common occurrence, happened twice in all the shooting today, and it was my own fault for not pushing the pellet deep enough.

Magazine thoughts:

• The mag is plenty deep for anything a 16-18fpe .177 has any business shooting. (This isn't a slug gun)
• The gun only comes with one (kind of a bummer). 
• No double-load feature. It is possible to chamber two pellets at once. 
• I like it better than the magazine on my Raptor (that one needs pre-wound). 
• I don't like it as much as the mags on my Brocock and my Veteran (those are the cylinder/revolver type mags, not the cassette type). 
• 10 is a nice round number. Makes my OCD happy for shot counts, where I'm at in the mag, etc. 
• I did the first narrowing down of pellets using the mag, than started using the single shot contraption thereafter. I didn't notice any marked improvement but there's more testing to be done there (mag vs single feed accuracy). 

First day actually shooting the gun

I had a day off from work and spent a bunch of time with the gun, mostly trying to decide which pellet it likes the most. 

Before I dove into the various pellets I have on hand, I wanted to get a baseline for what the regulator was doing. We always hear about "breaking-in" a regulator on a new gun. I was curious if I could scientifically document the reg behaving differently when new, vs some point later on, so, I shot 70 shots over the chrono before any accuracy testing was done. I knew the gun was in the 16-18fpe range, from the chrono tape supplied by AOA, and I decided to do the initial full string with 8.44 pellets. I've always been intrigued by the idea of a midweight pellet going 920-950fps, just for the sheer flatness of the trajectory, so I was kinda hoping the gun would like this pellet. 

Before the chrono data, some pics of my humble shooting area. When we added on the garage, I had it built to sort of wrap around the front corner of our house. So, it's a normal two bay garage, with a third car bay in front of one of the vehicles in the front bay. 45 feet long on the long side. That gives me 15 yards for indoor shooting and a nice place to get out of the weather to shoot out to 55 yards, out the back door of the single, third bay. 



Yeah, nothing fancy, but it does the job. Pellet catching buckets at 30 and 55 yards. The 30 was used just to get on paper when initially sighting in the gun.

Here's the first 60 shots from the gun, basically brand new, beginning of the day. (I shot 70 but they're predictably just further down the cliff of when it dropped off the regulator around 100 bar/54ish shots.) 



So, prelim chrono data has me thinking 50 good shots, from around 232 bar to 100ish bar, basically matches the green range of the gauge on the gun. Fairly consistent and about double the shot count I was thinking I'd get with that tiny little tube. Okay, we've got a baseline. On to the pellets. 

I dug out every variety of .177 pellets I could find. There are some real dogs in this bunch, but wanted to give them all a fair shake, just in case. Most of them are mid-weight .177, pretty much what the gun should like, being in the 16-18 FPE area. The blue tape is my way of marking that particular tin as washed and lubed (the only lube I've experimented with is the Slick 50, One Lube, so that's what's on all the blue taped tins). 



The general procedure was to shoot a ten shot group at 55 yards with each pellet, over the chrono. These are all shot from a bench, with a combination of stuff crunched under the gun to get it to the right height to clear the chrono eyes. It wasn't horribly stable, but it's not too hard to tell if an errant POI is from biological input (jerked the trigger left so shot went left) vs, "hey, that pellet didn't hit anywhere near where it should have." The mag was used for this initial round of pellet testing.

Here's the weather for the day. The National Weather Service has a link when looking at your local weather that shows readings taken from the nearest weather station, every 15 minutes, for the last 72hrs. The nearest one to me is about 25 miles away and up in the tall Ponderosa pines area, so, I'd guess that the wind is typically a little more here at my house where we don't have the forest.



Initial testing was done from about 10am to 12pm, so not much wind. 

Round 1



With a couple of exceptions (the really junky pellets) even the “bad”culled pellets, are still doing 10 shot, 1.75-2 inch groups at 55 yards. Definitely has it’s preferred pellet, but does ok with most mid-weight pellets.



Some of the Round 1 groups.



Check out how it did with the Polymags!!! Backyard pest killing machine. PRECISION.



Honorable mention from Round 1



Round 2

The 4 pellets that made it this far, and my thoughts on how they did. I also switched to the single shot adapter at this point. These were shot from about 2pm to 5pm so 10-15mph winds here. I just held on the aim point for each group, no adjustment for wind or trying to time shots between gusts. The right to left push is evident in where the pellets grouped in relation to my aim point. Scope is a few clicks high for these shots. 









Final Round



Two pellets now. Still shooting ten shot groups at 55 yards.



 



I'm not sure why, but the 10.34 just throws a flyer occasionally. These are a known good batch of pellets too, they do great and I've won matches with this batch out of my primary FT rig, so I'd like to think it's not the pellets. The gun just prefers 8.44 JSB as it's favorite. 



These groups are not all that was shot out of the gun during testing, just a few of the more data rich pages I shot at. They are not the best, nor the worst, and a general approximation of what the gun did with each pellet. I am pretty excited that it likes the 8.44s and can shoot them this fast accurately, like a said before, FLAT trajectory. 



Overall, the gun will do better than average accuracy ( consistently 10 shots into 1.5inches at 55 yards, in the wind) for precision shooting with most mid-weight pellets of decent quality. It does have it's favorites, like all airguns, and will do 0.5-0.75inch, 10 shot groups at 55 yards, in the wind. I'm sure it will do tighter 5 shot groups, and tighter still 5 shot groups when the wind isn't blowing. I'm a BIG supporter of the 10 shot group, so my groups are going to be bigger than every one of the 5 shot group guys groups. I'm more interested in how the gun shoots, on a consistent basis, than showing off a handful of the best 5 shot groups, cherry-picked. Mathematically (law of averages/statistics/etc) the group size will grow with the number of shots taken. Ten shot, 0.5-0.75 inch honest and consistent groups in the wind at 55 yards impresses me and I'm humble and realistic enough to admit that.

End of the day chronograph string. 

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm very curious to SEE this regulator breaking-in concept. 

This was shot at the end of the day, I'd guess about 600 pellets through the new gun. 



Really liking the SD and ES here. At first glance one would say that it's now more consistent than it was at the beginning of the day. I'll do this again a few more times over the next few weeks and see if there's any trends. There were some comments either here or GTA that the regulators in these BSA guns weren't the greatest at one point. I'd kinda have to disagree after shooting these strings. A lot of us obsess over single digit ES but that isn't necessary for very precise shooting. A 15fps spread is tighter than the gun that I usually shoot for Field Target, and I occasionally win matches with that gun.

So, 48-50 shots at about 16.5fpe with it's favorite pellet. Exceptional when considering how small the air tube is. Which leads us into the next topic......

Efficiency

I had a hard time tracking down an air volume for this gun. I finally found 96 cc's listed for a different BSA gun that looks to have the same airtube (I think it was a Scorpion). Some of the UK guys are saying the reg in this gun's tube further reduces the volume. Either way, it's small. 

This is what I'm getting, using the above, end-of-day string.



Not too shabby. 

I'm finding a shot count north of 75 for the 12fpe version, from the BSA website, and from the UK forums. With what I saw today, north of 75 is completely believable for this gun in it's 12fpe version, I'd hazard a guess that even 85 or so might be pretty reasonable. That's lot's of shots from not much air. 

Pumping

While I do have a compressor and tanks and used those to fill and shoot the gun all day, I wanted to include pump strokes because I know many of us are still handpumping PCPers. 

So, from 110 bar, up to 232 bar for 48-50 very precise shots........95 pump strokes on my Hill Mk3 and that includes the initial 10 or so strokes to pressurize the hose before the gun starts to fil. 

I've had some time to ponder on the testing thus far and here's the summary of those thoughts. Most of it revolves around perception and our pursuit of perfection. 

Perception

I am a Pharmacist by profession. Insurance companies, healthcare systems, hospitals, employers, even the FDA/DEA/etc. have pharmacists on staff that are tasked with making decisions based on which drugs should be on formulary, or "covered" or safe for human use, or labeled a controlled substance, or simply effective, or etc, etc, etc. Most of the time, those decisions are based on clinical trials. Clinical trials are funded by the companies manufacturing the drugs. You can already likely see the ethical conundrum here. Drug companies WANT to paint the prettiest picture possible about their particular drug. The other end of that concept is, "the numbers don't lie." Where those two ideas converge is that the drug companies have to present factual information, but they can present that factual information in a way that best supports whatever claim they are trying to make. 

The basic pathway to become a pharmacist includes an introductory semester long course usually called some variation of, "Drug Literature Evaluation." This is a course that basically teaches a pharmacist how to realize when the data in a clinical trial is being manipulated to support a certain conclusion. (There are further area specific tracks of MBAs that can expand on the basic ability to see through clinical trials skewing of the data). 

At this point you're probably thinking, this is an airgun forum man!!! Here is where it is relevant for us. 

This is an image of the 49 shot string posted yesterday (ES of 15.2, SD of 3.42), with the points plotted in the same way they originally were. 

 

First impression of this line is that it's pretty jagged, so our brain thinks, "ah, that's no good, those shots must be erratic in fps."



This is the exact same data, with some manipulation of the y axis (vertical). 



First impression here, "wow, what a flat shot string, that regulator is awesome!"

So, how can the exact same shot string look so different? Because I manipulated it. The overall bounds, and the way I told Excel to divide the Y axis changes how the line is plotted. The jagged line plot y axis is divided into 5fps increments and the flat line plot y axis is divided into 100 fps increment. Yes, still the same data, but our perception of that data is very much different. 

It's all about perception. 

Pursuit of perfection

Not as much back story here. But again looking at the same shot string. High of 947.7fps and a low of 932.5 for an ES of 15.2 fps. I just want to show the real world (as calculated by a ballistics program) variation in impact points from a 15.2fps variation.



First off, I'm not sure about the literature value of the BC (might test that at some later point actually). What I was hoping to illustrate here, is that at 55 yards, that ES means the slowest moving pellet of all 49 shots, will hit 0.1 inches lower than the fastest moving one. Stretch that out to 100 yards and the slowest moving pellet, again, of all 49 shots, will only hit 0.56 inches lower than the fastest moving one. 

I know that I am personally not a stable enough shot to notice a difference in impact point of 0.1inches, that is a tenth of an inch guys! So, an ES of 15, equates to a more consistent POI than most (perhaps all) of us are capable of. 

There isn't much empirical evidence in the following comments, just some of the neat details that I've learned about the gun in the last week that I wanted to share.

I spent some time online, digging up the history of BSA and this particular gun. I knew that the Birmingham Small Arms company had a long history, but was surprised to learn that it went all the way back to 1861. At various points in their history, they have made metal goods for just about every industry imaginable, and of course, their economic high points seemed to be the World Wars. I won't clog up the forum much about that, but really a worthwhile Google search, if history even slightly interests you. 

More germane for us, the following is what I could find on the history of the Gold Star, "Union Jack."

My best guess, going from UK airgun forum discussions, is that this version of the gun was first released in 2015. 

The Union Jack came about from a collaboration between BSA and a UK Hunter Field Target (HFT) shooter by the name of Roger Lait(y?). He says he, "used to shoot for BSA and was Captain of their Team for a good few years." We have been communicating through PM and he provided (and granted me permission to share) some cool tidbits of info about the gun.

First off, the laminate stock.

Rog says that he had been working on the gun with BSA when he got a picture from Simon Moore, who was the BSA CEO at the time. This picture was of the red, white, and blue laminate, sent by Simon, who was visiting the Minelli factory. Here is how Rog recounted the story to me, "He sent me a pic and I said " GET THAT LAMINATE !!! " Thank goodness we did. I loved it to be honest." 

Next, the barrel.

It is made using BSA's proprietary cold hammer forging process. I first saw this video when it was mentioned in AOA's video review of the black pepper laminate version a few months ago. I thought the video was informative, illustrating the process, so here is a link. 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFzyNm9Unp4



Rog says that the Gold Star barrels are even more special than a regular BSA barrel. Per him, "The barrel is made LOTS slower than a normal barrel. Instead of working the machine full blast , when they make the Goldstar barrels , they slow the machine right down to make sure the barrel is made perfectly. In 12 FPE, it made shooting HFT easier by miles." His claim is that the slowed hammer forging process makes the barrels "take less wind." That was a term I was unfamiliar with, but I came across it used pretty extensively when the UK FT shooters discuss a barrel/pellet's inherent ability to resist being deflected by the wind. Apparently, "taking less wind" is a good thing, similar to the phrase, "buck the wind" that I've seen used here in the US. 

Some UK forum digging provided the following barrel-related comments, made by various individuals. 

• 
  "The choke feels reasonably tight, but most interesting is that the lands appear to have soft edges, so instead of getting little rectangular 'bites' in the pellet, the marks are almost a lozenge shape."
  
• 
  "Yes I have measured the twist rate in the GS barrel, it is the same twist rate as other BSA .177 barrels I have measured @ 19" twist."
  
• 
  "There's a chance (and probably quite a good chance actually) that the new cold hammer forged BSA barrel results in a more stable pellet in flight and a better ballistic coefficient. A more stable and more efficient pellet will spend less time in the air, and as a result will drift less with the wind."
  

There was also someone who measured and reported a BC of 0.0267 with JSB 8.44 from a Gold Star in the 12fpe version. Chairgun supplies a default BC value of 0.021 for this pellet. I hope to eventually get around to verifying the BC with this one that I am shooting. 

In that UK forum discussion, there was a fair amount of skepticism regarding the claims that the Gold Star "takes less wind." From personal experience, I lean towards the thought that a particular barrel/pellet combo CAN indeed reduce the effects of wind deflection. I would guess that it's a combination of factors, but give the most weight to the idea that a pellet that deforms less as it passes through the barrel has less severe "teeth" for the wind to catch and push.

So, at some point, I intend to do a head-to-head comparison in the wind with two of my own guns, against the Union Jack. All three will be .177, doing high teens for fpe. One is a LW polygonal barrel, another a traditional cut rifled LW, and the third, the more slowly hammer forged, "takes less wind" BSA barrel. I'll shoot groups with enough pellets to be somewhat statistically significant and try to structure the whole comparison to not favor any one gun. 

My personal thoughts on the barrel at this point......I cleaned it about midway through the pellet testing, and was pleased with how quickly it came clean. Barrels on guns that I have owned or still own have seemed be more more porous when they were new, than the BSA barrel. I'm basing that opinion of bore porosity on the fact that other new barrels have taken a very long time to get clean and led me to believe the bore surface was rough and had many microscopic cavities in which the lead could adhere. Eventually, many pellets and JB Bore Paste has gotten those personal barrels to the point that they clean quickly and easily, but none of them started out that way. 

So, back to Roger, now five years later since developing the gun with BSA. His opinion is pretty apparent through the following quotes: " I am very proud of that gun, still have it, and it still shoots amazingly well." "My gun is stupidly accurate when it is on song." (Another UK idiom that means....."it's awesome?") "The gun itself is honestly a brilliant bit of kit . When everything is working perfectly you cant beat them … I still use mine and love it!"

As for how it did for him in competition 5 years ago when he was on the BSA team? "I shot mine in the World HFT championships before it came out and managed to pull a 4th out of the bag … It shocked LOTS of people ." 

With permission, here is Roger, with his gun.



Thanks for the input Roger. 

I got curious about this BSA cold hammer forged barrel's rifling profile so devised a little comparison. 

I pushed JSB 8.44 grain pellets through each of five different barrels, and then did the best I could to take decent close-ups. Some of these guns are capable of going breech to crown, but I carefully went from the crown to the breech with all five (for the sake of consistency in the comparison), using a coated, one-piece rod. Less than ideal but three of the guns would need some pretty serious disassembly to go the other direction. 

The five barrels:

• BSA CHF= BSA cold hammer forged
• LW T = Lothar Walther traditional rifling
• LW P = Lothar Walther polygonal
• HW ? = Weirhrauch (broach vs button vs cut vs?)
• FWB = Feinwerkbau (broach vs button vs cut?)

I couldn't quite get the detail I wanted in the above pics so took the following as well.





 (added some arrows here because it's just so hard to see the engravings with the poly)





Perhaps I'm imagining it, but it sure seems like the BSA barrel has rounded lands, like this: 

The other odd-ball is the poly. I'm seeing this, with the poly: 

And finally, the other three look like a 12 land and groove situation, but with rectangular lands, like this: 



The FWB felt like it has the tightest choke, based on the fact that the engravings start further up the slope of the skirt, and even smeared enough lead that you can see little tails of lead hanging off the head. It also seems to have the overall sharpest, most aggressive rifling, The base of the pellet also has the most distortion with the FWB barrel. 

The next tightest choke would probably be the BSA, based again on how high up the slope of the skirt the engravings begin, but also just with how it felt at the choke. 

I personally feel that an overall smoother post-barrel projectile has the best chance as resisting wind deflection. It seems like the less protruding lead from the basic shape the pellet began as, would offer less total surface area for the atmospheric molecules to interact with as the pellet flies downrange. Only taking the visual effect of the engraved pellet into account, the winner by a landslide out of these five particular barrels is the poly. (It's my main FT rifle barrel, and it DOES indeed shoot well in the wind).

I can't really say that the hammer forged has less overall protruding lead, or even less sharp edges. But, itt's not any worse than the 3 barrels that are 12 land and groove and have rectangular lands. Actually, the BSA pellet looks much better than what's coming out of the FWB barrel, if "smoothness" is even an aerodynamic advantage. 

Ultimately, actual accuracy results (and BC?) would be all that matters, the above was just to satisfy my curiosity of how the pellets look after passing through each of the barrels. 

(really tough to get decent up-close pics, best i could do guys)

I agree Bobby, a Labradar and a few more types of rifling/barrels would be an awesome experiment. I very much appreciate the offer and might take you up on it in the future, but for now I think I better leave that for another time. As was pointed out by somebody over on GTA and by all the time and effort I know you guys put into the ART project, external ballistics is a huge area of potential study. It is a topic that I have lots of interest in, but I'm not sure I have the time. 

As far as what I have planned, in relation to the various barrels and imparted rifling that I posted last night, I am thinking I'll probably try to make it a BSA CHF vs traditional LW vs poly LW barrel comparison. Since the FWB and the HW are in a different FPE range (6 and 9.5, respectively) I think I'll leave those two out of the comparison. The other three are 16-19 FPE guns and more of an apples to apples comparison. So, current plan is to measure each of their BC's, using the simple chronograph at muzzle and again at a known distance method. I'm also still planning on comparing the wind deflection of each of those three barrels on a really windy day. 

Lots more than that planned too. just need to have some time off from work. 

Bfloyd,

You're not hijacking at all. Very relevant comments. Thank you.

I do see a some similarities between your R10 and the Gold Star (breech/bolt/trigger/trigger guard/and maybe the buttpad?). I really like that nutmeg laminate. 

I'd like to hear more about the hammer spring adjustments you mentioned. I didn't think these guns could be adjusted. Did you swap a different spring in there or is there an adjustment that I'm unaware of? 

I don't have any of the JSB 13.43s on hand, might need to track some down. Some of the FT competitors at the matches I go to seem to have switched over to those, although in our club it seems to mostly be the Hunter Class guys. Although, if the Gold Star is a set power of 16-18fpe, those might be a little heavy for it's power output. 

Please tell us more about those hammer spring adjustments. 

Thanks for sharing.