SURELY arrived!!!

At the top of every post there is that "heart" that can be clicked on, hopefully you guys that I didn't personally thank in this thread can see that yours is clicked??!! That just means I appreciate your kind words! On most sites there is a LIKE button you can click on with the same purpose in mind. I feel strange clicking a heart button but it is what it is, lol!!!!

Alrighty then, well the foam is cut to fit and SURELY snugs in there like some Hot Lady's stretch fit jeans. 

Might even do some shooting today.

I thought you were from Arizona! Why is there so much snow on the ground?

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Yep I do, near the picturesque Flagstaff area at 6640 ft elevation. Way up in the Ponderosa pine trees and a chilly 16 degrees right now at 7:04 in the morn. Less than half hour I can be at the snow bowl ski area where Mt Humphrey is 12,637 ft elevation. 

I could drive 1.5 hours getting near Phoenix and it'd be T-shirt weather by noon at 1500 ft elevation. A fun thing about where I live. 

Steve,

What can I say-think you have got a class act there and not bragging on myself at all. When designing that I tried to think of everything that you and the gun was going to demand on a performance and artistic level and that's what I came up with. Someone in a previous post had said how difficult Mike's guns are to design for and he is right but I had to do something as these guns are just too good not to "figure it out" from a wood standpoint.

Thanks for your patience and go enjoy!

Steve Corcoran

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Thanks to you as well Steve! I love the feel and look of SURELY's outfit!

I had the opportunity yesterday to put another 80 or so 25gr MRD's through SURELY in squirrely winds switching from 2 mph to 8 mph coming in mostly from ahead of me. Back and forth constantly and only one shredded piece of surveyors tape at 50Y to try to judge wind with, which was better than nothing. The wind was mild at first and continually got worse as the afternoon progressed until it started snowing, at which time my friends and skedaddled.

Honestly I was just having fun on the steel getting a feel for the gun and trigger. The bench is about 4ft high so I have to stand behind it. I used a cheap front rest and a TAB gear rear bag which is the one in the photo's in my original post.

This top photo was at 50Y and that is the Sturkis KYL rack made for 22rf and airguns. I think the largest spinner is 2.5"?? and getting smaller the further right it goes, the smallest being 1/4". My initial shot was the topmost hit on the 2.5" so I adjusted .2 mil down, the two lower hits on the 2.25" were from my two buds later on in the afternoon trying SURELY out for the first time, (edit - so were the additional hits on the other smaller ones), and I think the gun was off reg by then. I did one shot, one hit, all the way down the line until I missed the 2nd to last, but hit it the next shot(wind had swapped) then hit the 1/4" six times in a row. THAT's NOT EASY with my expensive 22rf! I was ecstatic!!!

From top to bottom are the little steel I shot at, 65Y, (70Y, 75Y, oops swap these two distances the square was at 70Y) 90Y, and the cardboard is 100Y. I shot 12 shots on the cardboard about as fast as I could rattle them off. I was aiming at that hole just left of the group (shows how much the wind blew the pellets off to the right!). The orange circle is 3". In spite of the conditions these little steels were easy to hit. As I worked my way up the hill at each distance I got better at figuring out the wind. Overall I'm very pleased so far! 

I admire the way the barrel is clamped on to the receiver. It spreads the holding force in a wide area being sure there is no distortion. It does seem that there is a lot of barrel to free float though.

Some guns put a band on the barrel to control harmonics, while others tension them and still others, like the Thomas, let them fly free. There must be something to be said for all methods. JSAR puts their money on a pre-tensioned barrel. The Gauntlet (yeah I know, I shouldn't even put the word Gauntlet in the same post as a Thomas) absolutely needs a band, because if you breath on the barrel it changes the POI, but once controlled, that cheap gun shoots amazingly well.

It is clear to see that the Thomas has it all worked out the way it is.

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It's a 26" match grade barrel BTW. Mike's own specs which I don't know.

Yep the barrel attachment system was one of the reasons I wanted a Thomas. The other pcp that has a somewhat similar system is my Mac1 USFT which has been an amazingly consistent rifle over the last 15 years. With some other expensive-ish pcp's I've had over the years I was seriously tempted to smash them against a tree because of POI shifts and almost continually getting them fixed for various reasons! I'm short on patience when it comes to major tuning, chasing problems, and repeatedly buying guns and finding out that it wasn't up to snuff anyway, then selling at a loss after dumping money in it to get it fixed.

Barrel bands touching barrels has always been a source of frustration causing poi shifts. If the barrel band doesn't touch the barrel and prevents it from bending too much in the event of an accident then I'm fine with it.

You won't see a NON free floated barrel on a winning target rifle in the firearms world, or a flimsy barrel attachment system.......

Me personally I wouldn't mind a heavier barrel than this for a match rifle. It's not a great offhand gun in this configuration but it is wonderful otherwise. If I were a young 6 footer It'd be fine for offhand.

I haven't mentioned the trigger yet, because I keep forgetting too, but I came to realise it's about the perfect setting once I got used to it, 3.5oz two stage and it is has a crisp break with "FEEL". That aspect alone helps me shoot better.

A couple groups off the bucket and shooting sticks practicing for the EFT match next weekend, and getting my dope ironed out.

Man silhouette was 90Y, only four shots because I was hitting centered vertically. The big plate was 100Y and I was trying for the bolt which I hit 4-5 times out of the 10 shots. I didn't measure it but it was around .7" tall and 2" wide. The splats are .3"- ish wide so each hit is bigger than the 22 cal pellet is. 

Wind was 0-4 mph from 8 o'clock.

I checked velocity through a chrono and it was 920 fps right on the money.

This thing hammers!

Thanks Carl, and thanks to Bill/Crusher from earlier, both those guys being my teammates on Team Centercut,

Thanks Dairyboy, it's getting the job done!

It's a good thing I shot some yesterday because it's 20 mph winds right now. I really wanted to shoot more today too, darn it.

That airgun is a thing of pulchritude, sir!

Were it mine, I would never take it out to the field, lol!

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After looking it up I used that word on my wife a few minutes ago and she gave me a funny look, lol.

Thanks Carl, and thanks to Bill/Crusher from earlier, both those guys being my teammates on Team Centercut,

Thanks Dairyboy, it's getting the job done!

It's a good thing I shot some yesterday because it's 20 mph winds right now. I really wanted to shoot more today too, darn it.

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Shoot it in the wind... They're not going to cancel RMAC 100Y event if its windy... When Derrick and I were there in 2019 it got so windy on one of the 100Y qualification rounds that the targets kept blowing over. They just went cold range, set them back up with more weight to hold them down and continued the round. I remember telling the guy at the bench next to me that if I went hunting and it was this windy I'd put the gun back in the trunk and go home. I know its not fun, and getting big groups isn't fun either, but knowing how that gun and the RDMs react in the wind is important knowledge to have... I was shooting my .30 Bobcat and had to hold approx. 14 inches windage. Kinda freaked me out and I wished I had shot targets in those conditions more often.

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Ha, I've been to long range steel centerfire matches like that, it's miserable! The ballistic app gives a good idea where to aim in the wind but there's a heck of a lot of "LUCK FACTOR" guessing just right every shot. Here where I live it's windy quite a bit, especially in the springtime.

For SURELY's dope it's showing 3.1 mils/ 11.1" for a 16 mph full value wind/3 oclock at 100Y, 3.5 mils/12.5" for a 18 mph, 3.9 for 20 mph/13.9". Almost 3" drift from 16 to 20 mph. I can't tell the difference between those winds other than it seems like there's more sometimes, also a change from 3 to 2 oclock is .5 mil or 1.8". I can take a wild guess based off the ballistic calculator right here in front of the computer and be much happier while being much warmer 

I hear ya! That’s a situation where wind flags are of little use, and shooting rapid fire sighters is really the only method that even partially works. The only good part is that everyone else is shooting on the same wind where a 180 is a very good score.

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I practiced off the sticks yesterday at 100Y while the wind blew from the left most of the time, probably 2mph to 8 mph, and my group for 15 or so shots was 1.5" tall and 4" wide. I aimed .5 mil to 1.3 mil out depending on wind fluctuations. I'd say 85% would have hit a 3" KZ.

In contrast to the constantly switching winds of 0 to 6 mph from two days ago when I shot at 100Y, which was 9" wide for many shots. I'm not using flags so It's super hard to try to guess what the wind is doing down range when the wind is like that! I'd say 50% of the shots would have hit a 3" KZ. I couldn't help but laugh when the pellet would go the opposite way from where I intended! 

The grass is usually just bouncing back and forth when its switchy and I can't make out the mirage most of the time because it's not hot enough yet. But I'm learning a little as I go.

After putting a full tin through SURELY now I think you are correct in that it doesn't throw those huge flyers like some other powerful pcp pellet rifles I've had do. I did some closer shooting too. I didn't miss the 1" spinner on my quadrant target at 47Y yesterday, after a while I just stopped shooting. I aimed .1 mil to .4 mil out for wind. 

It's odd that at 90Y the vertical is so small, like 1/2" but at 100Y the vertical is 1"-ish??? I'll put a pic up of my 90Y steel later today. Edit this was the 90Y man silhouette target from yesterday - 10 or so hits but I did miss off the right side a few times. The other pic is the 47Y, only fragmentation and paint breaking off on the rest of the quadrant, I don't know how many times I hit it, maybe 10-12 times.