I don't post much, but thought I might add a few things here about what makes a great FT gun...especially in respect to the beginner shooter. Accuracy and adjustability are great, but lets just assume for the sake of argument that all guns are equally accurate and adjustable. (They are not)
FT is a tough game because there is a great deal of things that you must constantly keep in mind. The successful shooters are more able to manage all the information and decision making better than the rest. Shooting skill (reading the wind) and positional stability are paramount...but not nearly enough if you want to be a consistent 90% shooter. In the early stages of learning...those are the two major contributors to good scores. As those skills become more natural and consistent...other factors become places where points can be picked up.
The weather creates a lot of difficulty for those that are more than fair weather club shooters. I mean no disrespect when I say "fair weather shooters", to be clear. As shooters begin to travel to larger events outside their local club, the expense and time involved increases dramatically. If its unusually cold or hot outside when its time for a local match, many will decide to shoot another day. If you have traveled across the country for a match, you really don't have much choice but to get out and shoot if you want to make use of your travel investment. This is where experience and preparedness often tip the scales to the shooters that have put in the time to learn their equipment very well.
Scopes don't range the same when it's colder or hotter than the temp you set it up. Some scopes change a lot, some only a little. This can vary between several units of the same brand and model. As your experience grows, some processes become more natural and automatic...leaving more brain bandwidth to apply to situations like scope variation. Most guys that have been doing this a while have charted out the changes that take place over temperature and can make adjustments on the fly as the weather changes. The Nationals in 2016 was a good example of this problem. It was in the 30's in the morning, and would warm up to 50 and 60's in the afternoons. A lot of good shooters had trouble knocking targets down because they didn't have the necessary info on their scopes and guns to make the right adjustments for the cold weather.
Now, lets add the rifle into the situation. the typical scenario for a pcp rifle is they shoot slower in the cold, and faster in the hot. Unfortunately...this is at odds for most scopes. By this I mean that most scopes range shorter in the cold, and longer when its hot...by varying degrees. This is exactly opposite of the the rifle. When its 30 degrees, your scope may range 1-4 yards short on a long target, which will cause you to use less clicks than actually needed for the real distance. The compounded issue is that your rifle will also be shooting slower, so POI will be lower than expected. This is the double whammy of FT. You range a 55y target 3 yards short, which by itself decreases the KZ width by about 18% since the kz is round and you will be shooting lower than the middle. To add insult to injury, your rifle also shoots slower so that moves your POI down even further. Many times this scenario, unaccounted for, will lower your chance of hitting a long target to zero...even if you estimated the wind holdoff perfectly. Its not such a big deal on short targets...but FT matches are not typically won on the short targets.
There is also the factor of mechanical POI shift that is caused by rifles that were never engineered for FT competition. Most european rifles (maybe all) were designed as 10m rifles and have been modified to shoot FT...even at 12 fpe. The majority never gave any consideration to temperature shift because the rifles were designed for climate controlled indoor shooting. Much of these issues can be corrected by a good smith, but typically are a problem for the wide temp range ft shooter if not addressed.
This brings me to an interesting point (at least in my eyes and many other shooters). The Thomas FT rifle is substantially more resistant to the velocity swings associated with temperature. In a nutshell, this is because this was a major consideration when it was conceived. It also does not suffer from any mechanical POI shift...never did. What kind of numbers are we talking about, here? For a 30 degree drop in temperature, you can expect a Thomas to lose about 6 fps. Compare that to other rifles and you will find that to be about 5 times lower...with some rifles much, much worse. For the Thomas guys, that's about a 1 click difference from optimum at 55y...or about 1/16th inch. For the rest...thats about 5 clicks or 5/16" of an inch or more. I have heard many Steyr guys report POI drop of up to an inch in cold weather.
I'll post a pic of a very well controlled test done by Greg Sauve that compared the Steyr he has been shooting for the last 10 years or more, and his Thomas that he began shooting last year. Both guns were sighted in indoors at around 65 degrees. He then moved outdoors where the temp was around 30. He shot at 50y. After the rifles cooled to ambient temp, he took one shot with the Thomas, aiming at its own bull, then picked up the Steyr and took one shot at its own bull. He repeated this process until he had shot 20 shots each. This method assured that one rifle did not get better wind than the other for the test. That is something I love about Greg...he understands how to compare things properly. The test was also done to compare wind drift between the two. This is just one pic, with many others showing the same results. The wind was quartering, so the vertical was more than if it had been a full value cross. Greg chose to shoot a Thomas, because the temp shift he had to monitor closely with the Steyr is a non issue on the Thomas....plus much less wind drift than he was accustomed to. This freed up some space in his head to focus on other things. Greg shot Great with the Steyr...still shoots great with the Thomas, but has much less to think about. Greg also uses the only scope I know of that ranges short when its hot... the March 8-80. The opposite temp shift could not keep up with his Steyr, but he reports it very closely matches his Thomas....meaning that as the scope ranges shorter, the gun shoots a little bit faster and matches the difference so he needs to make no temp correction at all for optimum vertical placement.
There are lots of FT shooters that probably pay no attention to these things and shoot OK...but when they get somewhere and have to shoot outside their home conditions, they will probably have some surprises waiting for them.
By the way...there is no truth in the idea that the same barrel will shoot the same in every gun. That makes it sound like the power plant and barrel preparation is irrelevant. That's wishful thinking on the part of some manufacturer somewhere...but something I'm getting used to hearing from guys that have switched to barrels similar to the ones I now use. The first FT guns I built stomped the daylights out of the current records using the same barrel that the other builders had already been using forever with only mediocre results. Many looked at the performance at the time with incredulous eyes. I said, just wait...because all of these records will be broken again by other guys shooting my rifles. That has mostly come to pass...although I have still hung on to a few in the classes that are less popular. I'm happy to say that. In fact, that performance level is considered somewhat normal, now.
Also, if you are going to the compare accuracy of competition rifle, don't waste your time with 5 or 10 shot groups....unless you are going to a 5 or 10 shot BR or FT match. BR matches require around 35 accurate shots in a row, and FT guns require 50-60 greats shots in a row. I cringe when I hear that you don't need a super accurate rifle to shoot FT. I suppose that's true if you don't care about winning. Don't kid yourself. If you come up against a comparable shooter and his gun never makes a mistake, but yours throws a flier every 15-20 shots...the other guy will surely beat you. That's a fact. If your skill level is way beyond the competition, you may be able to get away with inferior equipment and still win. That's a very unlikely scenario for a beginner.
Anyway, I hope this was somewhat informative, at least.
Mike
PS....you can shoot the same Thomas in every class of FT and BR with only a jet adjustment to change power level....plus remove the tailstock on the FT gun and shoot any class of FT pistol. These features make this "expensive" rifle the best value there is in competition air rifle sports. I've done it for years. I don't think that can be challenged. Some guys are afraid to touch anything if a rifle is shooting well, but that is just a mental hurdle that troubles guys that don't really understand how a rifle works. If performance cannot be duplicated by repeating the settings of a rifle...its not a very good rifle. Both National FT pistol class winners this past year used the same rifle for pistol that they used in their respective rifle class with a scope change...and one of them changed power levels with no mysterious troubles reported in rifle or pistol.
