Beretta CX-4 Storm - Part 3

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2

There is a new podcast up on the website.

Podcast - Part 2

It's the first of August, and I'm back to the CX-4. Let's take a look at performance downrange. Before we do that, I tried to mount an optical sight. I say "tried," because at that point I discovered a problem with this design.


Pretty obvious why this scope doesn't work. This is the UTG Tactedge 4x long eye-relief scope that I believe is perfect for this airgun, but taller mounts are needed.

The tall front and rear tactical sight housings are so high that they limit the scopes that can be installed. You will need ultra-high Weaver rings to fit a long scope like the UTG Tactedge 4x40 long eye-relief scope I tried to mount. I have such mounts in 11mm, but not in Weaver because it isn't a traditional airgun scope base.

Next, I tried to mount a lower red dot sight with a Weaver base. It fit between the sights okay, but it was so low that the red dot could only be seen through the rear sight aperture. That wouldn't work, either! And before someone beats me up for not remembering that the Crosman NightStalker kit that I tested back in February of 2006 also has a red dot sight - I tried that, too. Not high enough!


Nope! This one fits, but it's so low that the red dot appears through the rear aperture!

However, legend tells us of an earlier time when primitive marksmen used those front and rear sight appendages that still come on many airguns to actually align their guns for shooting. It's called the BS era, for "before scopes." I reckoned that anything my ancestors could do I could also do, so I shot all my groups without the aid of an optical sight. I did wear my bifocals, though.

Comedy of errors!
Starting with the sight adjustments - the front sight adjusts rapidly on a cam, which the manual fails to explain. I broke a screwdriver tip finding that out. I've broken other Taiwanese screwdriver tips before, but never while adjusting a sight! The manual said the gun was sighted-in at 10 meters by the factory, but this one wasn't.

Moving to the rear sight, my front sight experience sensitized me to make small adjustments - this time with a tiny Allen wrench - and nothing happened. So here's what to do in the back. Treat the rear sight like a windlass and pretend you are raising a ship's anchor. I wound it around completely three or four times before the pellet moved the required two inches at 20 yards.

Then, it was time to shoot.

The open sights didn't do their job
All that joking about open sights, and these turned out to be the worst I've used in ages. At 20 yards and shooting from a benchrest, I never got a group smaller than one inch. I may not be a crack shot, but I can keep them inside a dime with good open sights at that range. I don't think this was the rifle's fault - I blame the open sights.

Pellets that performed...or didn't!
I tried RWS Hobbys, RWS Superdomes, RWS Supermags, Crosman 7.9-grain Premiers and Gamo Match pellets. The Hobbys seemed to perform the best. In this case, "best" is a very relative term.


This is the best I could do at 20 yards. This was with RWS Hobbys.

In every target, there was a cluster of three or four shots that told me the rifle wants to shoot better than this. I think with optical sights I can do better.

Well, not too good, thus far. I don't like the sights, how they adjust and the fact that you need tools to adjust them. Also, who makes front and rear sights that adjust with two DIFFERENT tools? That's just crazy. But, I'm not finished with the CX-4 yet. I'll get some kind of high scope mount, and we'll see how well it can shoot with proper sights.

I do expect Umarex USA to come out with some kind of optical sight and mount for the CX-4. With that Picatinny rail sitting on top, they'd be fools not to.

One last comment. Where is that reader who said I never criticize airguns that Pyramyd Air sells, because all I'm doing is selling things through these blogs? Without the use of profanity, this report was about as critical as I get. I don't load it with frownie faces to let you know how I'm feeling, but I don't think there are any lines that you need to read between.

Gamo Extreme Hunter - Part 1

by B.B. Pelletier


Gamo's Hunter Extreme is a big air rifle.

It's big and it's "EXTREME" - that over-used adjective that seems to have replaced "radical" as the flavor of the day. But is it any good? And how about Gamo's claim that the rifle shoots lightweight pellets made of a compound they call performance ballistic alloy (PBA) to velocities of 1,600 f.p.s.? Is that true, and do we airgunners even want it?

Lots of questions, so a big blog series. We begin with the gun.

The .177 caliber Gamo Hunter Extreme I am testing is a big breakbarrel air rifle in all ways. I went to the Gamo USA website to look at the specifications, but they lacked even the most fundamental specs like overall length and weight. The site is incomplete and appears to have been that way for several months. They also say the barrel is a bull barrel, which I would not agree with. It is a new barrel profile that looks like a long muzzle brake, reaching back almost to the base block, then tapering down to a smaller profile. The outer barrel jacket seems to be aluminum and the inner barrel is steel.

The metal finish of the long muzzle brake sleeve is highly polished and contrasts beautifully with the synthetic tapering part at the rear. The actual barrel is shorter than the muzzle brake and the true muzzle is recessed about 0.5 inches. That makes the true barrel length about 18.25 inches. The rest of the major external metal parts of the rifle have a satin finish covered with an even black oxide.

The wood stock is overly large in all dimensions and has a very blocky forearm. It will be easy to use the artillery hold because the bottom of the forearm is absolutely flat. There is impressed checkering on both sides of the forearm and pistol grip, but the diamonds are flat and give no purchase when grasped. The wood is medium brown with a semi-gloss finish that looks like genuine oil. The cheek rest is not well formed and has the "melted" look that's been characteristic of Gamo rifles for many years. The butt is shaped like a western-style stock, rather than a European style and there is a Monte Carlo profile.

This big rifle weighs a whisker over 10 pounds, with a whisker being two ounces or less. The weight of the wood on a rifle this large will probably make the weight vary by four ounces, heaviest to lightest. It stands just a whisker taller than 45.5 inches. A whisker is, well, not very much.

Articulated cocking linkage
Back in the 1970s when all spring guns vibrated a lot, some manufactures went to a cocking link that was two parts, articulated by a joint near the breech or forward end. This allowed the cocking slot in the stock to be shorter, which helped dampen vibration. But it also adds friction that a single-piece link does not have. When the link runs under the necessary bridge welded to the underside of the spring tube, it pops up against the bridge and scrapes the top of the link. There used to be a whole series of things one could to to reduce this friction, back in the days when the HW 35 was still being made, but most guns don't use articulated linkages today, so we have forgotten how to deal with them.


That's what an articulated cocking link looks like. Two link sections are joined by a flexible joint.

But Gamo has designed this rifle to need no bridge! The geometry of the linkage keeps the long rear link snug against the spring cylinder, so most of the extra friction isn't there. Gamo advertises a cocking effort of 58 pounds, but the test rifle is cocking at 52 lbs., after about 25 flexes. I don't think it will become any lighter with time, but 52 isn't that bad. However, this is not a plinking air rifle. It's for hunting, only.

Gamo scores!
This rifle comes out of the box with a nice 3-9X50 scope already mounted! Bully for Gamo! They are one of the first manufacturers of adult air rifles to recognize the importance of this feature. Crosman and Daisy have been doing it for years, but most other makers just don't seem to have figured it out yet. Unfortunately the scope on my sample rifle was not mounted with the crosshairs level, but I took care of that in less than ten minutes. The scope has the Gamo name and logo and it's not a model I am familiar with.


A Gamo scope.

The scope seems to be of good quality, and it has one feature I can't wait to try. The dot in the center of the reticle is all that lights up when the illumination is turned on. I think that's a high-quality feature because it preserves the hunter's night vision. And that dot is rather unique. I'll have to use it a little to see how I like it.

On the negative side, the scope has fixed parallax that seems to be set at about 35 yards on the sample I am testing. That will work fine, because I can always reduce the power if I want to shoot closer and want to image to appear to be in focus, but it seems a shame for a nice scope like this not to have adjustable parallax.

The scope mount is one-piece and the correct size for the scope. It has a steel vertical pin at the rear which is mated with a receiver hole in the right location, so all that has been thought out well. Good thing, too, because open sights are not an option with the Hunter Extreme. Unfortunately, neither is .22 caliber, yet. I hope that changes soon because this rifle has far more potential for the larger calibers. Even .25 caliber would be a nice option for an air rifle this husky.

One final comment before I go. This rifle is made in England, so it is actually made by BSA - not Gamo. Gamo owns BSA and BSA Optics, and the association helps both companies in many different ways.

That's it for today. Next time we'll look a little deeper.

How barrel length affects velocity in a CO2 rifle

by B.B. Pelletier

Before we begin, Dr. Mirfee Ungier has answered a question about scope parallax and and the wearing of corrective eyewear. Here is her report.

Contacts always have you looking through the optical center of  the lens.  However, depending upon the glasses prescription, turning your head to view the target off the optical center of glasses will induce a variable amount of prism.  The stronger the glasses, the more prism might be induced.  Typically, someone with a correction under about 2.5 diopters will not have too much to worry about until they get into advanced competition.  People with higher degrees of refractive error would be better off in contact lenses. It should be noted that protective eyewear, i.e. safety glasses, are not an issue and should still be worn.

I thank Dr. Ungier for her explanation. I hope this clarifies the corrective eyewear situation for scope users.

Today's test report comes at the request of reader Kyle, who wondered if there would be a velocity increase if he changed the 14.6-inch barrel in a Crosman 2250 to a 24-inch barrel. I said there would be at least a 100 f.p.s. increase, but Crosman said no. They said the barrel on the 2250 was optimum for that airgun.

I told Kyle that Crosman knows their guns better than I do, but that I would look back at my airgun literature and see if I couldn't come up with some test data for him that shows the relationship of barrel length to velocity. In the October 1994 issue of The Airgun Letter I found a test where Tom Gaylord had cut the barrel of a Quackenbush CO2 rifle and recorded the velocities as he went. I think this is exactly what Kyle is looking for.

The gun
The airgun Gaylord used is the Quackenbush XL, a rifle with a removable 7-ounce CO2 reservoir. It had a .22 caliber Crosman 2200 pneumatic barrel that was 20.125 inches at the start of testing.

The test
The rifle was shot at 76 degrees F with 80 percent humidity. The chronograph was an Oehler 35P and the muzzle of the gun was positioned 6 feet from the start screen. Ten shots were fired with each of two pellets at each barrel length. The shots were spaced 1.5 minutes apart, to allow the rifle's temperature to recycle after each shot. When the barrel was cut, the muzzle was reamed with a tapered reamer to remove any burrs. Since this was just a test of velocity, no accuracy was tested, so crowning the muzzle didn't matter. The test started with a full CO2 tank which was refilled when the barrel got to the 15-inch length. The reservoir had been perviously tested to give not less than 125 shots at consistent velocity.

Barrel- Hobby- Kodiak
20" -------- 645 -------- 548
19" -------- 689 -------- 564
18"-------- 680 --------- 562
17"--------- 681 --------- 555
16"-------- 671--------- 547
15"-------- 641--------- 541
14"-------- 639--------- 518
13"-------- 637--------- 512

When the barrel was cut to 12 inches, it was then shorter than the gas reservoir underneath and the velocity dropped like a stone. Gaylord thought the gas might have reflected off the reservoir at the muzzle and caused some interference, so he ended the test at that point.

Well, I'm glad I revisited these results, because I didn't remember them as well as I thought. My prediction that increasing a 15-inch barrel to 24 inches would bump the velocity by 100 f.p.s. was clearly wrong.

Gaylord also wrote that he was surprised that the 20 inch barrel was slower than the 19 and he prevailed on Quackenbush to send a 24-inch barrel to test. To his surprise, the 24-inch barrel was the slowest of all, even though it emitted a huge cloud of CO2 with each shot.

The fact that the 20-inch barrel was slower than the 19-inch shows that you cannot keep increasing the length of a barrel and hope to get higher velocity with CO2. Also note that the barrel performed about as good at 16 inches as it did at 20, and 15 inches wasn't far behind.

The valve/hammer/spring of every CO2 gun will give different results that are peculiar to that setup, and different barrels will also perform differently but this is the trend they will all exhibit. The point of optimum velocity will change as the setup changes, but the relationship will remain the same.

I have some thoughts about how barrel length affects velocity with pneumatics, too. Perhaps in a future post.

BB Gets disappointed - Part 2 More tales of the Taurus PT1911

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

Today's blog is going to be a BIG one, so settle back with your coffee cup and make sure the pot is still hot. At the end of my report I'm going to do some editorializing, because there's something I have to get off my chest. This will sound like a rant, but I believe I can expose something that is seriously wrong with some companies today. Read it if you like. I will warn you before I launch.



For those just tuning in, a while back I wrote a post about a .45 automatic I bought that didn't live up to its hype. Since I can usually steamroll my way past most airgun problems, I thought I'd use this experience with a new firearm to let you watch what I do when life hands me a lemon. And what a lemon it was! Read part one to learn what an uphill battle this turns out to be.

Just a quick reminder, the problem I experienced was a failure to feed fresh rounds from the magazine. Eight times in 84 rounds a round failed to feed properly. I took a picture to show you what that looks like. Okay, now you're up to date.



You readers offered advice about 1911s. Some of you told me to go easy on Taurus because you had good experiences with their guns, but a couple people told me Taurus guns had let them down in the past. Well, I checked into this deeper. I have an acquaintance who used to do work for Taurus, and he still has some connections inside the company. He placed a call and learned that Taurus knows all about the PT1911 problem. What I experienced is apparently not that uncommon.

Then I did some more research on the Internet. The problem with that is you can't tell whether a person is telling the truth or just has it in for a particular company, but when you encounter the SAME problem being discussed everywhere, there is a reason for it. PT1911 feed problems are being talked about in many places. And there seems to be a common solution - the Wilson Combat 8-round magazine!

Boy - if that isn't ironic! I bought the PT 1911 BECAUSE it offered the same features as a tricked-out Wilson, only the Taurus retails for under $600 (street price) vs the Wilson that STARTS at $2,100. Big difference there! Yes, I could have really stretched and bought the Wilson (by giving up a couple birthdays, maybe Christmas and perhaps by mowing the lawn extra times), I suppose. And if I had, what would I have had to talk about? Wilson Combat guns are the gold standard when it comes to 1911 reliability. The phrase "As good as a Wilson" would be used, except there aren't any other guns that good. Oh, that's not true at all - I'm just crying in my beer now! But you guys who want me to conspire with you in a lie that a Gamo CF-X is just as good as a TX200 - THIS is what I am talking about when I rant at you! One gun really is the standard to which all others are compared and the other is just a good value for the money.

Only the PT1911 wasn't turning out to be such a good value, after all. It is a defense gun that cannot be counted on to operate. That's as useful as a nuclear hand grenade with a three-second fuse!

So I gird my lions and place the call to Wilson, expecting a lecture on sow's ears from some good old boy who puts me on speakerphone so the office can have a good laugh. Instead, I get Traci, who seems to know exactly what I need when I tell her what gun I own. She's new to Wilson, so she checks with one of the techs, but it turns out she has heard this problem enough times that she has it down pat. I placed my order and yesterday evening the new magazine arrives.

Today I was at the range for many different things, but one of them was to see what kind of difference a different magazine can make (you Umarex shooters getting this?). Well, instead of 8 failures in 84 rounds, there were 3 failures in 116 rounds. I call that an improvement. We're not out of the woods yet, but we're heading in the right direction.

Now some something else has come from my research. Apparently, some new 1911s with trick tuning have to be broken-in before they shoot reliably. Nothing was said anywhere about the Taurus PT1911 being a tight gun, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Some of my research has been in books written about the 1911. As I mentioned in part one, I used to tune 1911s, but I know nothing of the post-1980 models that Colt added a fourth safety device to. However, in my reading, I learned that it's a good idea to shoot a new gun without cleaning it for several hundred rounds, which is exactly what I have done. It seems that a gun that's allowed to get dirty and still forced to function wears in better. Then you are supposed to clean the gun thoroughly and lubricate it well.

The airgun equivalent to that would be to NOT add chamber oil to the transfer port for several thousand rounds, and to clean the barrel with JB bore paste. SEE - there is an airgun tie-in!

Where do I go from here?
I'm looking for reliability, and this pistol is not there yet. When I can feed it 500 handloads with lead semi-wadcutters with nary a bobble, I'll call it macaroni (Americans, sing the lyrics to Yankee Doodle - everyone else, I will be satisfied). I will be very happy then, because I will have a $600 pistol that's almost as good as a Wilson.

If I can't get to my goal of reliability, I will sell the pistol and buy the Wilson I should have bought in the first place. Someone else will have to rationalize the occasional mis-feed. Either way, I will continue to report to you on my further research and experiences.

NOW COMES THE EDITORIAL - Look away if you don't want to know what I think is wrong with retail sales today.

Taurus knows there is a problem with this pistol. Do they tell customers they might need to expect a break-in period? No, they don't. Had they done that, I would have shut my trap and soldiered on in the knowledge that what I was doing would result in me getting what I wanted in the end.

One BIG problem with the PT1911 is the Taurus magazines. They don't always work reliably. Neither of my two are reliable. But does Taurus tell their customers that? Of course not! That would be an admission that their stuff doesn't work, and if they know that, why aren't they fixing the problem? Wilson Combat obviously knows it, and they have a solution ready to go. So, instead of stopping to fix a problem that is obviously fixable, they continue to pour thousands upon tens of thousands of guns on the market and ignore what has now become a black eye on their reputation - at least for this one model.

What Taurus is doing is taking out full-page $50K full-color ads in American Rifleman, touting the wonderful features of this pistol. And more people like me are wondering whether it is possible to get $2100 worth of value in a $600 package.

Want to know why it isn't? Because a part of that money Wilson charges is for the labor of human beings checking things after assembly. They can afford to do that, and they HAVE to, because their reputation is on the line with every gun that ships. Taurus, on the other hand, has cut the price so close that they haven't got the same time to devote to after-assembly work that Wilson does. It's nothing they should be ashamed of - they are selling a product for a price, and there have to be certain efficiencies to hold the line on costs when you do that.

Well THERE YOU GO! There are airgun manufacturers who also do not have the time to spend testing each and every gun they produce. They are selling for a price and there will be guns that slip through the cracks. In just the past three days I've heard of a Crosman 1077 and a BAM B40, both of which I have touted long and hard as excellent guns, only these two have problems - barrel problems, it seems.

Up to this point, I have no beef. This is the way the world turns and anyone who thinks otherwise is a pollyanna.

HOWEVER - when there is a known problem and a company does not reveal what they know about it, I do have a problem. When a manufacturer ships a gun that cannot meet an advertised specification and they know about it, I get mad. And this happens everywhere! The Gamo Hunter Extreme that they advertise in American Rifleman as being a 1600 f.p.s air rifle, when all the reports I have heard point to it perhaps being a 1400 f.p.s. gun, for example. I don't care that nobody would WANT to shoot 1600 f.p.s. - just that they are claiming it with nothing to back it up. Oh, well, they do have a televised spot that shows the gun going 1600. Well, next week I will test one for you with PBA Raptors and guess what? You'll just have to wait and see.

I have worked in organizations where the ship was full of holes and taking water fast. It broke my heart to see a hopeful customer with cash in hand about to make the mistake of his life. Could I warn him? Of course not! But after the sale, I was often the guy who had to take his vehement (and deserved) tirade. It's sad to be in the wheelhouse and see that the ship is running aground, yet not to be able to do anything about it. It's sadder to steer a customer towards a product or service that you know is wrong for them, but it's all your organization provides.

That's what's wrong with retail sales today, though it doesn't affect every organization. Land's End and L.L. Bean are two companies that have set the retail world on its ear with service that astounds both the average shopkeeper and the huge chain store. It also takes their business, each time they decide to play games.

Anyway, that's the way I feel today.

Fitting Leapers compact scopes to air rifles

by B.B. Pelletier

This post was suggested by a reader named Gary, who also goes by the handle oldhootowl. He asked specifically whether the Leapers compact scopes were made for airguns and would they fit on his Gamo Shadow breakbarrel rifle.

To that I answer: yes to the first and no to the second. The yes is unqualified, because Leapers scopes have been made for airguns since they started making them in the 1990s. Two things determine whether a scope can be used on an air rifle. First, is it parallax-corrected close enough and second, can it take the two-way recoil of the spring gun. Leapers holds the current record in close parallax correction, at 9 FEET with both Bug Busters.

Some Leapers scopes have a fixed parallax correction. I have a 3 to 9 variable that's fixed at 35 yards. It works fine and I have no problems with it. But a sister scope is corrected to 100 yards, which might be a little long for an airgun. It will work, of course, but there might be more parallax than you want at close range.

I also own an older Leapers compact scope with adjustable AO (parallax correction) that only goes as close as 25 yards. I still use it because the power is set at six, so the closer targets are not too fuzzy. As you can see, I'm not a fussy guy. I just take the shot, instead of debating about the specifications.

So - what is the problem?
The problem with mounting all compact scopes is where they have to be positioned, because of their compact size. There is only a small space on either side of the adjustment knobs that will accept the scope rings. You have to put them there or nowhere. That's why I keep harping on using two-piece rings. Unless one-piece rings have been made to fit a compact scope, they will not line up with the only place on the scope that will accept the rings. I've taken a picture to show you what I mean.


You can see the extremely limited area for scope rings on this Bug Buster 2. I have used half-sized rings to get more space, but thin rings are not recommended for recoiling spring guns.

Now, combine the limited positioning of the compact scope with the location of the scope stop on the Shadow 1000 and you can see that the compact scope has to be mounted too far forward on the rifle. The rear scope ring has to butt against the front of the scope stop, which puts the eyepiece several inches too far forward. If you can see any sight picture at all, it will be just a fraction the size it is supposed to be, plus it will be loaded with parallax from you craning your head all over the place to see the picture. Not good! I may not be fussy, but this just doesn't work at all.


The Shadow 1000 scope stop blocks the rings from coming back far enough for the eye-relief to be right.

Where can compact scopes be used?
One type of airgun that is ideal for compact scopes is the precharged pneumatic. Several, like the Career Dragon Slayer, seem to be made for it. Another type of rifle that's good for compacts is the small CO2 gun, like the Crosman 1077 and the Walther Lever. Guns like these not only have no scope mounting issues, the smaller size of the compact scope compliments their smaller overall size and weight.


This compact Leapers scope fits a Dragon Slayer like it was made for it. The lack of sharp recoil means no scope stop is needed.

That's why you have to be careful selecting compact scopes for air rifles. To determine if they will fit, find out about the need for a scope stop, and if the gun needs one, where is it located?

Great expectations

by B.B. Pelletier

Before I begin, there's an announcement for all you .20 caliber fans. Pyramyd Air just uncovered a pile of .20 caliber Crosman Premier pellets! These are the genuine article and there aren't many of them, so act TODAY.

I've been getting a lot of questions lately asking about airgun capabilities that are in the stratosphere. They have finally gotten to me, so today I want to address reality, as it concerns airguns.

The one-inch group at 50 yards
This one is the most commonly asked question of all. It goes something like this, "I want to get a hunting rifle and I want one that will shoot at least one-inch groups at 50 yards. I'm trying to decide between a .177 Gamo Hunter Extreme, a Webley Patriot in .25 caliber and an RWS 350 Magnum in .22."

I don't doubt that you're having some difficulty! Please tell me that ANY of those rifles can EVER shoot a one-inch group at 50 yards under ANY conditions, so I can be certain you are out of your mind!

Gentlemen - do you know HOW HARD it is to shoot one-inch groups at 50 yards? It ain't easy. And now you want to compound the difficulty by attempting to do it with a breakbarrel spring-piston rifle? Why not tie on a blindfold, while you're at it?

There is a reason that I tend to shoot precharged pneumatic rifles farther than I do spring-piston rifles. It's because springers are FAR MORE DIFFICULT to shoot accurately! On July 16 I finished my report on the RWS Diana 34 Panther. I was so proud to show you a group that measured less than one-half inch. That group was shot at 35 yards. Had I moved it to 50 yards, the group would have opened to more than an inch, I am fairly sure.

But that goes against "common knowledge" doesn't it? I mean, if a rifle groups one inch at 50 yards it's going to group two inches at 100 yards - right? I mean that's just simple math, isn't it?

No. A pellet rifle that groups one inch at 50 yards will be hard-pressed to do better than four inches at 100 yards. Six to eight inches is more likely. How can that be?

Because pellets are not laser beams. They don't fly straight for infinite distances (Laser beams don't either, if there are gravity wells in the way.)

So, what's right?
Instead of thinking about one-inch groups, you ought to be thinking about powerplant types and their relative capabilities. Spring-piston guns are the hardest to shoot accurately, with breakbarrel springers being the worst of all. Rejoice when you can shoot a group smaller than two inches with one. Sidelever and underlever springers are easier to shoot accurately, and the BAM B40, and the entire line of underlevers from Air Arms are capable of one-inch groups at 50 yards. Sometimes you can do a little better than that, but don't count on it. The sidelevers are slightly less accurate - except for the RWS Diana 54, which seems to be right on par with a TX 200.

Gas guns and pneumatics are both easier to shoot accurately, but pneumatics are currently being made with the power and the barrels that make them the dominant long-range airguns. Given barrels of equal quality, good CO2 guns could keep pace on a warm day, but compressed air is just so much easier to deal with that no manufacturer is putting forth the effort to keep up with CO2. Sub one-inch 50-yard groups are very possible with good pneumatics on calm days. But only when shot by shooters who can shoot that well. It takes real skill to shoot that consistently, and Easychair Eddy who just reads the forums and does all his shooting in his mind may not be the best bloke behind a real trigger.

That said, allow me to define a GOOD pneumatic as one with a track record. The new Walther 1250 Dominator will have to prove to me that it can group that well, because the Hammerli 850 AirMagnum from which it is derived can not. Simply changing from one gas to another does not increase accuracy. The Logun Domin8tor is BARELY able to group one-inch at 50 yards. I had to work hard to get it to group like that - a lot harder than a PCP is supposed to be.

On the other hand, I can usually shoot groups less than one-inch with most Airforce rifles in either caliber. Sometimes I get one that's hard to group, but the norm seems to be much better. And I believe that if I were able to clean the barrels with JB Bore Paste, I could get all of them to group well.

Okay, you understand how hard it is to shoot tight groups at 50 yards. So how do I answer the guy who wants to shoot 4-inch groups at that distance with an airsoft sniper rifle? I told him the best groups he could expect might be in the 12-inch range, but not to expect them that good.

Which is better, a Dodge Viper or a dump truck?
The answer depends on what you want to do with them. But how should I answer the 13-year-old boy who wants to know which gun he should buy - a Daisy 953 or a Gamo Nitro 17. I dedicated today's post to him, in part, because he also asked me whether the 953 could shoot one-inch groups at 50 yards. Before I could write this blog, he was on to a Crosman 1077 and asking similar questions, i.e. one-inch groups. So here is my answer.

No, I don't think a 1077 can shoot a one-inch group at 50 yards, but is that important? It can hit a dime at 25 yards, which is 75 feet, and I'll bet you will do a lot more shooting at that distance than you will at 50 yards. I own three 1077s and I find them all just as fun as any of my more expensive precharged rifles. I just shoot them at different targets. And by the way - I don't think the Gamo Nitro 17 or the Daisy 953 can shoot one-inch 50-yard groups, either. If I had to choose from among those three, I'd get the 1077 first, the 953 next and the Nitro 17 last.

And, finally...
"I want the most powerful air rifle made that goes the fastest and I want it to be semiautomatic with at least 30 shots and I don't want to pay more than $100. What do you recommend?"

A Quackenbush .457 Bandit Long Action tricked by Big Bore Bob (power),
A .177 AirForce Condor shooting Gamo Raptors (velocity),
A Beretta CX-4 Storm (30-shot semiauto), and
An IZH 61 (under $100).

Introduction to Field Target - Part 4Squads

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1 - How it all began
Part 2 - Targets
Part 3 - Targets - Part 2

Before we begin I have an announcement. Pyramyd Air now has a podcast radio program about airguns. Tom Gaylord will do periodic podcasts about airguns and airsoft, and it's on the main blog page. Look in the right-hand column, under Links.

Today I will talk about the organization of the squad and how it serves a field target match.

What is a squad?
At a field target match, shooters are randomly placed in squads of at least two shooters, but three are ideal and sometimes even four are necessary at crowded matches. The squad moves from lane to lane as a group, though each shooter is competing by himself against all other shooters in the match. The purpose of the squad is to divide the labor of the match so things move faster and smoother. Labor? There is labor in a match?

Well, it isn't debilitating, but yes, there is labor. While the shooter is busy shooting, someone else is keeping score. The shooter is too busy adjusting his position, getting pellets and adjusting his scope to be bothered with binoculars, a clipboard and pencil, so another squad member handles that duty. Binoculars, you say? Why binoculars? Well, they aren't required by regulation, but I do recommend them. They make it easy to see if a target was hit properly or if the shooter has a possible alibi, or claim that the target should be scored, even though it didn't fall. It's easy to see out to 25 yards with the naked eye, but sometimes at 40 or 55 yards things happen to the targets that need to be witnessed. I always used binoculars for that. But even if the scorer doesn't have them, it's always best to have a second pair of eyes watch the target, in case of a malfunction.


Squad member scores so shooter can concentrate on one thing.


Dad acts as spotter for his son. Note the young man is shooting a PCP, while dad seems to have a TX200!

Shooters are trusted to keep score
So the shooters in a squad keep their own scores. Each shooter is scored by another squad member, of course, but we do trust the squads to be honest about the scoring. In four years of running matches, I never saw a single problem doing it that way. But when the match is elevated to the state level or higher, things have to be more formal, so other steps are taken that I will mention in a moment.

Another thing the squad members do is go downrange to fix the target if something happens. The shooter has taken no small amount of time to get settled in position, adjusting the bum bag (I will address this item of gear in a later post) and perhaps strapping into the harness (a later post). We don't want to disturb him, once he gets settled in. But the squad members who are not shooting are free to do things like fix the targets. At my club we didn't call the whole range cold when a target needed fixing - just the lanes adjacent that would ensure the safety of the personnel walking downrange. You have to use judgement when doing this, of course, but it's pretty easy to see what needs to be done when you see the layout of the course.


Once a shooter gets trussed up like this we don't want to waste his time with superfluous tasks. Let him shoot. Another TX200.

Safety
Every shooter is briefed about the course before the match, like how the day will go and various safety procedures. Then they are all deputized as safety officers - or at least that's my recommendation. Anyone could call a cease-fire at my matches, and we had occasion to several times. One time a visitor was walking down the path and stepped in front of a shooter who was positioned well back of the firing point. A sharp squad member called an immediate cease fire, which drew everyone's attention to the infraction (except the guy who committed it, of course). I then had a discussion with the walker and learned that the match was so quiet that he wasn't fully aware of any danger! He had come to our match to see what field target was all about, and although the match was in full swing, it was quieter than a golf tournament, so he assumed nothing was happening. But that quick cease-fire call may have saved him from a trip to the emergency ward to get a 10.5-grain Crosman Premier dug out of his thigh!

Personal time
Another thing squads do is give each of their members time for things like refilling their guns, making repairs, eating lunch, hauling gear from the car, going to the bathroom and other personal things. If you are not keeping score, you have 5-7 minutes of time to yourself. The squad is like a team of buddies in combat. Every man is in the war for himself, but you help your buddies, too.

How squads are formed
As a match director, I found the best way to form squads was by random selection, but it wasn't always that random. If the match was just a normal one with no special significance, I had no problem with people asking to be squadded together. People like to be with their friends, and part of the enjoyment of the sport is the friendship. Also, shooters will often band together so one can coach another during the match. There's nothing wrong with that.

At a state-level match or higher, however, random squad formation is more important. At that level we want no hint or possibility of collusion during the match. So the buddies have to be broken up by random selection. And in the very high matches, separate scorers often are assigned to the squads.

The negative side of squads
While I never had a problem with squads being honest, there was another very real problem. There will always be certain shooters that nobody wants to be squadded with. We had one who was a motormouth. The guy never shut up! Others shooters would come to me privately and "take the duty" by volunteering to be squadded with this guy, but as match director I had to take my share of turns with him, too. He was a wonderful shot - just couldn't zip his trap.

I bet those of you who haven't yet shot a field target match haven't given any thought to squads. Why would you? They aren't anything glamorous or worthy of study. But squads are the core of running a match smoothly. Later on in this series I'm going to tell you how to start a field target club of your own, and you will need hints and tips like managing squads if you do.

Beretta CX-4 Storm - Part 2

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

Okay, I'm back to the CX-4. I won't call it the Storm because that name seems to be used by everyone these days. Our last look was just a walk around the outside, with a peek at the novel magazine. Today we'll load the gun and start shooting.

The first thing I did was charge the gun with an AirSource cartridge. The buttplate comes off and the cartridge is hidden inside, out of sight. Put several drops of Crosman Pellgunoil on the tip of the cartridge that gets punctured and screw it into the gun until you hear the gas release. The owner's manual recommends RWS chamber oil, and it does recommend using it with each new cartridge, so what I've been telling you for years is now showing up in manuals.

Loading the magazine
Loading the mag reminds me of what the Confederate troops were supposed to have said about the Henry repeating rifle, "That damn Yankee rifle you load on Sunday and shoot all week." Of course the Beretta mag holds 30 shots to the Henry's 14, so all-week shooting is even more possible, though a itchy trigger finger will probably reduce that time to a minute or two.


The pellets push in from the back of the pellet carrier.

The pellet chambers are longer than those found in other repeating pellet magazines and they allow heavy pellets to be loaded without a problem. The manual recommended using RWS pellets, and I felt that RWS Hobbys were ideal for a gun in this power range, so that's what I loaded, but the design of the magazine allows for pellets of all shapes. You can even load different pellets in the same magazine. No BBs though.


Even 10.6-grain Kodiak pellets will fit in the chambers with ease.

Trigger-pull
After reading that the trigger-pull is 11.5 lbs. I had concern. That's way too heavy for a rifle trigger. But relax - it breaks at 8.5 lbs. and is remarkably crisp. And by "breaks" I mean that the sear releases at that point. It's a very common gun term. I had a reader ask why triggers broke so easily and I felt I had to explain it again. It's a two-stage trigger and not adjustable. The wide trigger blade spreads out the force and makes it feel much lighter.

Firing behavior
You feel the pulse of each shot, but nothing on the outside of the rifle moves. In this respect, I have to observe that it's a little harsher feeling than the Crosman NightStalker, whose cocking knob on the left side of the receiver does cycle with every shot, but so fast that it's difficult to see. The CX-4 can be uncocked, however, which is a big safety advantage.

Power
After the first few super-energetic shots that still had liquid CO2 behind them, the rifle settled down to velocities that ranged between 560 and 608 f.p.s., with the bulk being in the 585-595 range. A broad range like that tells me this rifle need to be broken in, and that it will probably increase a bit in velocity. The post I just finished on what happens to a gun during a break-in will refresh you on what's happening, though this is a CO2-powered synthetic-based rifle rather than a metal spring -piston gun. It still has rough spots that need to be smoothed out.

Incidentally, for those who wonder how to tell if a CO2 gun is shooting liquid, the clue is when you see white snow coming from the muzzle. That's liquid that has frozen into frost on its trip through the gun's action. You get the same effect when discharging a fresh CO2 fire extinguisher.

Power part 2
Something about the way the gun was breaking in so fast during the velocity testing bothered me, so I came back and did it a second time. Now the velocity of Hobbys was up to 600-619 f.p.s. Not even the first magazine has been fired, so I will come back and do this again, when the rifle has more miles on the powerplant. But it has already exceeded the specification, which is pretty good.

Next we'll try the rifle for accuracy.

What happens during a spring gun break-in? - Part 2The physical changes

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

Okay, yesterday's post did not explain the physical changes that take place during the break-in of a spring piston airgun, so today I will finish the report. I assumed that all readers had followed the 13-part spring gun tuning series I finished back in August of 2006 and would be able to match the results of the break-in period with the things we did in that series. Some of you did, no doubt, but I keep forgetting that we get new readers every week, and many of them haven't had the time to read all the blogs we have done since we began in March of 2005.

Today I will explain what happens to the physical parts of the gun. You more experienced readers can keep me straight by adding your comments.

Spring-piston technology
A spring-piston airgun is a purely mechanical machine - perhaps among the few remaining in production. It has no microprocessors and requires no electronic test system to keep it running. It works on purely mechanical energy (excluding the one Rutten rifle that's cocked by a motor), with mechanical parts working together to produce a propulsive force.

As a society, we have forgotten what mechanical devices are like. We forget that an automobile used to have to be broken in after purchase with a process of slow driving followed by short sprints. Only after thousands of miles were on the odometer was the car loosened up enough to drive normally. There are many other examples, like leather cowboy boots, but you get the idea.

A spring piston airgun comes to you from the manufacturer full of burrs and sharp edges. Each manufacturer has different levels of finishing before the gun leaves the plant, which was the point I tried to make about the differences between guns and their break-in periods. Weihrauch rifles, for example, tend to have more burrs and sharp edges than Air Arms rifles. On the other hand, the Weihrauch HW45 spring-piston pistol (Beeman P1) comes from the factory in a very polished and ready-to-go state.

Wear-in
As the powerplant parts slide through their cycle time after time, the burrs and sharp edges wear off. You can see this when you disassemble an airgun with a few thousand shots on it. There will be shiny spots where metal-to-metal friction has worn the parts smooth. As the burrs wear down, the parts slide with less friction, which is where the cocking effort reduction comes from. It's probably also where part of the velocity increase in the TX200 Mk III came from, but that begs a question. Why didn't the Beeman R1 increase in velocity after the break-in? That's because of one of those difference I talked about.

Seals can wear-in, too!
The R1 piston seal is a parachute design, the same as the TX200. But the thickness of the lip is different, as is the material from which the two seals are made. The Weihrauch seal does just about all it's ever going to do right out of the box. The TX200 seal likes to be worn-in. It isn't made of steel, but even a synthetic part can experience a wear-in.

The proof of the Weihrauch seal being maxed is that you can replace it with a different type of seal and get different performance from the gun using all the same parts. The old blue Beeman Laser seal, for example, had to be sized to fit the cylinder of the R1. Until is was, you couldn't get it in. Do a good job and you got an increase of 200 f.p.s. in .177 using a lighter-weight mainspring. So the rifle cocked easier and gave 200 f.p.s. more velocity. However, if you didn't size the laser seal correctly, the gain was marginal, if any at all. So that seal really had to fit the cylinder tight to work.


The Diana 48 seal on the left has been fired between 1,000 and 5,000 times. The pretty blue seal on the right is new. The dark seal is as close to new as you can get, except for the color from the lubricant is has absorbed. Larger seal on the bottom is a new unfitted R1 Laser seal.


This R1 Laser seal was in a rifle for over 2,000 shots. Except for discoloration from lube, it shows no wear.


This experimental R1 seal was damaged because it didn't generate a high-pressure air cushion to retard its forward movement. It slammed into the end of the transfer port repeatedly for hundreds of shots. At the chronograph, the velocites were slower than expected. Firing was harsh. I show this to point out that airgun parts are not produced by guessing or chance. If they aren't right, they don't wear in - they wear out!

So Weihrauch seals don't change when they wear in, but Air Arms seals do. And Diana seals also don't change much as they wear in.

Triggers
Yesterday I mentioned that BSF airguns were overbuilt, but I didn't explain what I meant. Let's look at their triggers. The lever portions of the BSF triggers were made of numerous plates that were riveted together to act as a single solid piece of steel. Those joints where the plates were cut were rough. A new BSF gun had a horrible long hard trigger pull. But after 4,000 shots, the pull smoothed out (from metal wear) to a beautiful clean letoff. Older Gamo rifles were the same way, though not for the same reason. All their parts were punched and formed from thin sheetmetal and they were loaded with sharp edges and burrs. Horrible triggers at first, but after 3-4000 shots, not too bad.

But did you happen to notice that the two R1s Gaylord tested had slightly different velocity numbers with the same pellet? That drives some owners wild. They think their guns should all have identical performance because they are all made from identical parts. The truth is, those parts ARE NOT identical in any way. The miniscule differences caused by finishing and interaction with other slightly different parts makes each airgun unique. I think it's wonder they are all as close as they are, given the influences of such small variations.

Now I need you readers to tell me if this was a satisfactory explanation, taking what I wrote yesterday into account. Remember, I am answering Scott298's question about what happens during the break-in of a spring piston airgun.

What happens during a spring gun break-in?

by B.B. Pelletier

Before I begin, here's a tip I just received. Pyramyd Air is now a direct importer of ALL Air Arms airguns! In the past they had to buy their guns through another importer who couldn't supply guns as fast as they needed them, so Pyramyd's owner, Josh Ungier, went straight to Bill Saunders, the head man at Air Arms, and got Pyramyd on as a primary importer.

What this means to buyers is the wait times will be greatly reduced. They will stock every American model Air Arms makes, but if you need something they don't have in stock at the time you place the order, Josh simply tells Bill to add it to his next shipment. They talk on the phone about every other day. They have already expedited several key shipments of parts and guns this way, and they look forward to a long relationship of supplying the finest British airguns to American shooters.

Today's question comes from Scott298, who wonders what happens during the break-in of a spring piston air rifle. I was going to answer him directly in the comments section, but when I ran the answer through my head, it turned out to be bigger than you might think, so I made it this whole posting.

When I got back into airguns in the mid 1970s, both Beeman and Air Rifle Headquarters were telling customers that the spring guns they sold needed a long break-in period before they would perform up to standard. Back in those days many airguns still had leather seals, plus some of the guns, such as those made by BSF, were being overbuilt. They had to be worked in just like a good baseball glove. I don't have room for all the history here, but it is fascinating - if not applicable to the guns you buy today.

The Beeman R1
In 1994, Tom Gaylord and his wife started writing The Airgun Letter, a monthly newsletter about airguns. Tom needed a project that would last a long time to fill the pages of his new endeavor, so he bought a brand new Beeman R1 and proceeded to break it in for his readers. He promised to shoot 1,000 shots and to report at intervals how things were going. That multi-part series was called the R1 Homebrew. Well, the response to what he did was very encouraging, so Tom turned it into a book, which he called the Beeman R1 Supermagnum Air Rifle, which was Beeman's name for the gun.


The R1 book by Gaylord has test results from two brand-new R1s. The book is out of print and only available used.

From that book comes the information I will now give you. His brand-new .22 caliber R1 cocked with 54 pounds of effort on the first shot. RWS Hobby pellets averaged 826.8 f.p.s. in the beginning. By shot number 200 the cocking force had dropped to 45 lbs. By shot 500 Hobbys were averaging 828.2 f.p.s. and the cocking effort was holding at 45 lbs. At shot 1,000, the rifle averaged 819 f.p.s with Hobbys and the cocking force measured 44 lbs.

Tom then removed the stock and discovered that a steel tab on the spring tube that accepts one of the forearm screws had broken at the weld. He knew that Beeman would re-weld it for him which wasn't normally a problem, except that he had planned several non-invasive tunes for the gun before actually disassembling it the first time. To weld the tab back in place, Beeman would first have to disassemble the gun and degrease the inside of the tube, which meant that the gun would then have to be re-lubricated before reassembling it. They told Tom they would have to use moly for this because they didn't have Weihrauch factory grease. That would have thrown all his test results out the window because it would have bypassed several things he wanted to do before getting to that point, so he requested a brand new rifle. To Beeman's great credit, and thanks to Don Walker, their repair manager at the time, they sent him a brand new rifle.

So Tom had to break in a second new .22 caliber R1! Cocking effort measured 55 lbs. on the first shot. RWS Hobbys averaged 862.8 f.p.s. At shot 500 the Hobbys averaged 827 f.p.s . and cocking was down to 49 lbs. At shot 1,000, Hobbys were going 837.8 f.p.s. and the cocking force measured 46 lbs. Tom went on to test the Hobbys after oiling the mainspring and they averaged 847.8 f.p.s. at shots 1036-1040.

Tom was oiling the piston seal with chamber lube during the break-in. He reported that his gun honked like a goose when cocked. Today I would not advise oiling as much as Tom did. Let the seal squeak; it will get quiet on its own. But in the mid-1990s, oiling that much was common because the Beeman instructions told you to do so.

NOW, SCOTT298 - here is the important thing. A TX200 Mk III will not perform the same as an R1. It will be much smoother on the first shot and the cocking effort will not change as much as it breaks in. But after perhaps 1,500 shots have been fired, it will speed up. My Mark III increased from 895 to 930 with 7.9-grain Crosman Premiers in that period of time. Today, with at least 6,000 shots on it, it still goes 829 f.p.s.

A older Gamo 440 or 890 will behave like an old BSF - needing a HUGE break-in period of 3,000 to 4,000 shots to get good. But I don't think the newer ones act the same. I haven't tested enough to say for sure, but they seem to be more like the TX200.

And my experience with Diana guns like yours is that if they are going to have problems they will have them during the first 1,000 shots. They used to break mainsprings, and maybe they still do, but the spring guide now seems to be more of a problem than it was 10 years ago.

Other airguns have different break-in quirks and results, and I don't know them all. They tend to be the same for similar guns from the same manufacturer, like Weihrauch or Diana. But the minute I try to generalize, a Gamo CF-X comes along and changes everything. I love this hobby, but a lot of the fun is that nobody knows it all.

Introduction to Field Target - Part 3The targets - Part 2

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1 - How it all began
Part 2 - Targets Part 1

We are talking about the airgun sport of field target and right now we are in the middle of a discussion of the targets, themselves.

Dick Otten targets
Dick Otten's After Hours Target Company has produced the widest range of target types over the years. I have known Dick since he started his business, and I've been privileged to watch him grow as a maker. When he first began his targets were similar to the homemade kind, made of wood with metal washers around the kill zone for durability. That sounds real good when the committee is discussing it, but in practice, those wood targets get shredded by indifferent shooters pretty fast.


An early Otten wooden target. The kill zone is protected by a thick steel washer that you can't see.

Dick moved on to steel targets and played with different paddle mechanisms for several years. He was always searching for greater reliability, which is very important in the field target game. And that's something that you must learn, if you are going to pursue this sport. There are many makers of field targets who haven't got a clue what their targets are being used for. They don't play the game themselves and so they've never had occasion to use their own products. While what they make may look artistic, it may not function very well. Or they may just blunder and do it right without knowing it.


This is the Rolls-Royce of field target mechanisms. It's butter-smooth, ultra-reliable and can be adjusted to fall with a cross look! Dick Otten makes it.


Here's the front of Otten's target. He's put the reset cable on an eyebolt, way out in front, so it can't get caught on anything. And he has put a fancy steel cable with a snap loop on the end. This is so easy to set up for a match! By the way, how easy is it to see that 3/8" kill zone? It has a red paddle. Imagine it at 60 feet under the shade of a bush!


Air Arms target has the reset string attachment way out to the side of the target. Do you think they put it way out there because there is a problem with snagging? You're right!

I have a bunny target (not the one shown above) that was made as a rimfire target, if you can imagine that! There is no rimfire version of field target, yet there used to be several targets made for it. They were made by target companies who often have little grasp of the market they serve. My target has a paddle that has absolutely no connection to the target! It is possible to knock the paddle down and leave the target standing. But if you pull the reset string hard when you reset this target, the paddle sticks in the kill zone in such a way that it drags the target back for a fall when it's hit. It takes at least 12 foot-pounds on the paddle to get this one moving, but with a powerful rifle, this target works very reliably. It cannot be used in a match because of the power requirement, which I would like to discuss now.

How much power to topple a target?
I haven't mentioned power before, but in field target the power is limited. Mainly the limitation is to preserve the targets. A Career 707 pumping lead out at 60 foot-pounds will often shake a target down without hitting the paddle. It will also leave dimples on the target, eventually ruining them. So most American FT clubs restrict the power of competing guns to 20 foot-pounds at the muzzle. My club would chrono each gun before a match and we also weighed the pellet before taking the shot. There was no room for argument with that arrangement, but we took the word of shooters using guns with adjustable power. If they promised to keep their power dialed back below the limit, they were good to go. I remember the one match when I shot my best ever score, only to realize after the match I had done it with my .22 Career set at 26 foot-pounds. There was no power check that day, but I always knew my high score was probably inflated a little by the extra power I used.

My club set its targets to fall with four foot-pounds on the paddle. That way, even 12-foot-pound airguns could be certain to work all the targets out to 55 yards. On match day, I tested every target with a .177 air pistol at point blank range. If they didn't fall - and in the beginning a great many did not - then we either adjusted them on the spot or swapped them out. That was actually a Darwinian practice that eventually removed all the weak sisters from our stable of targets. We wound up with a group of proven targets that we reserved for matches and a few troublemakers that we put on the sight-in range.

The fallen target must get up!
Knocking them down is only half the battle. The targets have to stand back up reliably every time or the match is over before it gets started. This is where bad field targets show their true colors. Pull cords can get easily fouled in superfluous hardware sticking out of the front of the target and nothing you do from the firing line will reset it. Then you have to call a cold range and walk down to untangle it. After the third or fourth time, that gets old. Good field targets reset without problems - and there used to be darned few of them that did. Today's targets seem to be more reliable as a whole, but they still are not perfect. And please don't ask me whether such-and-such a target works good or not. I have no way of knowing without trying them all, and target makers change their designs without telling me.

Painting targets
Field targets can be works of art, or they can be simple silhouettes of animals with a single color. The work of art is a thing to behold - but maybe not to shoot at. Give me a simple paint scheme every time. Experience has shown that a simple black target is the easiest to see in all light conditions. The paddle should be a contrasting color. My club used international orange, blaze green and red. The orange paddles were easiest for me to see because I am colorblind. The red paddles were barely discernible against the black targets. Remember - these targets can be under a bush 40 yards away, so light is very important.

After the paddle has taken 10-15 hits, the color will be gone. Then it is a shiny gray color. My club stopped in the middle of a match and repainted all targets. With two people working, it takes just 10 minutes to repaint 30 targets both black and orange. This break, which was usually 30-45 minutes long, gave everyone a chance to top off their reservoirs and have a quick lunch. Restroom breaks were also taken then, or during the match, and handled within the squad that I will discuss next.

I am finished with the targets, but I'll probably have to come back to them as we move forward. Isn't it amazing how much there is to these simple mechanical devices? A successful field target club probably spends more time on its targets than any other single aspect of the sport.

What is a shooting bench?

by B.B. Pelletier

This post is for JR, who asked what a shooting bench is. I suspect that a lot of newer shooters might also wonder what I am talking about, so today I'd like to show you.

Shooting benches date back to the 19th century, and they are exactly what the name implies - benches to shoot from. There is even a sport based on shooting from a bench called benchrest shooting. The purpose of a shooting bench is to stabilize the gun as much as possible so the best possible shooting can be done.

Anytime groups are given in a test report, unless the writer specifically mentions a different shooting position, the assumption is that the gun was shot from a bench. But what does a shooting bench look like? Well, there are many variations, but the basic bench looks the same - a large flat surface with cutouts on either side in the rear to allow either right- or left-handed shooters to get close to their rested rifle. While handguns are also shot from shooting benches, it is rifles that define the size and shape of the bench.


Looking down at the top of a shooting bench, this is the ideal shape.

Permanent shooting benches are constructed of heavy materials to be as stout as possible. Several rifle clubs I have belonged to have made the bases of their benches from either reinforced poured concrete or cinderblocks cemented together. They were cemented to the concrete slab of the firing range. Of course once these benches are built, they cannot be moved, so most ranges build their benches from heavy lumber. They may weigh 30-50 lbs., but at least they can be slid from position to position when necessary. In one club I remember, the bench legs were made from 6 by 6 posts and the table and tops were made from 2-inch dimensional lumber. You would think that construction, alone, would make the benches solid, but it didn't.

At that club we rested our benches on bare ground, and if the ground wasn't perfectly level, the benches would rock. It was always necessary to level the bench before shooting at that club. Naturally the best foundation is a concrete slab, which my current ranges have, but then the worry is that the bench legs are all the same length. By building a bench with only three legs, you can eliminate this problem.


This big bore airgunner is shooting at targets 200 yards away. Shooting like this is easiest from a good shooting bench.


Here's my 7.5mm Swiss M31 on the bench at my rifle range.

Portable benches
There has always been a desire for portable benches that shooters could transport from range to range. Over the years there have been a number of plans for portable benches, but the last ten years have seen a boom in commercial portable shooting benches. However, what's on the market today is not well-suited to spring-piston guns, because it assumes you will rest the forearm on a sandbag or other rest. There are no provisions for a hand-held rifle on the portable benches I have seen. There are a number of plans online for building your own portable shooting benches, and, because the dimensions of the table can be altered, most of these can be adapted to a spring gun.


This portable bench is sold by several outlets.


This is Cabelas' portable shooting bench. Reader Scott will tell us about his in the comments section.

The seat
Some of these benches have seats built in but I feel a seat is best kept separate from the bench. The height of the seat is important so the top of the bench is comfortable. Adjustable seats are the best for shooting benches that will be used by a lot of different shooters.

What goes on top?
Once the bench situation is resolved, the shooter has to come up with a means of supporting the rifle on the bench. You don't just sit down and start firing. I use a long shooting bag filled with crushed walnut shells. You see it in the photo of my Swiss 7.5 M31 Schmidt-Rubin rifle, above It weighs about half as much as a sandbag of similar size, yet it has the same resiliency. Many shooters use two bags - one in front and one in the rear. And the adjustable front support, a metal or plastic gizmo with a thin bag in the rest portion, is also very popular.

You don't have to have a fancy shooting bench for accurate work, but the design of the bench has evolved to the point that anything else will feel like a compromise.

RWS Diana 34 Panther - Part 4 Final report

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

JR asked about a shooting bench, and I promised to blog it today, but I forgot that this report was waiting. I'll get to the bench tomorrow.

The jury is back and the verdict is that the RWS Diana 34 Panther is a world-class air rifle and a super value. I'm so glad I had the chance to test this model, because the several Diana 34s I have shot in the past do not do the current rifle justice. It might as well be a completely new gun, and I want to tell you what I think the differences are.

T05 trigger
The more I use it, the more I like the Diana T05 trigger. Its straighter trigger blade gives me more positive control over the release, and the trigger feels as though Diana has refined the release dramatically. It has less creep in the second stage and a crisper break than ever before. Only triggers tuned by Ken Reeves on the older T01 triggers have felt as nice as this one feels right out of the box.

Synthetic stock
I love this new stock. Diana has employed a straight line, so there is no need for a cheekpiece or a Monte Carlo profile. It may look funny to new shooters who are used to the Monte Carlo look, but it harkens back to a time when Winchester put straight-line stocks on their rifles and they fit everybody. There is no difficulty aligning the eye with the scope, because the stock is so straight.

Also, this stock is dead. It does not resonate with each shot like a wood stock. I can't tell if the powerplant is smoother or I'm just feeling the deadness of the stock, but the RWS Diana 34 Panther is a very civil air rifle. It reminds me of the Gamo CF-X, which also has a synthetic stock, so there may be something to it.

Here's what happened
I told you in the last report that I wanted to test the 34 at a longer range, to verify that those tight 20-yard groups would continue. Last Friday, I went to a range where I could get 35 yards. That is only 15 yards farther, but it's the range at which groups start opening up dramatically.

What I didn't tell you before is that I am also testing a new mount that will solve the droop problem for Diana guns. The prototype I have isn't correct yet, and the rifle was shooting six inches low at 35 yards with the scope's elevation cranked all the way up. But I had an ace up my sleeve. The scope on the rifle is a Leapers 3-9x40 with red/green illuminated reticle and mil-dots. My scope is an older one than Pyramyd now carries and it doesn't have the TS platform or the side illumination switch, but it performs just the same. All I had to do was use the fifth dot below the crosshair intersection, and I was right on target...as you can see from the results. I have to take shortcuts like this because I may be testing several different things at the same time.

I settled right into the correct hold, which I'd determined was the rifle on the flat of my open palm just in front of the triggerguard. Yes that makes the gun muzzle-heavy, but I shoot off a bench with my hand resting on a sandbag, so there's no weight to support. If I were shooting from the prone, kneeling, or sitting position, I'd do the same. Offhand, I'd use my knuckles or fingertips a little forward of this point.

The day was getting ugly, with black thunderclouds rolling in fast. I'd been testing other guns earlier, so now time was running out. The wind was starting to kick up in gusts, so I had time for only one quick group at 35 yards, but the gun performed like it had at the shorter range: totally stable and dead-on. Shooting Crosman Premier 7.9-grain pellets, my one and only group measures 0.460." That's really good for a springer at that distance. Had I shot longer I feel confident this would have been representative of all the groups. I cannot remember a time when the first group in a series was also the smallest.


That's what a sub-half-inch group looks like. Shooting one from a breakbarrel at 35 yards is a big deal.

Bottom line
The RWS Diana 34 Panther goes up on the short list of spring guns that I consider best buys.

Introduction to Field Target - Part 2The targets - Part 1

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1 - How it all began


A modern spring-loaded squirrel field target.


This one falls completely flat.

The targets we shoot at have evolved considerably over the years. When I got started, there were some old British targets still in use. They were made of very heavy steel plate and had stout linkages that rusted if you didn't maintain them often. They also had to be exercised before a match because they were so stiff and difficult to operate. You could hit one with 12 foot-pounds of energy and only knock it halfway down. Of course if you took the time to adjust all the nuts and bolts and lube all the joints, they worked fine for that match, but they presented quite a problem. If they were put out on the course the night before (which is how most clubs set up their range) the morning dew would rust all the joints and they would quit working again.

Gravity targets
Ron Juneau made some wonderful targets that operated by gravity. They were simple and rugged, and when set the paddle had a sear that held the target upright. No amount of vibration would unseat the target, so even a hit on the head of the animal with a 20 foot-pound gun wouldn't vibrate the sear loose. However, these targets did have to be emplaced so they were very close to level or they wouldn't work.


Ron Juneau turkey target.


Back of Juneau target showing the gravity paddle. When hit it swings back and down, hitting the bent bar connected to the target and pulling it down, too.


Here you see the Juneau sear when it has not contacted the target.


Now the sear is in contact with the target. Hitting the paddle removes the sear, allowing the target to move.

My club made concrete target holders and we had the bases of the targets bolted to wooden slabs that fit into the holders perfectly. When they were in the holders, they were designed so pulling the reset string would not pull the base from the holder, yet the target just slipped into the holder when setting up the range. However, during a match, the holders would sometimes settle into a position that was not level - especially when the reset string required a strong pull. Then the target would start acting up during the match. The first shooters would knock it down easily but as the match progressed it became harder and harder to topple. That can be difficult to spot when some shooters are using FWB 124s with .177 7.9-grain Crosman Premiers and others are using a .22-caliber Career 707 shooting 14.3-grain Premiers. The larger caliber Career will slap down most target without a fuss, while the lightweight FWB has maybe half the power and just taps the paddle. After several years of using gravity targets, my club set almost all of them aside for spring-loaded targets. The one we kept was a life-sized turkey target whose long paddle has so much energy when falling that it performs reliably all the time.

Spring-loaded targets
In the late 1990s, field target makers were not prolific, so a club starting up had to wait for months while the targets were made. Rick Stoutenberg was one maker of spring-loaded targets that my club used heavily. I suspect we bought about 25 targets from him over the course of several years. A spring-loaded target stays upright because the paddle linkage has gone past center when the target was reset. A hit on the paddle pushes it back past center and then the spring pulls the target down rapidly. Compared to the gravity-type targets, the spring-loaded targets were faster-acting and more reliable. They could tolerate not being level and still operate because of that spring. You can always spot a Stoutenberg target because of the coiled spring in the back that pulls it down and the rubber bumper to keep it from clanging when it falls.

Ulysses Payne is another maker of spring-loaded targets. He puts the spring in front of the target instead of behind it. Because of the linkage he uses, not all of his targets fall completely flat, and I will discuss what that means in the next post. I have used Payne targets for just as long as Stoutenbergs and they are just as reliable.


This Ulysses Payne target is a spring-type, held up by a linkage that's over-center.


When this Payne target falls, the linkage prevents it from falling flat.

There is a lot more to show and talk about concerning the targets. While new FT shooters focus on the guns, scopes and pellets, the targets are what make the game run, so it pays to know them well.

The artillery hold

by B.B. Pelletier

I have to break in today for this subject because we have a reader who is getting very frustrated with his spring piston breakbarrel. I may have said these things many times before, but today I'm putting them all in one place so I will have a post to refer readers to in the future.

The artillery hold was first described by Tom Gaylord in his R1 book. The name comes from that fact that an artillery piece moves a lot during recoil, yet the gun is extremely accurate over a huge distance. In The Airgun Letter Gaylord said he got frustrated trying to shoot a Beeman C1 rifle accurately. The Beeman catalog said to hold the rifle firmly, yet he was spraying pellets all over the place when he did. So one day, he decided to hold the rifle as loosely as possible to see how much worse it would shoot. To his surprise, that rifle, which had been shooting half-inch groups at 10 meters, suddenly shot a group smaller than one-tenth of an inch. He tried it again and again and rediscovered a shooting technique that has been known for more than a hundred years. Only with a recoiling spring piston air rifle, the need for the loose hold is more important than ever!

How a spring-piston pellet rifle moves when fired
When a spring is fired, the first thing that happens is the piston starts moving. That imparts a recoil to the rear of the rifle, but since the piston is only a fraction of the rifle's weight, this recoil is small. But when the piston comes to a sudden stop at the end of the compression stroke, the jolt sends the rifle in the other direction (moving forward) and is much larger. The pellet has not started moving while this is happening. It sits in the breech as pressure behind it builds. When the piston comes to a stop against a thin cushion of highly compressed air, the pellet is finally overcome by the pressure and starts moving. That reduces the air pressure so the piston can settle to the end of the compression chamber.

The shock of forward recoil puts the rifle in motion as the pellet starts down the bore. Also, the mainspring is now vibrating wildly and sending additional vibrations into the rifle's mass. All of this is going on while the pellet is still in the barrel. It is physically impossible for a shooter to overcome these movements by holding the rifle tight, so Gaylord found that by holding it as loose as possible and allowing the rifle to move as much as it wanted to, the movements would tend to be the same every time. If you have ever seen a movie of a field artillery piece when it fires, you have seen the barrel of the gun move several FEET in recoil - yet the gun is accurate. That's because the gun moves the same way every time. So wherever the gun carriage is pointed determines where the round will go. When you shoot a spring piston gun this way, YOU become the gun carriage. And you have to act neutral, so the gun can move the same way every time.


When a field artillery piece fires, the carriage remains in place.

How its done
Lay the forearm of the rifle on the flat of your open palm. Do not grasp the stock with your fingers or you create new nodes that dampen the vibrations of the rifle. Unless you can put your fingers in the SAME PLACE every time, you can never be accurate this way. Your shooting hand grasps the pistol grip of the stock as lightly as possible. Your trigger finger must squeeze STRAIGHT BACK. Rest the butt lightly against your shoulder. Do not pull it in tight. That is the setup for the artillery hold.

Part two - shooting
There is more to it than just how the rifle is held. It's also important to "lay the gun," which means to align the rifle, correctly. When you aim at the target, do so as relaxed as possible. Do not use your muscles to pull the rifle into position. It must lay there on target with no outside input. The best way to test for this is to align the sights then close your eyes and relax. When you open your eyes again, the sights should still be on target. If they moved off, the pellet would have gone in the same direction, had you fired. Realign the sights and go through the same procedure until the rifle does not move. When you get to that point, squeeze the trigger and fire. Do that five times in a row and you will get the best group you have ever shot with that rifle. All that remains is to align the sights so the pellet strikes where you want it to.

Where to put your off hand?
I've discovered that the best place for the off hand (the one that doesn't contain the trigger finger) is just in front of the triggerguard. That gives the rifle a muzzle-heavy balance that seems to dampen any tendency to stray from the aim point. It may not always work, but most of the time it does - especially with breakbarrels.

Tom Gaylord didn't invent this hold. He just gave it a name and described how to do it. When everything else fails, give this a try and see if you're not amazed.