Wild River Air Rifle - USARB Report- December 11, 2013 - Indoor

M

MHOPKINS

Guest
Wild River Air Rifle - USARB Report
On this chilly, sub freezing day, only 4 points separated the top 4 scores today. Steve is liking his newly acquired P70FT! We welcomed Gary Palmer who put aside his FWB300 for the match and tried Mike Aber’s MPR400. Good shooting, guys. Now about this weather and temperature…

Shooter Ser. Class Equipment Tgt. 1 Tgt. 2 Tgt. 3 Total
Mike Hopkins W HV Feinwerkbau P70FT 249 8x 250 12x 250 14x 749 34x
Ron Silveira W HV Feinwerkbau P70FT 249 18x 250 18x 249 14x 748 50x
Tom Santos W HV Feinwerkbau P70FT 250 9x 247 12x 250 11x 747 32x
Steve Ware W HV Feinwerkbau P70FT 249 12x 249 11x 248 17x 746 40x
Linda Hopkins W HV Feinwerkbau P70FT 247 13x 248 12x 245 11x 740 36x
Gary Palmer W LV Air Arms MPR400 .177 248 11x 242 7x 240 4x 730 22x
Chris Lovitt W HV Benjamin Marauder .177 245 10x 242 10x 237 7x 724 27x
Mike Aber W LV Air Arms EV2 .177 241 5x 243 5x 238 3x 722 13x


Christmas week shoot is cancelled.
Next tournament will be Indoors January 8, beginning at 9:30 am.

Mike Hopkins, Match Director
 
Great shooting Guys and Gals!

Mike,
Great scores! Close scores Ron sure can hit the X's !
Gary beat Mike Aber with his own gun! My AA s-400 MPR FT out shoots my EV-2 and cost 1/2 the price of the EV-2 plus loads a lot easier!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Paul
 
Welcome

Welcome back Mike, I assume you are now running around Grants Pass, Oregon with a nice tan :cool:

Great shooting by the way

Brian
 
Great shooting! Ron, I sure wish that I could hit 2 out of ever 3 X's I aim for. That was fantastic.

Great shooting to all the rest, but I'm afraid you've got a tough act to follow between Mike and Ron… and Tom... and Steve…. and let's not forget Linda too.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all,

Dave Shattuck
 
Gracias

Brian_K said:
Welcome back Mike, I assume you are now running around Grants Pass, Oregon with a nice tan :cool:

Great shooting by the way

Brian
Click to expand...

It was 80 degrees in the morning in Mexico when we flew out. 17 degrees in Medford when we landed. Guess which passenger was wearing a T-shirt while his wife was wearing shorts?
 
whoops

ModelA said:
Mike,
Great scores! Close scores Ron sure can hit the X's !
Gary beat Mike Aber with his own gun! My AA s-400 MPR FT out shoots my EV-2 and cost 1/2 the price of the EV-2 plus loads a lot easier!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Paul
Click to expand...

It was just brought to my attention that Ron's TM1000 was mistakenly listed as an FWB.
I thought the EV2 almost OWNED the 25 yard indoor genre. What other beliefs are you going to destroy?
Have to see which gun Mike loans Gary for the NEXT match.....
 
There is more to this Indoor stuff than meets the eye - - -

I wouldn't draw many conclusions regarding how any rifle shoots indoors as there are other factors involved. What seems so simple is apparently a bit more complex.

Case in point: recently in a very big indoor shoot, the winner won the match by moving his tuner slightly. He says he routinely has to move his tuner slightly indoors. What we fight is air density issues, not "conditions" = rifle tune. There is no good reason a rifle and pellet combination that shoots well outside doesn't inside other than the resistance of the air we shoot the pellets through. This is the area to look for answers in, not barrels or pellets or phantom conditions, IMHO. Finding a tuner that can show us that moving it just a little can put us back in tune is where we need to go with this.

Pete
 
Pete,

A couple of years ago, Mr. Harrell donated some reduced weight tuners of his design. We sent them out to several shooters with only the request that they provide feedback on their results. With one exception, those shooters were unanimous with their opinion, tuners did NOT work on air rifle barrels. The exception never did get back with us on his results but that was expected. Now, this was very unscientific and maybe more testing is required. Air strippers/muzzle brakes have shown some positive results. Some believe that this is simply due to an even smaller "tuner" weight. Changing the harmonics of the barrel remains the goal.

There are parallels to the rimfire game but there are also some notable exceptions.
 
With what I have done so far

sgeorge said:
Pete,

A couple of years ago, Mr. Harrell donated some reduced weight tuners of his design. We sent them out to several shooters with only the request that they provide feedback on their results. With one exception, those shooters were unanimous with their opinion, tuners did NOT work on air rifle barrels. The exception never did get back with us on his results but that was expected. Now, this was very unscientific and maybe more testing is required. Air strippers/muzzle brakes have shown some positive results. Some believe that this is simply due to an even smaller "tuner" weight. Changing the harmonics of the barrel remains the goal.

There are parallels to the rimfire game but there are also some notable exceptions.

I saw a positive result in warmer weather when using a simple bloop tube set at the Purdy prescription BUT as soon as the air dried out, the tune went away. Mid barrel tuners work on the two air rifles I have but being able to adjust them so that one knows where they are at, exactly, is a missing element. It would be my opinion that a reduced weight Harrells would be grossly over weight for the little slinky barrels we mostly use.

There is no reason air rifles should act any different than any other rifle. Probably speed is an issue as well as the reduced explosion but there is no reason to believe that other than those two conditions, the rifles would differ. I believe tune weight or tube length is far smaller with Air Rifles. I tried an Air Stripper during my last outing and it made a Shotgun out of my rifle. I haven't seen any tune derived from the strippers I have tried.

Like I said, there is a lot more to be learned but it should be possible to be able to tune these suckers any place we shoot them. It's gonna take time and work and good notes to solve this. My hope is more people will get involved with trying outside the envelope things. Trying to improve on something that will never work isn't making progress. Throw away everything we are trying to make work and start again I say. To that end I bought a gauge that measures air density to see if I can find some correlation. I fear it may not be sensitive enough though.

Merry Christmas everyone and PLEASE, Share whatever we learn going forward. None of us are going to get rich at this. Let the conditions be the arbiter of who wins.

Pete
Click to expand...
 
Pete,
I was involved with that initial testing of the Harrell Airgun Tuners. As I had determined at the time, and had discussed in depth with both Steven and Lynnwood, because of the type of problems I was encountering I felt the tuner needed some sort of Stripping devise incorporated immediately after the muzzle in order for it to work. From what I was seeing, it seemed the turbulent air exiting the bore at the exact same time as the pellet, but yet not being able to escape from the restrictive tube of the tuner, created a situation of giving the pellet an extra kick in the pants in a hap-hazard sort of way causing the pellet to become much less stabile immediately upon achieving free-flight than when simply leaving the bore without the tuning devise in place.
My feeling was at the time, and still remains that if the Harrell Tuner incorporated an Air Stripper immediately after the muzzle, but before the main adjustment portion of the tuning devise, this would not only help to remove the majority of that turbulent air from around the pellet, but would also allow us to ability to still “tune” the barrel independently from the Stripper.
In 2010, after participating in the Harrell test, I read an article in Airgun World about an Englishman who was building Air Strippers for some of the top shooters in the U.K. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I was on the phone with him about building me three different types of Air Strippers: two for my Theoben MFR 20 fpe gun, one being of 100% Brass with a threaded adjustment piece, and one being of a combination of Brass and Aluminum with a sliding adjustment piece held in place by a grub screw, and then a third for my Air Arms MPR FT 12fpe gun made from 100% Aluminum with a sliding adjustment piece also held in place by a grub screw.
The reasoning behind not going with only having a “sliding” adjustment piece held by a grub screw for all three, similar to the way most Strippers are made today, goes back to my many years of working with the Harrell’s design on my rimfires. I figured that by using the threaded adjustment piece rather than the sliding would give me the ability to more easily fine-tune not only my Air Stripper, but to also be able to “fine-tune” my barrel by adding, subtract, and/or reposition, weight out beyond the muzzle by adding or taking away washers and/or nuts. As a side note: I have yet to find that either adding or subtracting weight beyond what is already on the Stripper to be of any benefit, but love being able to make small adjustments without the fear of having the adjustment piece move further than intended and loosing my original position without remeasuring everything.
If you want more options, Dan Brown seems to be having created a great devise and several of our shooters have had a great amount of success with his Air Strippers, plus he’s “local”, so you might want to get in touch with him.
As Steven had said, you will need to keep in mind that none of these determinations were in any way landed upon scientifically, but more from when using seat-of-the-pants methods combined with any logic that may have been accumulated over the years of working with tuners in rimfire while seeking out the utmost in accuracy. But, then again, you will need to ask: what do I know?
Dave
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wow!

I didn't realize so much "sperimentin" had been done and for so long. I am surprised, frankly, that more has not been learned. A dearly departed friend told me a couple of years ago that he believed if we ported our barrels with Air guns, we would see more benefit. Has anyone tried that, magna-porting Air Rifle barrels?

Why do you believe the turbulence behind pellets is more profound that the air behind Rimfire Bullets?

Merry Christmas,

Pete
 
Pete,

I feel that both the air behind and in front of the pellet has a profound affect on the pellets stability immediately upon leaving the confines of the bore into free-flight and needs to be stripped away as soon as possible. Which end has the most affect I'm not sure, but neither would be anything but negative.

It is my feeling that immediately upon leaving the bore into the open air, by having nothing attached to the muzzle at all would allow that turbulent air to disapate more freely, but when leaving the bore into the tightly restricted confines of a tuner, it can't help but have some sort of greater negativity on the stability of the pellet. On the other hand, if that turbulence air were to be stripped away as soon as possible after leaving the bore would allow the pellet to remain stabilized right from the beginning of its free-flight. Here again, I have nothing scientific to support this theory, but is based upon just personal opinion developed through my experiences.

As for your question about comparing our Pellets to Rimfire bullets: There are three main differences between pellets and bullets: weight, design and speed. Because of a bullet being 3 to 5 times heavier, of a more solid by not having a hollow skirt or contoured waste, plus, depending on Class and caliber, is traveling anywhere from 100 to 450+ f/s faster at ±1050 f/s would all by nature make a bullet more stable than a pellet. Add to that the argumenet about whether the Eley Flat Nose design, or the more traditional Round Nose works best to help dissipate that turbulence from in front of the rimfire bullet, and now your in a whole different argument about the exact same thing.

This discussion still has a long, long way to go, and I can't wait to read more about it. In fact, that is part of the reason why I subscribe to Airgun World Magazine because of the fact that they have a team of much smarter and more experienced writers than I could ever hope to be discussing their theories almost monthly within its pages, even if those discussions more often reflect a very general thought line directed toward much less demaining types of shooting, they are still along the exact same thought lines and are a great starting point.

Dave
 
Very Iteresting Dave,

Something I noticed that got me to thinking there is a yet to be discovered device or method to find "Tune" is the day the PRX worked for me, both rifles would shoot different pellets into the same pellet sized hole consistently. Even a pellet with a notably damaged skirt went into he same tiny hole. That state of tune only happened on that one day but the rifles both shot exceptionally well, both inside and out. All I had done was make simple tubes that clamped to the barrel.

Considering the one day I just wrote about, I tend to pretty much dis-regard any thought about turbulence having an effect that can't be corrected. I am not saying that turbulence is not a major factor but in my mind it begs a very big question. How was I able to lock in "Tune" to both rifles on one specific day, that would predictably place pellets where they should go and it totally go away, not yet to return, in the attempts I have made to make it so? Nothing changed with either rifle other than the atmosphere they performed in.

I will be the first to admit that I have very little experience with Air Rifles and know very little about how they work, etc. but once a pellet is chambered and the propellant released, lead thrown is lead thrown in my mind. Adjusting the circumstances to fit the lead thrown is what we are all after I would think. I like discussing these sort of things and would like to see more folks who are working with these items open up on here, the way you have. I appreciate your taking the time to write here. It fills me in and I'm sure it does the same for many others.

Thank You so much.

Pete
 
Pete Wass said:
I like discussing these sort of things and would like to see more folks who are working with these items open up on here, the way you have.
Click to expand...

Well, since seeing you asked Pete, I’ll throw my hat in the ring.

The Purdy PX and rimfire:

Finally prised my rifle out of the hands of UK Customs and of the two barrels it came with I went for the Rock Creek and set it up using Tony’s calculations shown here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53488303/Purdy%20Rx%20Calculator.xlsx

To get the shell of the Harrel tuner out past the inner bloop tube I fitted a 1oz weight and set the length to 26.754”. Here are the results (25m indoors) with no further changes (target 13 and 12 are 5 shot groups). Each target shot at dead centre, no hold off allowance.

TD2RCbarrel_zpsc50b66ae.jpg


Not perfect but very,very close, with ammo (RWS R50) selected for another rifle.

The Purdy PX and air rifle:

Doesn’t work, at least for me. I’ve tried a number of harmonics and various settings. Like you, on occasions I think I’m getting somewhere but it’s not repeatable. I think there are just too many variables with air rifles and Dave’s seat-of-the-pants (experience) tuning is as good as any at the moment. If you look around for the best air rifle shooters is the US and the World, they are pretty much dedicated to this particular branch of the sport (with the odd exception) and have been for some time. I feel it’s this experience, attention to detail and countless hours of testing which has helped some of them put together great rifles and produce great results.

In a nutshell barrel harmonics has a lesser effect on air rifles than it does with a rimfire, probably for the reasons Dave highlighted in post #12 (IMHO)

Brian
 
Gees Brian, Seeing what you had to show us, all I can say is: I'm sure glad there's an ocean between us. :D:D:D

Great shooting, and glad to hear that Customs finally decided to let you have your new toy.

Dave
 
Dave Shattuck said:
Gees Brian, Seeing what you had to show us, all I can say is: I'm sure glad there's an ocean between us. :D:D:D

Great shooting, and glad to hear that Customs finally decided to let you have your new toy.

Dave
Click to expand...

It’s been a nightmare Dave, but now it’s finally cleared.

You guys certainly make some good stuff over there, add a little German engineering (ammo) from testing in February and I hope to be good to go.

The point was, I wish air rifles were this simple to sort out, unfortunately there not, so you're going to have to give me a few more years with those ;)

Brian
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top