BRK Ghost Review

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Did a little checking on your notes and found this
I used the 12.5grain NSAs for the max fpe output vs regulator pressure test projectile, as I assumed it would be the most likely slug to produce decent accuracy. This all with the hammer stroke set for maximum travel.
  • 125bar
    • MIN on hammer tension-630fps (not what we're looking for)
    • MAX on hammer tension-837.3, 837, 831, 834.8, 830.
12.5 gr nsa @630fps is 11 fpe so it might be possible to get pellets to 12 fpe without making anything special.
 
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Solo1 said:
Did a little checking on your notes and found this
I used the 12.5grain NSAs for the max fpe output vs regulator pressure test projectile, as I assumed it would be the most likely slug to produce decent accuracy. This all with the hammer stroke set for maximum travel.
  • 125bar
    • MIN on hammer tension-630fps (not what we're looking for)
    • MAX on hammer tension-837.3, 837, 831, 834.8, 830.
12.5 gr nsa @630fps is 11 fpe so it might be possible to get pellets to 12 fpe without making anything special.
Click to expand...
Man that was a long time ago!
Slugs have so much bearing surface that they'll usually be a couple less fpe than a similar weight pellet. And this is with the lighter skeletonized hammer that very few Ghosts have.

You got me curious now, I still have the .177 Carbine barrel. After the Founders Cup match on the third weekend of October, and if nobody else with a .177 Carbine reports the low end of the power output before then, I'll convert over to .177 and see just how low we can go (with typical weight .177 pellets). I have a standard weight hammer too, so we could make it a true apples to apples comparison. I'll report the findings in a month or so. I'll be surprised if it'll go less than 14-16fpe with just hammer spring adjustments and "normal" reg pressures for a non-powerhouse .177. However, a higher-than-customary (for desired power output) reg pressure is a way to strangle power with light projectiles-that's exactly what I'm doing with the .20/13.73 field target tune-although typically at the cost of greater extreme spreads....hhmmmmm, hmmmmm, hmmmm. Should be interesting.
 
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Hoping to use the slugs for one of the long range field target night matches next week so I've been getting actual dope data on them. Everything prior with the slugs has been from Strelok, and was pretty close to actual, but as usual, not exact.
So that true dope data just became a new column on my bottle sticker.

It's smaller than it looks (size 6.5font).
Left column is distance, the rest are click values. Since I'm using a 1/10mil per click scope, the printed data is easily converted to holdovers. Furthermore, the scope allows a guy to zoom out and use a combo of holdovers and clicks to REALLY stretch it out.

PXL_20230929_032536150.jpg


The sub 20 column has been verified to 100 yards on paper. And the 15.89 and 18.9 columns have been verified on paper to 135 yards, and much further on pests.

The three columns are an amalgamation of shots taken on paper, at pests, and data from Strelok. While the wind is always the wildcard, I'm pretty confident in the vertical with most of this information. The main gray area is the 100-250 yards with the 13.73s, and that's also the combination that I may never even use, as 20fpe even out to 100yards is a stretch.

I don't love having two zeros for the 15.89 and 18.9 "tunes" but I DO love not needing to rezero the scope when I switch projectiles.

Kinda interesting to compare the three and how it shakes out as distance increases. BC of 0.044 with the 13.73, 0.048 with the 15.89, and 0.09 with the 18.9.

Having a physical dope sheet is much quicker than needing to open my phone to access Strelok. AND my dope sheet is more accurate than what Strelok gives me, since much of it has been verified and/or is based on real-world shooting.

Range em, smile and dial, then smile some more. 😁
 
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Shot these 4, 10 shot groups at just shy of 20fpe, 55 yards. Stool and sticks, Hunter style. Bottom right I dialed the turrets for but the other three were holdover. I was curious to see if dialing would be a better group than holdover, but they're about the same. Had some left to right quartering in wind during these shots. I yanked one out to the middle of nowhere in the upper left group everything else was good shots, or wind effects.

From a benchrest the .20/13.73s will shoot better than this from the Ghost, but I'm satisfied with this from Hunter position.

Circles are 1 and 3/8" across, penny in the photo for perspective.

PXL_20230929_014204198.jpg
 
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Cole

I was able to get Barb’s ghost with the 177 carbine barrel down to 12 foot pounds when she and Lauren were practicing for worlds in August. I dumped the reg as low as it would go and had to cut 3 coils off of a medium spring to get it there…..At 50 yards it shot pretty good, not great though. They ended up taking a 12 foot pound huntsman instead….I also tried some springs from Ace hardware you had told me about, but the cut medium spring was more consistent…..

Tony P
 
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pesty3782 said:
Cole

I was able to get Barb’s ghost with the 177 carbine barrel down to 12 foot pounds when she and Lauren were practicing for worlds in August. I dumped the reg as low as it would go and had to cut 3 coils off of a medium spring to get it there…..At 50 yards it shot pretty good, not great though. They ended up taking a 12 foot pound huntsman instead….I also tried some springs from Ace hardware you had told me about, but the cut medium spring was more consistent…..

Tony P
Click to expand...

Thanks Tony, that agrees with what I was thinking you'd said....can't get to 12fpe in Carbine .177 with just reg and hammer tension adjustments. Again, foggy memory but seems like 3 coils would be roughly 20-25% of the whole spring.

Not .177, but I know my .20 and the "medium" 0.047" wire spring has to be strangled with high reg pressure to get to even 20fpe, reg pressure won't even go low enough to get to 20fpe. Same with Bobby's .20 Ghost, he had to use a lighter hammer spring (Ace) to get it down to even 20fpe. Some of that is the bigger cross section of the .20 versus .177, and some is the more optimized transfer port Bobby did on these .20 barrels.
 
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If I’m able to bring down the power of my .22 Ghost Carbine, I think it should be easier on a .177. In my case, to bring power down to 10 FPE, I had to use one of the thinner-wired springs in my tacklebox, cut it, and lower the plenum pressure to 50 BAR. Going below this point wouldn’t yield any fruit, if you will, at least with mine, because it becomes difficult for air to be metered and I would venture to say that it would be going beyond the regulator’s working parameters and consistency would be thrown out the window, so to speak. Anyway, from there, to lower velocity a bit and attain consistency, I had to restrict the transfer port hole on the barrel by turning it; this is essentially a crude way of decreasing the size of the hole as opposed to how a dedicated transfer port knob like that in an Air Arms S510 does it.

At present, to increase shot count even more, I’ve increased the plenum pressure on my gun to 60 BAR, the purpose of doing so was to induce just a tiny bit of valve lock, then tune for shot-to-shot consistency as well as efficiency. So, right now my Ghost is shooting at sub-15 FPE, and I can still get over 200 shots—from a Carbine bottle.
 
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spinj said:
If I’m able to bring down the power of my .22 Ghost Carbine, I think it should be easier on a .177. In my case, to bring power down to 10 FPE, I had to use one of the thinner-wired springs in my tacklebox, cut it, and lower the plenum pressure to 50 BAR. Going below this point wouldn’t yield any fruit, if you will, at least with mine, because it becomes difficult for air to be metered and I would venture to say that it would be going beyond the regulator’s working parameters and consistency would be thrown out the window, so to speak. Anyway, from there, to lower velocity a bit and attain consistency, I had to restrict the transfer port hole on the barrel by turning it; this is essentially a crude way of decreasing the size of the hole as opposed to how a dedicated transfer port knob like that in an Air Arms S510 does it.

At present, to increase shot count even more, I’ve increased the plenum pressure on my gun to 60 BAR, the purpose of doing so was to induce just a tiny bit of valve lock, then tune for shot-to-shot consistency as well as efficiency. So, right now my Ghost is shooting at sub-15 FPE, and I can still get over 200 shots—from a Carbine bottle.
Click to expand...

I agree, with the tiny port in the .177 barrel it should be easier to restrict power output.

Are you the Ghost owner who also reconfigured the washer stack in the regulator to get this low?

It's interesting to watch human nature at work. Some of us are willing to make whatever changes are necessary to achieve the goal power output, others are only willing to fiddle with factory adjustments. I'd guess it's largely because of their laws, but lots of owners in the UK seem hesitant to adjust ANYTHING, at least per their comments on the Facebook Ghost owner page.
 
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Franklink said:
I agree, with the tiny port in the .177 barrel it should be easier to restrict power output.

Are you the Ghost owner who also reconfigured the washer stack in the regulator to get this low?

It's interesting to watch human nature at work. Some of us are willing to make whatever changes are necessary to achieve the goal power output, others are only willing to fiddle with factory adjustments. I'd guess it's largely because of their laws, but lots of owners in the UK seem hesitant to adjust ANYTHING, at least per their comments on the Facebook Ghost owner page.
Click to expand...
Yes, I am the person who removed one Belleville washer in the regulator and replaced it with a flat one. The idea behind that was to retain the distance of the springs’ compression without increasing pressure further (which would negate the removal of the single washer in the first place) and quicken the plenum’s rate of recharge. I also think the washers perform better when they’re compressed midway to maximum.
 
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pesty3782 said:
Cole

I was able to get Barb’s ghost with the 177 carbine barrel down to 12 foot pounds when she and Lauren were practicing for worlds in August. I dumped the reg as low as it would go and had to cut 3 coils off of a medium spring to get it there…..At 50 yards it shot pretty good, not great though. They ended up taking a 12 foot pound huntsman instead….I also tried some springs from Ace hardware you had told me about, but the cut medium spring was more consistent…..

Tony P
Click to expand...
The easiest way to achieve 12 FPE from the lowest power you can get to with good consistency, say for example 15 FPE, is to turn the barrel to decrease the size of the port hole on the barrel, thereby restricting flow and power, which is what I did on mine and on my Cricket. The UK barrels basically have smaller port holes than those on FAC barrels. I think this is a good move on BRK’s part because it allows both the UK and FAC Ghosts to have the same hammer and spring. Mr. Belas himself even says so here (beginning at 12:40):

You won’t be able to squarely set the grub screw on the recessed dwelling, but believe me you don’t need to fully have it dig into that recessed groove to lock the barrel in position. You only need to finger tighten the screw and it won’t be going anywhere—I’ve tried to move it by hitting, pulling, and twisting it to test for any movement to no success.
 
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Franklink said:
Anybody that's got a .177 Carbine and you've explored the bottom end of fpe output and willing to share that with us?
Click to expand...
I will crank my reg all the way down tomorrow and see where I’m at with the .177 carbine.

Flipping the pellet probe upside down sure slows things down! Like mid 700s at 140 on the reg.
 
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GhostRider1685 said:
I will crank my reg all the way down tomorrow and see where I’m at with the .177 carbine.

Flipping the pellet probe upside down sure slows things down! Like mid 700s at 140 on the reg.
Click to expand...
Ahh I like your thinking. I hadn't thought of flipping the probe, but being a flow-through type, that would certainly do it.
 
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