BRK Ghost Review
- Thread starter Franklink
- Start date
I'm pretty sure that it will push King Heavies at 900 with reg as low as 135 but MRDs need a little more. In any case, I would start at 140 and see what the max velocity it will do and go down if it is significantly above that. The AoA video shows them running it at 950 with the Heavies and still getting good accuracy but in my experience , going above 900 is counterproductive unless you have a specific need for the power.
The barrel muzzle threads on the RW, DW, AW, and Ghost HP's are all 1mm x 14 mm.
Bob
The barrel muzzle threads on the RW, DW, AW, and Ghost HP's are all 1mm x 14 mm.
Bob
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The threads on the end of your shroud are, yes 1/2x20.
The threads on the barrel are what Arzrover stated.
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Doing a little dope verification this morning..... beautiful sunrise @ 7200feet above sea level.
Also, it must not be very loud, cuz I just had a herd of 12-14 mule deer casually pass through out past my targets at probably 100ish yards. Nice little 4x4 in there with the group but this is a photo of a yearling. Not much concern at the report of the Ghost.
Also, it must not be very loud, cuz I just had a herd of 12-14 mule deer casually pass through out past my targets at probably 100ish yards. Nice little 4x4 in there with the group but this is a photo of a yearling. Not much concern at the report of the Ghost.
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I read all 5 pages last night. Waiting on slug testing. I am looking at several platforms for something that can shoot both slugs and pellets well. Supposedly the new Prophet II PRB barrel is capable of shooting both. Thanks for posting all the info so far. Good luck!
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I have a Prophet II for sale if that's the route you decide to go. Message me if you have questions about the platform.
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Scored a 47/48 with the Ghost at the ft match today.
Driving home now, will give a better report later after I'm home and unloaded, etc but for now will say that I'm VERY happy with how it performed.
Driving home now, will give a better report later after I'm home and unloaded, etc but for now will say that I'm VERY happy with how it performed.
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I apologize in advance that this post will include some non-Ghost stuff but it'll show a little of the fun that I had with my son and airgun friends this weekend. And there will be some Ghost sprinkled in as well.
SO great little camping/field target trip with my 9 year old son Colben.
We decided that a night in a tent was better than waking up really early and driving to make it to the match on time. We got to the match site a little after dark and got set up pretty quickly.
Campsite....
He was calling this the "s'more station."
Colben spotted a tarantula right at the beginning of the match.
Colben went on to shoot his personal best field target match, 41/48, using a gun he has claimed as "his." (no, it wasn't the Ghost but a short length of pull gun that he started shooting ft with last summer).
I shot the Ghost of course. I had decided before hand to shoot from my normal field target position, sitting on a bumbag and using a harness, or rather "Open" class position. But I had also decided to use a laser rangefinder. The scope I mounted on the Ghost was a spare 20x SWFA and I didn't have one of my rear-to-sidewheel focus contraptions on it.
In my opinion, there are a couple of integral parts of shooting a good score in field target. First, the gun has to be accurate and capable of maintaining its point of impact. Second, the shooter has to be familiar with the trajectory, ie, know where the pellets are going to impact at 10-55 yards. And finally, the distances have to be accurately measured. The yardage determination is as big a factor as the first two in getting a good score. Most guys range by focus, using the AO of the scope. And that creates a problem when one is assessing the first component (the guns potential for accuracy, reliability, maintaining point of impact) because if the distance isn't estimated correctly, not matter how good the gun is, you'll still miss. Since I really wanted to know how the Ghost would fair, I decided to eliminate the range estimation component and just use a laser rangefinder. And, as previously stated, I shot a 47/48. I went 40/40 on the shots from the bumbag, 4/4 on the offhand shots, and 3/4 on the kneelers. So, I missed one kneeler, and the frustrating thing was that I simply pulled that shot, and pulled it bad! It was a gimme, nice big kill zone, not too far away and I shanked it about an inch outside of the killzone. Just flat out mistimed my trigger pull with all the movement inherent in forced position shots.
And no, that score did not bring home the Founder's Cup Trophy, although I was tied for the high overall score of the match. One must shoot from an AAFTA recognized class to be eligible for the Cup. And that laser rangefinder put me in Unlimited class, which isn't AAFTA approved.
As for my thoughts on the Ghost's performance in the match? Superb. The gun put 47 shots right where they were supposed to go. And would have put 48 in the kill zone were it not for my pulled shot. This may have been the first field target match shot by a Ghost? and what a way for it to start. I had minimal practice time with the gun. I shot a grand total of 3 practice offhand shots prior to the match and a grand total of 0 kneeling practice shots. I was refining my dope sheet the morning of the match because I had such little time to do so all week. With the poor preparation, I really didn't have any business expecting it to do as well as it did. The hardest shots at the match (in my opinion) were a 1.25 inch kill zone at 53 yards. That sure seems like it would be right on the edge of legality. That lane happened to be my last lane. So I was 45/46 prior to shooting at that tough target and it put em both right in the kz. I was pretty nervous but quite thrilled. I did have a moment of panic about 75% of the way through the course. I pulled the trigger.....nothing....pulled a bit harder....nothing. My first thought was "oh no! with all that fiddling I did in the trigger I messed something up and now the gun won't fire!!!" But nope, took a look at the safety and I had just bumped that push button and put it on safe inadvertently. Took it off safety and dropped the target.
Also, I was up and practicing not too long after daylight. The weather said it got down to 37 degrees at the match site last night. I was pleased to see that the dope was lining up with what I had gathered at my house on Friday morning in 80 degree weather. So, temp swings don't seem to induce any shifts of impact points.
The "tune" of the Ghost for the match......regulator pressure was still at 105. Hammer stroke length at max. And hammer spring tension at about 40% That produces 900fps with the FX 10.34grain pellets and accuracy was everything it needs to be for field target. Accuracy starts to fall apart with this barrel and 10.34s above 920fps. 880-900 seems to be the sweet spot.
Realistic expectations......
First off, the design of the gun puts the scope above the barrel quite a bit. I used higher than necessary mounts because they were already on the spare scope, so the scope was EVEN higher than it would have been otherwise. Once a guy has set up a handful of field target guns, you get a feel for how trajectory plays out. Well, with that scope so far from the barrel, it threw me for a loop because the dope data was quite different than what I see with most guns. The whole thing meant that I had a nice straight neck for seeing through the scope, but the close shots needed much more elevation than I'm used to seeing on ft guns.
Second, don't expect to be able to buy a .177 Ghost Carbine, slap a scope on there, and start shooting perfect or near perfect scores in field target. It will very likely require some tuning and maybe even a polish of the bore and a decent trigger fiddling. I documented the tuning process that I went through to get the gun to a point capable of this level of accuracy.....expect to need to do the same and you won't be disappointed. On that vein though, the fact that the gun did that well in a match means that it is capable of doing that well in a match. There are lots of guns out there that no matter what is done to them, they will never shoot a 47/48 in a field target match. So, while it required some trigger work and some chrono work in conjunction with thoughtful adjustments of the regulator and hammer tension, this particular Ghost specimen proved to be capable of a pretty impressive field target showing.
Third, I lucked out and shot my first ft match with the Ghost in nearly no wind. I had zero chances to shoot it in the wind in my minimal practice sessions. It is usually important to get a feel for how a barrel behaves with some wind currents pushing projectiles around. Knowing how your barrel does in the wind is perhaps the 4th big component of good scores in field target that I failed to mention in the list provided a few paragraphs ago. Fortuitously, there just wasn't much wind today.
After the match me and Van and Bobbie and of course Colben hung out and just shot for fun. Van had a tannerite-like product and we had a .....blast, literally.
Here is some of the tannerite packed into a pellet tin and another packed into 4 or so bottle caps sandwiched together.
Colben was our trigger man for quite a few of the explosions. Here he is using a .25 Ghost.
And a video of one of the BOOMS. (forgive my absolutely horrible filming job).
Watching that chunk of firewood get busted up and bounced around produced a bunch of good laughs.
Finally.....
Some goodies for the Ghost found their way home with me after the match. A PRS bag rider, some adjustable splitter cones for the shroud (not available for purchase, somewhat of an experiment to satisfy Bobbie's curiosity), and the most exciting one.....a full length .22 slow twist polygonal barrel with a .22 probe. With that barrel came another not-purchasable item: an adapter to go from 14/1mm threads to 1/2x20unf, so it can be threaded on the barrel threads, and a moderator threaded to that, sans shroud. That barrel and probe mean that we can crank up the power and the distance to see what this dude can do in that HP realm.
I was already feeling overwhelmed with all the future testing and documentation (more extensive .177 pellet testing, as well as .177 slug testing since a couple folks have expressed interest in how it does there), but now that .22 barrel really opens up the possibilities. Depending on finding a high bc pellet and especially a pellet lot that agrees with that .22 barrel, I might be competing with this gun at long range Xtreme Field Target matches this winter down in PHX.
Phew, LOTS more to come on the performance reporting of the GHOST, and now not just in .177. Stay tuned.
SO great little camping/field target trip with my 9 year old son Colben.
We decided that a night in a tent was better than waking up really early and driving to make it to the match on time. We got to the match site a little after dark and got set up pretty quickly.
Campsite....
He was calling this the "s'more station."
Colben spotted a tarantula right at the beginning of the match.
Colben went on to shoot his personal best field target match, 41/48, using a gun he has claimed as "his." (no, it wasn't the Ghost but a short length of pull gun that he started shooting ft with last summer).
I shot the Ghost of course. I had decided before hand to shoot from my normal field target position, sitting on a bumbag and using a harness, or rather "Open" class position. But I had also decided to use a laser rangefinder. The scope I mounted on the Ghost was a spare 20x SWFA and I didn't have one of my rear-to-sidewheel focus contraptions on it.
In my opinion, there are a couple of integral parts of shooting a good score in field target. First, the gun has to be accurate and capable of maintaining its point of impact. Second, the shooter has to be familiar with the trajectory, ie, know where the pellets are going to impact at 10-55 yards. And finally, the distances have to be accurately measured. The yardage determination is as big a factor as the first two in getting a good score. Most guys range by focus, using the AO of the scope. And that creates a problem when one is assessing the first component (the guns potential for accuracy, reliability, maintaining point of impact) because if the distance isn't estimated correctly, not matter how good the gun is, you'll still miss. Since I really wanted to know how the Ghost would fair, I decided to eliminate the range estimation component and just use a laser rangefinder. And, as previously stated, I shot a 47/48. I went 40/40 on the shots from the bumbag, 4/4 on the offhand shots, and 3/4 on the kneelers. So, I missed one kneeler, and the frustrating thing was that I simply pulled that shot, and pulled it bad! It was a gimme, nice big kill zone, not too far away and I shanked it about an inch outside of the killzone. Just flat out mistimed my trigger pull with all the movement inherent in forced position shots.
And no, that score did not bring home the Founder's Cup Trophy, although I was tied for the high overall score of the match. One must shoot from an AAFTA recognized class to be eligible for the Cup. And that laser rangefinder put me in Unlimited class, which isn't AAFTA approved.
As for my thoughts on the Ghost's performance in the match? Superb. The gun put 47 shots right where they were supposed to go. And would have put 48 in the kill zone were it not for my pulled shot. This may have been the first field target match shot by a Ghost? and what a way for it to start. I had minimal practice time with the gun. I shot a grand total of 3 practice offhand shots prior to the match and a grand total of 0 kneeling practice shots. I was refining my dope sheet the morning of the match because I had such little time to do so all week. With the poor preparation, I really didn't have any business expecting it to do as well as it did. The hardest shots at the match (in my opinion) were a 1.25 inch kill zone at 53 yards. That sure seems like it would be right on the edge of legality. That lane happened to be my last lane. So I was 45/46 prior to shooting at that tough target and it put em both right in the kz. I was pretty nervous but quite thrilled. I did have a moment of panic about 75% of the way through the course. I pulled the trigger.....nothing....pulled a bit harder....nothing. My first thought was "oh no! with all that fiddling I did in the trigger I messed something up and now the gun won't fire!!!" But nope, took a look at the safety and I had just bumped that push button and put it on safe inadvertently. Took it off safety and dropped the target.
Also, I was up and practicing not too long after daylight. The weather said it got down to 37 degrees at the match site last night. I was pleased to see that the dope was lining up with what I had gathered at my house on Friday morning in 80 degree weather. So, temp swings don't seem to induce any shifts of impact points.
The "tune" of the Ghost for the match......regulator pressure was still at 105. Hammer stroke length at max. And hammer spring tension at about 40% That produces 900fps with the FX 10.34grain pellets and accuracy was everything it needs to be for field target. Accuracy starts to fall apart with this barrel and 10.34s above 920fps. 880-900 seems to be the sweet spot.
Realistic expectations......
First off, the design of the gun puts the scope above the barrel quite a bit. I used higher than necessary mounts because they were already on the spare scope, so the scope was EVEN higher than it would have been otherwise. Once a guy has set up a handful of field target guns, you get a feel for how trajectory plays out. Well, with that scope so far from the barrel, it threw me for a loop because the dope data was quite different than what I see with most guns. The whole thing meant that I had a nice straight neck for seeing through the scope, but the close shots needed much more elevation than I'm used to seeing on ft guns.
Second, don't expect to be able to buy a .177 Ghost Carbine, slap a scope on there, and start shooting perfect or near perfect scores in field target. It will very likely require some tuning and maybe even a polish of the bore and a decent trigger fiddling. I documented the tuning process that I went through to get the gun to a point capable of this level of accuracy.....expect to need to do the same and you won't be disappointed. On that vein though, the fact that the gun did that well in a match means that it is capable of doing that well in a match. There are lots of guns out there that no matter what is done to them, they will never shoot a 47/48 in a field target match. So, while it required some trigger work and some chrono work in conjunction with thoughtful adjustments of the regulator and hammer tension, this particular Ghost specimen proved to be capable of a pretty impressive field target showing.
Third, I lucked out and shot my first ft match with the Ghost in nearly no wind. I had zero chances to shoot it in the wind in my minimal practice sessions. It is usually important to get a feel for how a barrel behaves with some wind currents pushing projectiles around. Knowing how your barrel does in the wind is perhaps the 4th big component of good scores in field target that I failed to mention in the list provided a few paragraphs ago. Fortuitously, there just wasn't much wind today.
After the match me and Van and Bobbie and of course Colben hung out and just shot for fun. Van had a tannerite-like product and we had a .....blast, literally.
Here is some of the tannerite packed into a pellet tin and another packed into 4 or so bottle caps sandwiched together.
Colben was our trigger man for quite a few of the explosions. Here he is using a .25 Ghost.
And a video of one of the BOOMS. (forgive my absolutely horrible filming job).
Watching that chunk of firewood get busted up and bounced around produced a bunch of good laughs.
Finally.....
Some goodies for the Ghost found their way home with me after the match. A PRS bag rider, some adjustable splitter cones for the shroud (not available for purchase, somewhat of an experiment to satisfy Bobbie's curiosity), and the most exciting one.....a full length .22 slow twist polygonal barrel with a .22 probe. With that barrel came another not-purchasable item: an adapter to go from 14/1mm threads to 1/2x20unf, so it can be threaded on the barrel threads, and a moderator threaded to that, sans shroud. That barrel and probe mean that we can crank up the power and the distance to see what this dude can do in that HP realm.
I was already feeling overwhelmed with all the future testing and documentation (more extensive .177 pellet testing, as well as .177 slug testing since a couple folks have expressed interest in how it does there), but now that .22 barrel really opens up the possibilities. Depending on finding a high bc pellet and especially a pellet lot that agrees with that .22 barrel, I might be competing with this gun at long range Xtreme Field Target matches this winter down in PHX.
Phew, LOTS more to come on the performance reporting of the GHOST, and now not just in .177. Stay tuned.
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Frank,
First, nice shooting FT with your son! I tried to get my son into it, but it didn't take. I also really appreciate you looking at this rig form a FT perspective, since that is what i would be using it for. I'd potentially be using a .177cal for hunter FT and a .22cal for extreme FT. I'm looking forward to reading more of your journey with this gun.
So far, the only major negative is the AK grip. That was just a dumb decision... JMO. I really like my zero angle ERGO grip, and would probably need to try and modify it like another poster did.
First, nice shooting FT with your son! I tried to get my son into it, but it didn't take. I also really appreciate you looking at this rig form a FT perspective, since that is what i would be using it for. I'd potentially be using a .177cal for hunter FT and a .22cal for extreme FT. I'm looking forward to reading more of your journey with this gun.
So far, the only major negative is the AK grip. That was just a dumb decision... JMO. I really like my zero angle ERGO grip, and would probably need to try and modify it like another poster did.
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This is a great grip @Green_Yamo. At least for my paws 
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Shop by Weapons - AK 47 Accessories - FAB Defense
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Totally agree on the AK grip.
What am I supposed to do with all these? Besides the ones already mounted and I'm probably missing 2 or 3, I'm pretty sure one of these in my "collection" I've accidentally amassed would have fit if it was an AR pattern grip even if I was to cut the beaver tails off.
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Here we go!
7.87 up to 16.2grains.
Running a full mag over the Chrono with each, and then accuracy testing a 50 yards.
A guy could go really deep here, tuning for each projectile, but I think I'll keep it simple by testing all of them just with current reg pressure of 105bar, and only using the hammer tension on a sliding scale to pellet weight.
7.87 up to 16.2grains.
Running a full mag over the Chrono with each, and then accuracy testing a 50 yards.
A guy could go really deep here, tuning for each projectile, but I think I'll keep it simple by testing all of them just with current reg pressure of 105bar, and only using the hammer tension on a sliding scale to pellet weight.
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Ron, do you want to share with the public what you look like"I’m an AK guy myself"
Yes, you look Arkansan in that photo!
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Ron's Textreme matches must be a real hoot with you guys ribbing each other back and forth!Ron, do you want to share with the public what you look like
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