Kalibrgun Cricket II Accuracy

[mcoulter]

Related Posts: 

• My previous post about the Cricket II and my initial impressions of it is here. 
• Cricket II 70-yard accuracy testing.
• Lord help us, I did a video of my one-month impressions...
• Detailed hammer spring / velocity testing

I've had the .22 caliber Cricket II a little over two weeks now and today was really the first calm day that I have had so far. Winds were light at probably 5mph or less (coming from behind me). So today felt right to push out past 50 yards. I set up my bullet box at 70 yards and loaded the first of what would become the 7 magazines (98 shots) I ran through the gun today.

While I'm not going to go through each of these 7 targets, I will mention each target is one magazine worth of shots (14 pellets). And here they all are:

And this is how I shot them:

As we all know, shooting at longer distances tends to amplify things. And while I was really looking forward to testing the few H&N Baracuda Match 5.51mm pellets I had left at this longer distance, it became clear that darn it, I think it's time to clean the barrel. It just didn't feel like these 70 yard groups was representative of what the gun had been showing me at 50. 

(Note: I shot this target and all the rest of them in groups of 5, 5, and then 4 shots.) 

So before jumping to any conclusions, I wanted to shoot my "baseline pellets" which are JSB 18.1s. They were a bit better, but I still felt they should be grouping tighter than this at 70 yards:

I unscrewed the shroud and pulled 4 ballistol soaked patches through with a patchworm and then pulled one or two dry patches. No major flakes of lead came out but the barrel, but it was pretty dirty. I also noted some lead dust on the outside of the barrel. I'm pretty sure I have between 350 and 400 shots through the gun now at the point of this cleaning. 

Sooooo, how's this for an improvement? Not bad grouping for a 27-inch long bullpup at 70 yards!

I shot two more targets/magazines with the JSB 18s to see how it would settle in (they are included in the group photo at the top). But here's the last target shot with FX 18.1 grain pellets. I do have more of these FX pellets which I'm saving for another nice day

Now, one thing I'm still working through - and maybe this is just me not having shot at 70 yards in a while - but I found myself over adjusting my scope more than a few times when shooting these targets. I think the POI danced around more than it should have simply because of me being click happy more than anything else. Next time I need to make my scope adjustments in smaller increments.



Today's takeaways:

• Shoot the heck out of your guns but listen to that little voice that tells you that it's time to clean the barrel!
  
• I still have H&N Baracuda Match pellets in 5.53 and 5.53 mm sizes. But I hate that I ran out of the 5.51 mm so I'll be ordering more to run through the gun in the future. I still think these deserve to be tested at longer distances.
  
• I didn't use my chony at all today. Sometimes it's nice to just shoot! The gun is consistently giving 50 shots but I decided to top off after each 3 magazines (42 shots). Check out my chrony thread on the Cricket II here.
  
• Speaking of topping off the gun, Originally the 300 bar fill wasn't appealing - and I don't have any plans to use 300 bar as my normal fill pressure - but it is kind of cool to just let my gun fill from my tank and not worry about it... I have a Joe B Tigershark tank and and a Shoebox F10 compressor. I may get one or two 300 bar fills out of my tank, but after that they are all lower. So now I can just open up the valve on my tank and do something else for a minute or two. The tank and the gun just equalize.

No worries about over filling!


The gun shaping up to be a pretty good shooter. AND it is definitely a looker too!

 

[intenseaty22]

That’s fantastic! Excellent accuracy for sure. Most definitely a shooter! 

 

[mcoulter]

Hey thanks for that! Today I decided to play with the hammer spring. One turn counter clockwise didn't do much but a second turn brought the velocity just about where I wanted to have it.

The poor lighting today was giving my Prochrono fits, but I was able to find a spot in my yard with adequate light to record some individual shots (no full strings yet). As originally delivered, the Cricket II was shooting JSB 18.1s around 950 (36.3 fpe). With two counter clockwise turns on the hammer spring the gun was now shooting them at 890 fps. But after a mag or so of shots, they seemed to settle in at about 906 fps (33 fpe).

Below is today's 1st 50 yards target . The two really high shots here were from a 70 yard zero (post above). I brought the scope adjustment down and the groups were uninspiring. Winds were variable but relatively light. They were coming from the south (my right) and going between calm and 7mph. I took this as my sign that it's time to play with velocities! 

The top right group was the first after the two counter clockwise turns on the HS. BTW, that adjuster is really tight so I'm not too worried that it's going to walk around on its own! I wish my chrony was reading better because I would have liked to see exactly how many shots it might take for the velocity to stabilize after a two-turn adjustment, but between the shots on paper and what I chronied, my feeling is that one mag should be enough. That bottom middle group did make me smile! 

I switched to JSB 15.9s for the right group. Those JSBs shot a pretty consistently at 940 fps (31.2 fpe) across this and the next target.

This velocity is probably still kind of hot for these 15.9 grain JSBs, but they did reasonably well. Oh, it's worth noting (and you'll see written on the target below) that one of my groups with 15.9 JSBs was shot pellets split between two tins. I found that pellets from the tin I just opened (a smaller sized one) hit a bit higher and to the right than the pellets from the larger tin I was finishing up. Once I finished up that split mag (center top), I did two 7-shot groups (top right and bottom left) with the small tin 15.9s.

For the last two groups on this target (bottom row) I tried one more thing and switched back to the FX 18.1 grains pellets. These definitely have a different look than JSBs. They're shinier and almost have a machined feel to them.

Lessons learned today:

• I'm guessing that as the Cricket II was originally set up, it was pushing pellets at it's max velocity for the current reg set point. I saw little change in velocity at -1 hammer spring turn. 
  
• I'll plan on doing some full strings with both JSB 15.9 and JSB 18.1s at this setting. I'll also plan on doing a full hammer spring test and graphing out the velocity results to see where exactly the gun is in its range now. I'm guessing that my efficiency should be better...
  
• Now that we're getting into the low 30 fpe range, I'll start testing some of the lighter .22 cal pellets (Crosman, FTT, and JSB express). It wouldn't surprise me if some of these pellets also shoot well at faster than normal velocities!

And here's my backyard RSO hard at work keeping me safe!