MAC1 USFT Analysis/Overview

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Franklink said:
I had a chance to revisit the .20 barrel a bit yesterday.

First groupings at 55 yards had me pretty, "meh." These are from stool/sticks (Hunter class style) and of course there was some wind switching back and forth, but it wasn't super windy. Top three are 10 shot groups from the .20 USFT, bottom three are 3 groups from the "control," the Vet .20. Alternating guns for each ten shot group. (as an aside, the first shot from each group with the Vet was hitting low, prob time for new orings in the reg...) Overall, the .20/13.73s were tracking into where I wanted them to go better from the Vet. Hence the "meh" for the USFT .20 project.

(the 9 ring on these is 1.25" if I remember correctly, and the 8 ring is 2," so somewhere between the 8 and 9 ring would be the 1.5" typical kill zone size we see at this 55 yard distance)

View attachment 521583

After the above groups I had mostly decided to go back to the slow twist .177 poly for my USFT. I was even considering converting it back to an Open class rig and swapping scopes around to make all that possible. Remembering a friend's recommendation from a few weeks ago to take a look at the crown, I decided I'd recrown and clean and use that as this barrels last chance before getting shelved. So, made my witness mark for barrel indexing, pulled it off the gun and recrowned the barrel. The existing crown didn't have any obvious defects, or at least not any visible to my poor eyesight. So, light recrown, and then a decent clean with Gunzilla and tight patches. Barrel was fairly dirty with that gray crud that dirty barrels get, but no lead flakes.

Reinstalled barrel and shot these 6x 10 shot groups, again at 55 yards and from stool and sticks. That first 10 shot group into 1/2" got me pretty excited.
View attachment 521581

So I repeated the same thing, 6 more 10 shot groups at 55 yards.
View attachment 521582

Got a low one or two in there from forgetting to refill, but overall MUCH improved. Not sure if it was the recrown or the cleaning, but something sure changed.

Finally, decided to run another comparison between the USFT .20 and the "control" Veteran .20. All the same setup as before but the last group from each gun was only 5 shot groups instead of 10 shot groups. Again, top is USFT .20 and bottom is Vet .20.
View attachment 521584


All said and done, looks to be capable of 55 yard, 1/2" 10 shot groups with high levels of focus and good wind reads, and 1-1.25" groups as the "norm," sans brain farts like forgetting to refill at the appropriate pressure, bad wind calls, and pulled shots. Next step is to experiment with some minor tweaking of the hammer spring tension and the transfer port restriction to see if there's any gains to be had there. As has been stated prior, the beauty of the USFT is the lack of adjustability, as there's just not much to mess with. So, minor fiddling, and then run a full string over the chrono with an intentional slight overfill and shooting down past 1250. That'll give me my new fill and refill pressure, if they've even moved at all. I expect them to still be in that roughly 1500-1250psi range though.

Gotta love an accurate airgun. Fun stuff.

(Oh, man I love the new shorter length! Crazy how losing a couple inches helps a gun feel more maneuverable, in this case it lost 7!!! since I had mostly run that big long moderator on it prior. )
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Very nice!
 
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Spent many enjoyable hours shooting the .20 USFT today.

The prevalent wind at my house is usually coming from directly behind my shooting position, going "out" in the same direction as projectile travel. BUT today I had a rare NNW wind that creates an almost perfect 90 degree angle to pellet path. And so I decided to hold a "match" comparing two .20s. The purpose was to see if one is more accurate than the other, specifically in the wind. And also to see if one gets pushed further in the same wind.

So, I shot 4, 15 shot groups from each gun. The top of all of these is the Veteran .20 and the bottom is the USFT .20. No hold offs for wind, just holding on the blue dot. Also not timing for between gusts. I WANTED to see how the guns shot without any attempts at reading the wind. The purpose behind that was to not muddy the waters about misreads and hold offs affecting group size and/or wind deflection . So, 3 shots with each gun, then switch. Five rotations of that for each 15 shot group, repeated a total of 4 times.

All shots were taken from stool and shooting sticks. Distance = 57 yards.

PXL_20241228_220350275.jpg


This series was taken from about 1 o clock to 230 ish. Off and on (lunch, kids, laundry, etc).
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Wind deflection is very similar between both barrels, enough so that neither is at a clear advantage in that regard.
The average group size of one was 1.6" and the other was 1.66." So again, no clear winner. And that is actually good news, because the Vet .20 is a proven performer. Not show so much in the shared groups, but the Vet .20 is a slightly more accurate barrel, but with an OAL of 26", its a harder gun to hold steady. The USFT is longer and that length seems to reduce the reticle wobble. So the more stable USFT platform makes up for the slightly more accurate barrel in the Vet.

--------------

Hours later, and not much before dark, the wind had calmed down considerably so I decided to compare two moderators: a Hugget Atom, and a Hogan Decimeter.

The Hogan has always seems to make the .177 poly barrel sing a bit sweeter, and I was curious how it would affect the .20.
55 yards this time...but still stool and sticks.
3, 10 shot groups with the Hogan and 3 ten shot groups with the Hugget, totaling 6x10 shot groups. I was surprised to see that they had mostly the same impact point, as usually a mod swap makes the pellet hit in a different spot.

PXL_20241229_000153283.jpg


As expected, ever so slight edge to the Hogan.

Also pretty happy with all 6 groups being under an inch.

Haven't doped out the gun yet, but the shooting today proved the accuracy is there to warrant doping it out and trying the new .20 barrel in a few matches.
 
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Franklink said:
Spent many enjoyable hours shooting the .20 USFT today.

The prevalent wind at my house is usually coming from directly behind my shooting position, going "out" in the same direction as projectile travel. BUT today I had a rare NNW wind that creates an almost perfect 90 degree angle to pellet path. And so I decided to hold a "match" comparing two .20s. The purpose was to see if one is more accurate than the other, specifically in the wind. And also to see if one gets pushed further in the same wind.

So, I shot 4, 15 shot groups from each gun. The top of all of these is the Veteran .20 and the bottom is the USFT .20. No hold offs for wind, just holding on the blue dot. Also not timing for between gusts. I WANTED to see how the guns shot without any attempts at reading the wind. The purpose behind that was to not muddy the waters about misreads and hold offs affecting group size and/or wind deflection . So, 3 shots with each gun, then switch. Five rotations of that for each 15 shot group, repeated a total of 4 times.

All shots were taken from stool and shooting sticks. Distance = 57 yards.

View attachment 524191

This series was taken from about 1 o clock to 230 ish. Off and on (lunch, kids, laundry, etc).
View attachment 524192

Wind deflection is very similar between both barrels, enough so that neither is at a clear advantage in that regard.
The average group size of one was 1.6" and the other was 1.66." So again, no clear winner. And that is actually good news, because the Vet .20 is a proven performer. Not show so much in the shared groups, but the Vet .20 is a slightly more accurate barrel, but with an OAL of 26", its a harder gun to hold steady. The USFT is longer and that length seems to reduce the reticle wobble. So the more stable USFT platform makes up for the slightly more accurate barrel in the Vet.

--------------

Hours later, and not much before dark, the wind had calmed down considerably so I decided to compare two moderators: a Hugget Atom, and a Hogan Decimeter.

The Hogan has always seems to make the .177 poly barrel sing a bit sweeter, and I was curious how it would affect the .20.
55 yards this time...but still stool and sticks.
3, 10 shot groups with the Hogan and 3 ten shot groups with the Hugget, totaling 6x10 shot groups. I was surprised to see that they had mostly the same impact point, as usually a mod swap makes the pellet hit in a different spot.

View attachment 524193

As expected, ever so slight edge to the Hogan.

Also pretty happy with all 6 groups being under an inch.

Haven't doped out the gun yet, but the shooting today proved the accuracy is there to warrant doping it out and trying the new .20 barrel in a few matches.
Click to expand...
Nice prepping work - the time spent will be very rewarding!
 
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Had a chance to run the USFT through a couple firsts at a match last weekend.

The scope swap a few months back allowed me to be Hunter class eligible. So this was the first match I've used it in Hunter. And I fitted a .20 barrel to it more recently. So the first time competing with it as a .20.

I'd say it went well. 40/40 on the stool/bipod shots, 4/4 on the kneelers, and 3/4 on the offhand shots combined for a 47/48. The only other 47/48 was Barbara P. She had missed one of her kneelers. So they had us do a shoot off to break the tie. The shoot off consisted of 2 shots at a target that was probably around 35 yards, I'd guess 3/4" but could have been an inch I suppose. And two shots at a target that couldn't have been closer than 52-53 yards. And the KZ wasn't very big, probably 1.5." She missed her second shot on the far target and I went 4/4 on that lane so I won the shoot-off, and the Founders Cup for 2025. Barbara P is a talented shooter and she's very tough to beat.

In regards to shooting off a bipod in Hunter, I REALLY like the longer wheelbase of the USFT over the short little carbines I've been shooting a lot of for field target the last couple years. All kinds of stability. I had a couple shots where I wasn't quite ready for the trigger break, and the targets fell just like they should. USFT has a 3-4oz trigger and is my lightest. I would have had 0s and not Xs on those unexpected trigger breaks with the harder-to-shoot short OAL guns.

I also really like how the gun ends at the airtube now. It was at least 4 inches longer with the full length .177 barrel, and sometimes 7 inches longer (when using a longer moderator). I feel like I'm at a goldilocks OAL with this 20.5" .20 barrel in the USFT now, of long enough to aid in stability, but not so long that I feel like I'm shooting a heavy broom. I might even chop the amazing full length slow twist .177 barrel to this same length if I decide to go back to .177.

As for my offhand miss, I think I'm going to start utilizing the USFT feature LD pointed out a while back in this discussion: the ability to break the trigger without a full dry fire. Some time doing that in offhand position and I think I can cut out that offhand miss in future matches (without burning through a bunch more pellets when practicing).

In conclusion, I had a blast shooting it and I'm thinking this .20 USFT is going to be my numero uno for Hunter class field target the way it used to be when there was an active Open class. Doesn't mean I'll stop shooting other guns at matches, but when I want to win, out will come the USFT. In other words, it still doesn't feel fair when I use the USFT.

Full version of the match report: https://www.airgunnation.com/thread...-report-from-phoenix-az.1326158/#post-1896689

Here it is in action on the kneeling lane...(photo credit to Mark K of Airgunners of Arizona FT club)

1737587806507.png
 
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honeysuckle said:
This is a very cool thread! I remember seeing this gun in early Internet time. I almost memorized the Mac1 site. I never had any money for anything but I dreamed big.
Thank you Tim and LD for keeping my imagination going so now at 60 I'm getting into airguns again.
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I was the same way. And having just got mine a few months ago..the rifle is sweet. If you can find one, grab it. They are sweet rifles. A bit qwerky but fun to shoot.
 
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