I’ve been feeling bad after chickening out of buying the Panthera in 177 and getting the 22 instead. So, I convinced my brotherIL to get one! My initial concern was that it wouldn’t shoot the heavier slugs and I didn’t want to be stuck with something that is 5feet long and can only shoot 13 grainers. Anyway, my BIL is relatively new to PCPs and loves my 22. He wants to be able to shoot at my 110y home range but also use the Panthera for pesting in his own suburban yard, mandating lower power and projectiles contained by his fencing. So the goal for him is to shoot 13g Zans at home and 16g at my range, if possible.
The mystery here lies in the capability of the FX liner in the Panthera. In the US, all 177 FX liners are 1:18 twist and of the standard, rather than heavy/slug variety. Heavy liners can be purchased in Europe but they also seem to be 1:18. With those “heavy liners” some Danish shooters have had good success with 16g slugs but don’t seem to use anything larger. The Panthera is advertised as having heavy liners in all cals. Are these the 1:18 heavy liners or something different? My enquiries to FX have yielded nothing clear, so the only option was to “suck it and see”
The P177, as I’ll call it, was set initially with a 110bar tune shooting 13g pellets at 1000fps. Correspondingly, it shot 13g Zans at around 990.
After cleaning the barrel, the first change involved increasing the reg to 122bar and HST to 2.45 on the micro wheel, which allowed the Zan 16 grain to reach 985 on the knee. Reducing the macro wheel by four turns, the 13 grainers shot at the same speed. Both projectiles were stacking at 50y, which means that my BIL was set for his needs.
However, after leading in with 100 or so shots, we were keen to try the Zan 20 grainers! The resulting tune was 140bar and 2.9 on the HST for 990fps (44fpe). They were stacking again at 50y, so we shot a quick group of 5 out to 100y, before some wind came in ahead of a microburst. Suffice to say that this is looking good! I won’t be able to do anything more today but I’m keen to push this tune out to 150bar and try to get a subsonic 50fpe! I also have some 23g inbound and if anyone wants to send me anything else that’s larger than 20grain, I’d be happy to try em out!
Caveat is that we’re at 5000ft elevation, so a 1:18 will behave as a 1:15-16. YMMV. The 20 grain Zan expand to .30 size in our duct seal putty, so they would certainly be effective on even the larger pests!
The mystery here lies in the capability of the FX liner in the Panthera. In the US, all 177 FX liners are 1:18 twist and of the standard, rather than heavy/slug variety. Heavy liners can be purchased in Europe but they also seem to be 1:18. With those “heavy liners” some Danish shooters have had good success with 16g slugs but don’t seem to use anything larger. The Panthera is advertised as having heavy liners in all cals. Are these the 1:18 heavy liners or something different? My enquiries to FX have yielded nothing clear, so the only option was to “suck it and see”
The P177, as I’ll call it, was set initially with a 110bar tune shooting 13g pellets at 1000fps. Correspondingly, it shot 13g Zans at around 990.
After cleaning the barrel, the first change involved increasing the reg to 122bar and HST to 2.45 on the micro wheel, which allowed the Zan 16 grain to reach 985 on the knee. Reducing the macro wheel by four turns, the 13 grainers shot at the same speed. Both projectiles were stacking at 50y, which means that my BIL was set for his needs.
However, after leading in with 100 or so shots, we were keen to try the Zan 20 grainers! The resulting tune was 140bar and 2.9 on the HST for 990fps (44fpe). They were stacking again at 50y, so we shot a quick group of 5 out to 100y, before some wind came in ahead of a microburst. Suffice to say that this is looking good! I won’t be able to do anything more today but I’m keen to push this tune out to 150bar and try to get a subsonic 50fpe! I also have some 23g inbound and if anyone wants to send me anything else that’s larger than 20grain, I’d be happy to try em out!
Caveat is that we’re at 5000ft elevation, so a 1:18 will behave as a 1:15-16. YMMV. The 20 grain Zan expand to .30 size in our duct seal putty, so they would certainly be effective on even the larger pests!
somehow my NSA 12.5gr slugs will go through my pizza pan at 100 yards. None of the others(even a 13gr Wildman) just put huge dents in it.
that would seem to be the right terminology then! I've been TRYING to catch some so that I can study the results. My next slug session should yield a good result. *been working on a 100yard portable/easy setup/cheap trap
