Veteran Short .20


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Sweet little gun and I'm just as excited to own it now as I was the day I first received it a couple years ago. I knew in the very first shooting session that Vet's are just special, and that impression is strengthened every time I get the privilege to shoot them. This little .20 Vet is my favorite general use airgun, it can do it all, and well at that. 





I know that feeling :)



Nice job with the rail. I think I'm gonna use your tip and blacken mine.

Never knew about that product.

Great write up and pics.

Thanks!


 
I had a good time with this gun this past weekend at a monthly ft match. 

It'd been at that 910fps with the 15.89gr power level and had previously figured out 1.5turns of the hammer tension were needed to get back to 800fps with the 13.73s to be FT legal. Got to the match site and got camp set up and then adjusted the power level, crossing my fingers that fps would repeat and all my dope data from the previous monthly match would cross over. It was perfect. Didn't have to do a thing with the turrets and it was just stacking them during plinking and sight in, from 10-55 yards.

At the first match I shot it in (in current configuration with hamster and Midas Tac scope) I shot a 50/60, and dealt with a weird situation where I thought my shots were hitting to the right on far shots, and then adjusted the turrets (Open class so allowed) and then had shots hitting to the left on close shots. I didn't know if I had the scope canted in the mounts or had wind or what so I woke up early enough on Sat morning at the match site to do some windage verification in the still morning air. I was able to figure out that the problem was two-fold, gun cant, and not being careful to get my cheek weld/eye relief just right. When making a conscious effort to have gun level and eye concentrically placed in the eye box, the windage issues I thought I was having disappeared. 

Went on to shoot a 45/48. 3 misses were: pulled a shot on my first lane, went 3/4 on the offhand lane, and I think the wind got me on the 1 inch @ 45 yards shot as it was a split at about 2 oclock (got it the second time though:). All three misses were operator error.

I'm very pleased with the gun and the accuracy it provides. Quite enjoyable to shoot, very dead, pull trigger, watch pellet hit where crosshairs were at time of sear breaking. Squad mate commented that it was dang quiet, and that it is (OEM shroud only). 

Field target accuracy on par with my .177 USFT (which is clean course/perfect score capable and simply exceptional), just needs a bit more hold-off for the wind than the USFT. Also a little more challenging to shoot on the bum bag just cuz it's so short. BUT I think it was a bit easier on those offhand shots, there's just not a bunch of weight hanging WAY out there in front like there is with my USFT. My only offhand practice in many, many months was 15 or 20 shots taken the evening before the match, so was pleased to drop 3 of 4 4 of them during the match. 

Very sweet gun. Excellent repeatability in fps, scope zero, accuracy, precision, etc. One of my favorites, easily. 

Also, as this is pretty much my general use gun, I've been grabbing it for when a inattentive starling or euro dove presents itself in my back pasture, I wanted to be able to shoot it from a bipod so I picked up one of the Airmaks UIT rail to picatinny adapters. This is for when I have it in the 29fpe configuration with the Heavy .20s. Had to modify the adapter a bit to work but seems like it'll perform its function now. The tabs that slide inside the UIT rail were just a bit too wide to fit the rail so I needed to file them down a bit. Also, couldn't tighten it down enough as it came from UA to get it to stay put so put some tiny orings on the little bolts holding it all together. They gave enough depth and "squish" for the allen bolts to tighten down and keep the rail fixed in place.

Cheapest place I could find such an adapter, as Amazon wanted something like $60 for a similar one.

https://utahairguns.com/airmaks-uit-rail-to-picatinny-adapter-5-slot/
 
Early on the question of magazine usage came up and I'm not a big mag user so hadn't gotten around to even looking into it much. Until just now. 

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That's mags loaded with the 15.89 "Heavies". 

There's a bit of light showing around the pellet wells, and if tapped hard or knocked against the palm of the hand they'll pop out. But the orings hold them in sufficiently secure enough for the gun to cycle and function as mag fed. For bench shooting or long range pesting, it seems to work just fine, but if a guy was to fill up the mags and stick em loose in pocket, some of the pellets wouldn't still be in the mag when retrieved from said pocket. 

So, the .22 mags CAN be used in the .20 Veteran. 
 
Just had a little long range night shooting session with the .20 Heavies after another failed .22 sized down to .20 experiment. 

(failed experiment: https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/20-baracuda-match-sized-down-from-22/?referrer=1)

So that didn't go well but I was all set up so decided to throw some 15.89 Heavies down range. Just figured out that I can make this night shooting work pretty well with just some puck lights out at the target, shining into my 5 gallon bucket/rubber mulch pellet traps. Here are some photos I took from a different shooting session about a week ago (didn't take any just now). 

First one I circled (red circle) the little speck of light @ 90 yards that is my pellet trap.

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This next photo shows the set up a bit better, with a pellet trap at about 50 yards over the top of the gun. 

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So, anyway, just enjoyed the heck out of shooting the .20 Heavies @ 910fps @ 90 yards and wanted to share. REALLY accurate configuration. Shot a couple 5 shot sub moa groups (no they weren't all that good, but some were). Also got a case of the giggles a couple times when shooting at holes in the paper from previous shots and sticking another pellet in the same hole. Just a mighty dang accurate set-up to be shooting that type of stuff @ 90 yards with a small, small-bore airgun (not.25 or a .30 or even heavy .22s like the MRDs). 

Love this gun, and love this barrel in it. 
 
Did a little night shooting again about 10 days ago.

95 yards, took 50 shots, 25 with this gun and 25 with the Vet Long in .22. ABSOLUTELY perfect conditions, hardly any air movement and the air had that slightly damp feel to it, night dew coming on I think. Giving it a couple clicks after each five shot group. 

5 groups of five with each gun. 

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Big smiles after those 50 shots. 
 
Awesome shooting Cole! I wish airgun manufactures would get behind the .20. If I couldve gotten a .20 barrel for my RTI Prophet Compact that's what I would have went with. Having shot those 15.9gr .20s out of a custom barreled Mrod I put together they did excellent. I could imagine in a much better platform it'd be better. Have it setup for 30fpe for long range and then tune down with the 13gr for close range shooting.
 
Awesome shooting Cole! I wish airgun manufactures would get behind the .20. If I couldve gotten a .20 barrel for my RTI Prophet Compact that's what I would have went with. Having shot those 15.9gr .20s out of a custom barreled Mrod I put together they did excellent. I could imagine in a much better platform it'd be better. Have it setup for 30fpe for long range and then tune down with the 13gr for close range shooting.

Thanks Dillon.

Yes, a very cool caliber, and I use it exactly as you just described. 

I hit a starling at 62 or 63 yards last week with it (15.89s @ 910) and it just switched him off, REALLY effective on pest birds. When the .20 Heavy hits a bird you can see the expansion of their mass, with feathers and wings kinda going stiff/expanding out. Really cool. Have taken plenty of pdogs and ground squirrels with it too, zaps em pretty good. Zipped one right through a ground squirrel last summer and it pinged off the guardrail cow corral about 30 yards behind the squirrel with a surprising amount of retained energy, considering it went through the ground squirrel all ready and the steel guardrail was probably 55-60 yards from me. 
 
I can't believe that I have just realized that the BC of .20cal 15.89 JSBs are HIGHER than 44.75gr! (0.047 vs. 0.042 according to Strelok). That about puts them in contention with the 50.15gr and MRDs :0

No wonder I wasn't seeing much drift with them in my Blue Streak! I guess I'll be shopping for some new barrels now LOL

Yes sir! I shot this gun (at only 29fpe) in the Feb XFT event here in Phoenix and was only down a few points from the high scores. Everybody else rocking 45-50+ fpe in .22, .25, and .30. 

The .20 Heavy has one of the top 5 or 6 best BCs OF ALL JSB pellets, per their own BC chart. And I've done multiple speed-at-two-distances measurements to confirm that high BC myself.

Really docile to shoot too, just not much equal and opposite reaction with only 16 grains, an absolutely AMAZING pellet.
 
It's been a long time since I gave an update on the .20 Short but it gets shot a couple times a week. It's the gun that gets grabbed for a pest bird or a quick little low stress shooting session. In fact I had it out this evening knocking starlings out of the trees at the creek at the back of my property.

It has kinda become my 9 year old son Colben's gun of choice for field target. He shoots it with the JSB 13.73s around 800fps and just a few weeks ago shot an Xtreme Field Target match with it using the JSB 15.89s @ 915-920fps. And he did quite respectably in that match.

Crazy to me how dependable this gun is, in all aspects. It lives with the hammer spring set at 20fpe for the 13.73s, but 1.5 rotations is all it takes to get to the 915-920fps for the 15.89s. 35 yard zero with the 13.73s and a 50 yard zero for the 15.89s. We never have to verify dope, it just always shoots where it should. And that power adjustment is 100% repeatable, and has been over a couple years now. I probably trust this gun a bit more than I should as I imagine it'll bite me in the butt at some point.

Get's over 100 shots before the poi drops with the settings for the 20fpe 13.73s, and 42 shots per fill for the 29fpe 15.89s.

I realized about two weeks ago that I could add a plenum and not increase the overall length of the gun. In this case the plenum isn't for increased power, mostly just to have more air on tap. Adding a 20cc plenum to the "Short" version of the Vet offers the greatest percentage of total air volume increase, compared to adding a plenum to the Standard or Long. Taipan lists the volume as "air tank of 173 cc (without the regulator capacity)" on their website. Somewhat educated guess says the OEM Veteran plenum area is probably worth another 20ccs, so it's probably more like 193ccs. Add a plenum and gets us up to 213ish, probably. Just working our the ratios and should see an increase to something like 115-125 shots at 20fpe above reg pressure, and maybe 50 shots at 29fpe with the 15.89s.

So Colben and I just spent about 30 minutes in the gun room adding the plenum to "his" gun. He hadn't seen the insides of it or the mechanisms that keep it doing what it should. I let him do lots of the "wrenching" and we talked about how the gun works as we went through the steps. (plenum addition is really only about a 10 min project but we were just taking it slow and easy). Gassed it back up and held just fine. Went to the chrono station and got it to 800 fps with the 13.73s and gave it another 1.5turns and fps was 915-920fps. Turned it back down to 800fps for the 13.73s. Dependable as the rising sun.

Here's the new look, compare to some of the older pics in this topic to see the change. I think it looks a bit better now. Still only measures 25.75" long and still fits in the little briefcase shaped gun case. Just a sweet gun.

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