700mm CZ barrel in Taipan Long .22 - testing different ammo's

20 October - so the last two days ( like literally - 48 hours - ugh ) have been dreary, drizzly, rainy, damp and cold - non-stop. ( OK - not *cold* per se but - you know - upper 40's to barely 50* when raining - not exactly comfy ) {sigh} Needless to say - not a lot of shooting or testing happening but I was determined to get *something* done with these sample packs I got. The range where I'm able to shoot at - fortunately the tables we shoot off of are all under a roof - one can stay dry. My car isn't terribly huge either so I was able to back it up practically right into the area where the tables are - so I did. No one else there so no one would care . . .



I figured I would at least capture a 'snapshot' of how fast each of these ammo's are going to go based off of a 'reference' tune that I have the rifle set for at present. The numbers proved interesting and leave me with a question - that I think I already know the answer to (?).

Check this out:

The gun is really good right now with FX Hybrids @964fps - most of ya'll know - 22 grain weight-wise. The H&N sample packs only come with 30 of each weight - so I kind of want need to be a bit frugal for now . . . without making any change to the gun at all I fired two of each size (.217 and .218) in the weights that I'm interested in (25, 27 and 30) then taking the two speeds from each shot and picking a number in the middle to call it an "average". Ie; shot 1 = 850fps, shot 2 = 846 - call it 848 avg fps. Yeah - not super scientific but again - I've only got 30 to play with. ( 28 now . . .  ) I kind of expected the .218's to be slower as they should be a tighter fit yet . . . they were all FASTER. In all three weights.

.217 / 25g - 919fps
.218 / 25g - 926fps

.217 / 27g - 884fps
.218 / 27g - 891fps

.217 / 30g - 823fps
.218 / 30g - 836fps

. . . which leads me to my 'self answering' question: Because the .218's are tighter fitting - yet seemingly flying FASTER . . . are they the better choice for this barrel? Tighter fit, no - or at least less - air getting past them as they make their way out of the barrel after pulling the trigger?

It was miserable out - this was literally all I did was just shoot two of each to record speeds. I didn't shoot at any target looking for accuracy / consistency but I think (?) I may have gleaned something useful from this - that was also surprising. I fully expected the .218's to be slower - but they weren't. I'm wondering if I can already just rule out the .217's and just test with the .218's. What do you guys think?

Hey all -- ok - an update to this. Work has been crazy and by the time I get home from work I *might* have 45 minutes to do some shooting at the range which hasn't allowed for me to do a lot - when I'm even able to get there lately.

So . . . I've changed the gun some since my last post. I was not happy at all with results I was getting with the sample packs - maybe I was feeling "rushed" due to lack of daylight (yep), slapping in ammo straight of of the package not cleaned or lubed at all like I normally do (possibly) - reg pressure way to high - I'm kind of guessing possibly. Long story short - I pretty much ran out of the sample packs of the H&N's and was NOT happy at all with the results of ANY of them - this was a major bummer. Some reading in here and elsewhere on the web led me across a couple of messages re: reg pressure being to high (esp with a power plenum installed) and potentially messing with harmonics. (?) Now I don't know about all of that but I did know that my reg was set at around 140 bar and that perhaps with this new longer barrel + the add on plenum - maybe it was in fact a bit "hot". I decided to tear the gun down and throttle the reg back. Turns out that it was actually at 145 . . . whoa ... it was "hotter" than I thought. I dialed it back to around 128 ( it's a HUMA so relatively easy to do ) and since I've got the thing all apart I may as well clean the barrel too. It was FILTHY!!! Holy crap was it dirty . . . . 

Fast fwd'ing a couple of days. Friday after getting home from work I managed to get in 20 minutes or so of time with it since the complete rebuild and barrel cleaning. I figured that I'd start out really basic and just see how it would handle JSB 18g pellets. After shooting some sighters and roughly dialing in the scope I got this - that'll work. It was cool'ish and WINDY - but this was MUCH better than what I'd previously experienced with it - I was happy with that and went home.



I planned on spending some time with it today but hey - it's getting cold out now and guess what decides to take a s@#t? The pellet stove that I heat the house with. {sigh} wonderful. ( if any of you know anything about clearing error codes, specifically "H" msgs - Hi Temp trigger - I'm all ears - the tech I had out to the house today and myself - we cannot get the damned thing cleared and the stove is a brick. Fortunately it's not terribly cold - yet . . . I may be in the market for a new pellet stove. {sigh} ) ANYWAY . . . lol - sorry about that. I did manage to get out about an hour before sunset and do a little bit more testing with some light nsa slugs I have kicking around here - some 20g and 23g's - both in .217. Between yesterdays test with the 18g pellets and the slugs today - so far it looks like this gun seems to come into it own in the lower 900's speed-wise. The 20g's as you'll see in the picture below could probably have been tightened up but it was starting to get dark, and again - windy and temps in the lower 40's - "good enough". ( it's squirrel, wood chuck accurate . . . ) The 23's on the other hand - they really came into their own when I got them up into the 921'ish range - I'm pretty happy with those.



I'm hoping to get out tomorrow and test some more - and some heavier ones - we'll see. So far with the little bit of testing that I've been doing it's all short at just my 40 yd zero but I've found that if I can get decent results with "X" ammo at that distance then it'll usually hold up well out to 70-80 yards Some even 100 yards or more - but . . time and daylight have been my bigger challenges for the time being.

Maybe it doesn't like .218's??? So far - granted in limited testing to this point - the .217's are winning hands down. I've got a couple of sample pack NSA's inbound in .2175 that should be here in a day or two . . . and some .218's too. I'm losing faith in that size though (.218). We'll see how the .2175's do. @robr indicates that he had good luck with middle weight .217's over here. He measured the FX Hybrids at .2175 and I had really good luck with those. I want to find something "heavy" in the 27-30g range weight wise, find a good tune for it and then "put this baby to bed" - ie; never work on it again - just feed it air and ammo.

More to come . . .