Adventures with the Air Arms S510 Ultimate Sporter

[nortac]

Thanks! It won't take long to put 500 pellets through her at this rate.

 

[eKretz]

I have referred to the JSB Exact Jumbo Heavy Diabolo .22 18.13 gr pellet as being of 5.50mm head diameter, but I see it described online as being 5.52mm. Can't wait to get my Pellet Gage to see what these really are!

They're probably going to be all over the place. All the pellets I've used haven't been super consistent even in the same container. That number they put on the sticker is just a target. That said, as long as the head diameter is large enough to engage the rifling well I haven't noticed much difference in accuracy.

 

[nortac]

They're probably going to be all over the place. All the pellets I've used haven't been super consistent even in the same container. That number they put on the sticker is just a target. That said, as long as the head diameter is large enough to engage the rifling well I haven't noticed much difference in accuracy.

Yeah, I don't expect any tin to have all the same size pellets, but if one would go to the trouble to sort them into groups of a given head size and then shoot same size pellets, maybe there would be an accuracy advantage, we'll see. Alternately and perhaps in addition to sorting by size, one could sort by weight.

 

[eKretz]

Yeah weight seems to be more important in my testing - at least in my gun.

 

[nortac]

Yeah weight seems to be more important in my testing - at least in my gun.

So I wonder what, if any correlation exists between weight and head size, in other words, how likely are pellets that measure the same head size also weigh the same?

 

[eKretz]

Sometimes they correlate sometimes not in my experience. I think it's best to test in each individual gun to see what makes more of a difference and what doesn't if you're going for best possible benchrest style accuracy. Pellet brand/quality will make a difference there in terms of consistency pellet to pellet too. I bought a whole bunch of tins of 21.1gn Beeman Kodiaks in .22 quite a lot of years ago after I found them to be my preferred pellet for my gun. They are pretty darn consistent but they were discontinued some time ago. Some other company makes a very similar or nearly identical pellet now but they aren't as consistent in the tins I've gotten.

 

[nortac]

Yeah I believe that's the H&N Barracuda Match. I've shot a few through my S510, so far less than stellar accuracy, but that was early in the game and need to revisit them. They seemed to do well in .177 in my Gamo Bone Collector, just goes to show how each gun is different.

 

[Acmemfg]

Wowza.
The technology here is totally out of my league. Never was what you would call a precision shooter. Very cool though regardless.
And a way pretty rifle.

 

[nortac]

Thanks! The only way for me to justify the cost of this rig was for it to be a precision training gun that I can use at home and not have to spend all day driving to a distant range to shoot center fire guns long distance. The challenge in doping the wind for 100 yd. shooting with a pellet gun compares to shooting a powder burner at 600 yds.

 

[eKretz]

If you haven't yet, check out these guys:

Long Rangers | Airgun Depot

Barrel twist, fit to rifling, pellet weight, velocity... Everything has to tie in to get the best accuracy.

 

[nortac]

If you haven't yet, check out these guys:

Long Rangers | Airgun Depot

Barrel twist, fit to rifling, pellet weight, velocity... Everything has to tie in to get the best accuracy.

Interesting link.

 

[Merle]

I'm getting hungry again...
... I should just go out to the boat garage and open the door...
...shoot what I have...
I should, I could, Oh I should...
(it's just odd how that Benjamin .357 seems to be talkin to me.)

 

[nortac]

My Pelletgage came in. Much smaller than I expected, but it does what it does very well. The JSB Jumbo Heavy Diabolo 18.13 gr. pellets that have shot well in my S510 are labeled 5.5 mm (on line described as 5.52), but most measured 5.54 and a few were 5.53. The gage works like a Go/ No Go gage. In the pic you can see that a pellet won’t pass the 5.53 hole but falls through the 5.54 hole and is suspended by the skirt. The small group of 8 pellets are the ones that measured 5.53. There are 125 that are 5.54. These were from a tin of 250 pellets, having shot the rest before the Pelletgage arrived.
It will be interesting to compare the weights and see if there is a correlation to size sorting and if there is any correlation to size and/or weight with accuracy. I don't think I have enough of these on hand to fully answer this question. I will be ordering more of these pellets. Also, it is probably too early in this guns life to do extensive accuracy tests with variations in a given pellets characteristics and slight variations in weight or head size until the gun is well broken in.

 

[eKretz]

Not too shabby. Better than a lot I've seen.

 

[nortac]

I weighed a bunch of the head size sorted pellets from yesterday and their weights varied from 17.9 gr. to 18.4 gr., tin states a weight of 18.13 gr., I wonder how they arrived at that figure, why not just call it 18.1?. Of the 5.54 mm sized pellets, about 3/4 of them weighed between 17.9 and 18.1 gr., the rest fell between 18.2 and 18.4 gr. So although sorting by head size may be beneficial, it doesn't appear to have any direct correlation to weight. So if one was striving for absolute accuracy, you'd probably want to sort by weight and head size.

 

[nortac]

A little target porn for ya. Ten rounds of JSB Exact Jumbo Heavy Diabolo 18.13 gr.(actually 17.9 to 18.1 gr.) shot at 30 yards, average velocity 901 FPS.

This mornings shoot was to chrono and compare the different power levels of the AA S510 using the same pellet. I may have mentioned before that the S510 has 4 power levels, that was a mistake, as there are 5 levels. The above target being the highest, which I call "5".
At power level 4, average velocity was 875 FPS and gave similar accuracy and POI.
At power level 3, ave. vel. was 798 FPS, group slightly larger, but not much, and POI was slightly lower.
At power level 2, ave. vel. was 641 FPS, group opened up a bit more to about 3/4 in. and POI was almost 2 in. lower than the previous groups using the same POA.
And at the lowest power level. Ave. Vel. was 363 FPS, initially undershot the target, pellets could been seen in flight, and essentially un-useable accuracy, at least for this particular pellet, at this range.

So it would appear that power levels 5 through 3 could be useful in finding what velocity gives the best accuracy for a given pellet, Level 2 might be useful for shooting indoors at very close range, like in a basement, as long as aiming adjustments were made. I don't see much use for the lowest power level, at least with this pellet.

 

[eKretz]

Nice grouping. For your next test you should try pellets with varying head sizes but the same weight. In my gun with the pellets I use, I don't even bother checking head sizes anymore. Weight makes a lot more difference for my combo. I have never found a pellet small enough not to engage the rifling well in my Kodiak tins but have in a few other brands. Those are terrible for accuracy as you can imagine.

 

[nortac]

@eKretz, thanks! There are certainly a lot of variables to (try to) control, in addition to one's own shooting skill/technique, or lack thereof. I will probably try that as I move out to longer ranges. Some "juggling" of variables may not reveal themselves close in but become more apparent at longer ranges. I have so many pellets to evaluate and will save the more extreme sorting to those that show promise at longer ranges.

 

[nortac]

So I'm beginning to think that the pellet gage detects irregularities in the rim of the pellet head more than actual head diameter. I think it detects "out-of-roundness" from minor dings that occur as the pellets rattle around in their tins. Often if a pellet does not drop through a particular sized hole in the gage, you can gently wiggle it and it will drop through, which to me indicates a "high spot" on the rim of the head, as opposed to being evenly over sized. Some times after passing through a larger sized hole, the pellet will then pass through the next smaller sized hole that it failed to pass through before. Of course you are not supposed to "press" the pellets through the gage, you don't want to swage them or intentionally shave off any lead, but so very minor shaving of high spots often occur, though unintentional. But this does not indicate a flaw in the pellet gage or that it is not useful. Today I gaged some H&N Barracuda Match pellets that were supposed to be 5.53 mm head diameter. About 2/3 of them were 5.55 mm, one third were 5.56 mm and a few were 5.54 mm. NONE were 5.53mm.

 

[simon1]

So I'm beginning to think that the pellet gage detects irregularities in the rim of the pellet head more than actual head diameter. I think it detects "out-of-roundness" from minor dings that occur as the pellets rattle around in their tins. Often if a pellet does not drop through a particular sized hole in the gage, you can gently wiggle it and it will drop through, which to me indicates a "high spot" on the rim of the head, as opposed to being evenly over sized. Some times after passing through a larger sized hole, the pellet will then pass through the next smaller sized hole that it failed to pass through before. Of course you are not supposed to "press" the pellets through the gage, you don't want to swage them or intentionally shave off any lead, but so very minor shaving of high spots often occur, though unintentional. But this does not indicate a flaw in the pellet gage or that it is not useful. Today I gaged some H&N Barracuda Match pellets that were supposed to be 5.53 mm head diameter. About 2/3 of them were 5.55 mm, one third were 5.56 mm and a few were 5.54 mm. NONE were 5.53mm.

It may be beneficial to swage a batch then try those compared to the other batches that have just their size checked. Just another variable to explore.

Very nice groups by the way.