Starting your own field target club Getting and maintaining targets

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

I started this series for Wayne in Ashland, but since we won't be running the Pyramyd Air field target course this year, I am going to present as many of the classroom segments of the course as possible in the blog. This is for anyone who wants to shoot field target but doesn't have a place to do it.

In Part 1, I told you how to start a club and how to find land for the field target course. Let me add that if you can't find as much land as you think you need, there are things you can do creatively to expand the use of very little land. Let's suppose that you can get access to a very small patch of land. It's 100 feet wide by 200 feet deep - that's less than one-half acre, or not much larger than a suburban tract house lot. But, it's large enough to hold a field target match under the right conditions.

If the downrange area (the area beyond the end of the plot and about the same distance to either side of downrange) is safe from accidental intrusion (people or pets walking through), you can fit about 7 or 8 field target lanes in the 100 feet without too much crowding. The 200 feet is the depth of your lanes, but here is a trick to multiply the number of lanes. Use two different firing points on each lane! I've drawn a diagram to make it clear how you do that. First everyone walks down path one, then they all walk down path two and engage the same targets from different firing points. Obviously the reset strings have to run back to the firing point farthest to the rear.


This small course is crowded but not overly so. By putting some targets in trees you can keep things interesting. Use the terrain to help divide the lanes.

How 16 targets become 64
If you count the number of targets on our hypothetical course, you'll see there are 16. But you will have each shooter fire two shots at each target, so that's 32. And there are two different paths to shoot from, so that makes a total of 64 shots we can get from just 16 field targets.

But where do I get my FIRST target?
I currently own about 10 field targets, but it took several years for me to acquire that many. There was a time when I had none. You read in the first part about how I was able to borrow 20 field targets from another field target club in my area, but what if you don't have one of those nearby? Well, do you remember the friend I told you to find? Here's where he pays off. You and your friend hold a field target-making party. Then you follow the plans set forth in the article on the AAFTA website, How to make field targets.

You can also buy field targets, but here's a tip. Don't buy too many of any one kind until you have time to evaluate them. At DIFTA, we found that targets from some makers were finicky and difficult to emplace and keep running (reliably) while others were no trouble at all. Once we learned what the good ones were, we bought them exclusively. There are more good field target makers today than ever before. Back in the 1990s, Rick Stoutenberg made targets that would function in almost any sort of situation. I don't know if he still makes them, but if he does, he's a great resource. Dick Otten's After Hours target company still makes targets, and his mechanisms are different but just as reliable as Rick's.

Of course, you can also buy ready-made Gamo field targets from Pyramyd Air. At just $20 apiece, these are a bargain. I've never used them so I can't comment on how reliable they are, but they have very good customer reviews.

The good thing about Gamo targets, besides the low price, is the ability to change the target faceplate with another animal silhouette. You can have quite a few different types of animals. They come with a huge 2-1/2" kill zone, but each target also comes with a set of kill-zone reducers of 1-1/8", 3/4", 1/2" and 1/4" - all very handy FT sizes. And, the replacement target faces also come with a set of kill-zone reducers.

You have to make money for the club
This ties in directly with the targets and other equipment. It all costs money. Nothing is terribly expensive, but 10 Gamo targets represents $200, and nobody is going to want to spend their own money that way. So, you charge for shooters to shoot every match. At DIFTA, we charged $10 a match, but we discounted $5 to those who helped set up or run the course. We didn't make a bucket of money, but it was enough to buy and maintain targets. We also started an airgun show that generated several thousand dollars in revenue. That went to the local Izaak Walton league, but we were favorably considered whenever we requested funds for our projects. However, if you feed cash directly into the FT club, it's yours to spend as you desire.

What do I mean by target maintenance?
The field targets do have a little maintenance, depending on the models you have. Lubrication of the hinge is the big one and general cleaning (knocking the dirt off) is the rest. But you also have target reset strings and hardware that has to be made and maintained all the time. You will start breaking reset strings in your first match, so some small amount of money will have to be spent on a regular basis. I used to paint the targets before each match and during the match at the lunch break, so the cans of flat black and international orange paint are a small ongoing expense. Every little thing adds up, and you'll want to have a budget to draw upon. In the beginning, the money comes out of the founder's pockets, and when you start holding matches they get repaid, plus you build a cash fund for club operations.

Next time, I'll tell you a lot more about the targets - like emplacing them, permanent stands (these are great!), reset string hardware and the art of maintaining a reliable field target.

Diana scope base - Part 2Testing

by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1

In the beginning, we learned a lot
When I started the Diana scope base development project, I didn't know what all the variables would be, but that is to be expected in the beginning of any development project. Often, something that sounds dirt-simple will surprise you with nuances and variables you couldn't imagine before doing a little testing. Which is why the first two batches of prototypes I tried were complete failures. But, we did learn a lot of useful things from them; the most important was that an obvious approach toward making this base will absolutely not work. I'm not going to explain what we discovered, because Leapers deserves some consideration for all the effort they put into the project. It's enough to say that the obvious approach to solving this problem of barrel droop on Diana rifles does not work. Learning that lesson added several months to what I had expected to be a quick development.

What range would work?
Once we did discover a method of droop correction that worked, we uncovered several more surprises. Leapers allowed me to control the technical specs we were after, which shaved a ton of time off the development. I didn't have to test anything to know the ranges we were after with this base. I knew we wanted an initial zero of 20 yards, which will put all of these rifles back on zero at 30-36 yards. There is no other distance at which the trajectory is so flat within the useful range of any of the Diana spring rifles.

No two scopes alike
Now what I mean by "an initial zero of 20 yards" is that I wanted a scope base that put the scope at zero at 20 yards when the vertical reticle was adjusted somewhere near the center of its range. Every scope on the market has a different amount of adjustability range (the number of inches of adjustment from one end to the other), but they all have a center. If I could determine the best slope for every scope, so that no matter what scope was mounted they would all be approximately in the center of the vertical adjustment range, then airgunners would have the maximum number of clicks in both directions once they'd obtained a 20-yard zero. And, since the 20-yard zero really puts them on target from 20 to 30 (or even as much as 36 yards), depending on the velocity of the rifle and the pellet style used, this setup would give them the absolute greatest flexibility with their scope, regardless of the make or model.

Not everyone is an airgunner
This is not an insignificant fact. I have heard through the grapevine that some European designers have worked on a similar problem and selected 10 meters as their initial zero point. Ten meters is the worst possible zero point, because the scope and the barrel are not in alignment and must be made to converge. The scope has to be slanted downward to intersect the pellet in flight. By choosing a 10-meter zero, a scope would have to be on such a severe slant that much of its vertical adjustment would be wasted. You'd get only one or two yards with the pellet at the same height. With a 20-yard zero, the greatest amount of useful adjustability remains and the trajectory is the flattest over the longest distance.

What does useful range mean?
To determine useful adjustability, I took into account the fact that very few airgunners will ever attempt to shoot their RWS Diana rifles at ranges beyond 100 yards. In fact, very few will ever intentionally shoot past 50 yards. The fact that the gun will shoot farther is mitigated by the fact that nobody will use it that way. I selected the range within those limits over which the airgunner experiences the flattest trajectory, and they can adjust the reticle if they want to shoot at other distances. With that slope built into the base, the scope always has the adjustability for the other ranges.

A lot of drop!
When I discovered the amount of drop we had to build into it at 20 yards, it was stunning! The barrel was pointing so low we had to make a slope of more than 20 inches to get the scope to the center of the adjustment range with the reticle zeroed. I tested and retested to make certain the slope was correct, but it was. Then it hit me: What if all RWS Diana rifles don't have the same slope as the RWS Diana 34 Panther I was using for testing?

In fact, no RWS Diana air rifle has exactly the same barrel droop as any other RWS Diana rifle. They're each unique unto themselves. Diana doesn't intentionally build barrel droop into each gun. It just happens because of how the rifles are designed...mostly how the breech is made. I won't go into the reason why they're like that because we don't have time for it now, but a study of the design will reveal a barrel slope that's consistent within certain limits. Unless the barrel has been intentionally bent, it will always droop within those limits. However, that's true only for the breakbarrels.

Fixed-barrel droop
The fixed-barrel models also droop but not for the same reasons and not by the same amount as the breakbarrels, so I also tested the new base with an RWS Diana 460 Magnum rifle - an underlever rifle whose barrel is pressed into the receiver rather than into a pivoting baseblock. Because of this, the amount of downward slant may be more calculated than with the breakbarrel models. If the fixturing were totally random, I'd expect to find rifles that shoot high as well as low. While there are a few Diana fixed-barrel rifles that do shoot high, they're rare compared to the number that shoot low. In fact, you can just about bet that a Diana fixed-barrel will shoot low, though the amount of droop is less than that of the breakbarrels.

Not everyone needs one
Many scopes can actually be adjusted for the droop that a fixed-barrel RWS Diana rifle has, and because of that there are a lot of airgunners who don't even acknowledge the problem. Their scopes are all adjusted up nearly as high as they'll go, but they're on target and therefore satisfied. That may be all they need. If they never shoot beyond 40-50 yards, they may never run into the upper limit of their scope's adjustment. Those shooters don't really need this new base. But breakbarrel owners will hit the limit much sooner than fixed-barrel owners. Plus, everyone who wants to have some scope adjustment remaining will want the new base.

So what about the fixed-barrel owners? Do we give them the same base as the breakbarrel owners, or do we make a base just for them? The decision was up to Leapers, and they decided to do it right the first time. They made a second base just for fixed-barrel guns that was engineered to the slope I measured on the 460. I checked myself and tested the base on the 460 magnum as well as a sidelever RWS Diana 48 - another type of fixed-barrel Diana rifle. Like I said earlier, no two rifles will ever be exactly the same except by coincidence, but I did establish that the breakbarrels tended to be close to each other and so did the fixed-barrels.

Later testing
All this testing was proven in the third prototype which performed well, except that Leapers wanted to establish that the recoil shock shoulder was a better design than a vertical adjustment screw, so they built two different prototypes - one with the shock shoulder only and the other with the vertical pins only. Of course, by this time, there had to be a prototype set for breakbarrels and a second set for fixed barrels. I had to test both types of recoil restraint in the third prototype, and that added time to the development. In the end, the shock shoulder proved to be the superior design, and the vertical pins weren't needed.

I took the third prototype to the 2008 SHOT Show and talked with the engineer who was doing the design development at Leapers. We could have gone into production at that point, but Leapers wisely wanted to test the base as thoroughly as possible, so they built a fourth prototype that was essentially the finished base except for some cosmetics.


I discussed the third prototype with Leapers at the 2008 SHOT Show.

Fourth time's the charm!
On the fourth prototypes and also on the production bases, Leapers put both types of recoil stop - the shock shoulder and the vertical pin. Shooters who feel more comfortable with a vertical pin can have one, though everyone has to use the shock shoulder. It's really all you need. The base absolutely cannot move once it's correctly installed, because the recoil shock shoulder bumps against the front of the rifle's base and comes to a dead stop. It's the same thing we did by hanging the vertical stop pin in front of the rifle's scope base all those years. Now, there's a huge bearing surface, and the new base very nicely conceals the fact that the shock shoulder is hanging over the rifle's base.

I think in my next installment I will share some of the astounding test data with you (targets used to determine drop), plus I'll give you a review of installation - what little there is to say. This new base is the fastest, most reliable scope mounting system ever developed for a spring air rifle, and it will cut your scope installation time in half or less. Far less if you were also using adjustable mounts to get rid of the droop.

The FWB 124 - 30 years later

Introduction by B.B. Pelletier

Guest blogger
Greg Anderson fell in love with the FWB 124 years ago. After all these years, it's still his favorite, and in today's blog, he tells you why.

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The FWB 124 - 30 years later

by Greg Anderson

Everyone has a story about a gun he owns. After reading B.B.'s report on the FWB 124 - a classic pellet rifle some time back, I thought I would add my experience with the 124.

In the beginning....
I first read of the FWB 124 in a boilerplate magazine article about the best firearm of each general class of firearms. It was the usual article. The best shotgun was the Remington 870, best pistol was the M1911 and best revolver was some S&W kit gun. It was the kind of article we’ve all seen a hundred times. But what was different in this article was that it included an airgun.


The FWB 124...still a great gun 30 years later.

The airgun they puffed about was something called a Feinwerkbau Model 124. Well, I'd never heard of Feinwerkbau or their rifle, but when I read that it didn’t require CO2 or pumping and that it needed just a single cocking stroke to propel a .177 pellet at 800 fps, I was intrigued. Eight hundred feet per second was getting close to rimfire velocity, making this more than a teenager's toy.

My first adult airgun
I ordered a copy of the Beeman Precision Airgun Guide, and it had detailed information on the FWB 124. The catalog was also a wealth of information on what Beeman called "adult" airguns. Anyway, I was sold. I wasn't so much sold on airguns as I was on this particular airgun. It appeared to be powerful, accurate and a masterpiece of practical engineering.


My FWB 124 loves these pellets. Wish they were still made today.

I bought a new FWB 124D from Beeman around 1978 or 1979. Along with the rifle, I bought 10 boxes of Beeman Silver Jet pellets, which they recommended for the 124. At the time, Beeman was also pushing their overpriced scope, insisting that other scopes would be beaten to death by the recoil, but I passed on it. As I recall, the scope with mounts was around $100. That was a lot of money back then.

I called several scope manufacturers to see what was available for airguns. The folks at Weaver told me their Marksman K4 scope (4x32, steel body) would handle the recoil, and they'd adjust it for 50-yard parallax. In addition, they recommended mounts for the gun that would stay put under the sharp recoil of the piston slamming home. The mounts looked like the ordinary 3/8" dovetail units found on most .22 rimfires, except for a row of hardened steel teeth on the clamps. I installed this scope on the rifle with these mounts, zeroed it and started shooting. At that point I had about $400 in the gun, scope and ammo. (A year or two after I bought the 124, I ordered the new aluminum trigger to replace the plastic unit. It's still in the original bag. The plastic trigger just keeps getting the job done.)


Who says plastic triggers don't last? Here's the replacement aluminum trigger I bought for the 124, because I figured I'd need it down the road. I never installed it, and almost 30 years later the plastic unit still works like a champ!

Figuring things out for myself
I'd never used a spring airgun before and there was little adult airgun information available at the time. Generally, what little information there was came from Beeman. I found that shooting technique was critical. You could not zero the gun off a sandbag and then expect accuracy when shooting off-hand. You couldn't zero shooting off-hand with a sling and then expect accuracy from an off-hand snap-shot. I didn’t find that the loose hold advocated now was superior to any other hold. The one critical item for accuracy was that, regardless of how you held the rifle, you had to hold it exactly the same way for every shot. Once I got that figured out, the 124 became old reliable.

Over the years, I've used that little rifle to shoot just about anything you'd normally shoot with a .22 rimfire. While it's certainly no .22 rimfire in the power department, it's adequate for everything squirrel size and smaller out to about 20 yards. In fact, its lower power is an asset when shooting red squirrels or starlings off the side of my house because the pellet rarely penetrates the creature with enough velocity to damage my siding.

30 years old, but it's just like new!
I've used this rifle for nearly 30 years now. In spite of all the dire warnings of it being hard on scopes, I've never even had to adjust the zero. I've always used the Beeman Silver Jet pellets (8.39 grains, out of production for some years), so there was never a need to re-zero for another pellet. I have about 700 pellets left of the original 5,000, so that's at least 4,000 shots through the rifle. I recently removed the Weaver scope because my eyes are getting bad and I needed a scope with more focus adjustment in the eyepiece. When I pulled the mounts off the receiver the "teeth" on each mount had impressed a neat row of notches in the dovetail cut on the receiver. There was no evidence the mount had ever shifted in 30 years.


This Weaver scope really came through. My FWB 124 never shook it loose or shifted aimpoints.

As long as I was going to invest in a new Leapers 4x32 scope, I thought I should replace the piston seal and mainspring. I decided I would chronograph the thing before I tore it apart so I could have a benchmark for the seal and spring change. The chronograph showed the gun still drove Silver Jets at 780 fps and it made 830 fps with Beeman Lasers, so I just changed the breech seal and put on the new scope.


Old gun, new Leapers scope.

It's still my favorite air rifle
I have around a dozen modern airguns. I have three other rifles, all of them more powerful and newer than the 124, including a Beeman R1, an RWS 350 and an RWS 54. Yet, the 124 is still my favorite. It's the gun I always reach for if I just need to shoot something quick. It's light, effortless to cock, quick to mount, powerful enough, quiet and more accurate than I am. Yeah, maybe its trigger isn't perfect, but it's such an elegant little rifle in every other way that I can overlook the trigger. If I have one regret about the 124, it's that I didn't order it with a Beeman custom walnut stock. If I remember correctly it added around $165 to the 124D's price, which, at the time, was a lot of money. Still, in retrospect, I wish I'd scraped up the cash to get it.


The 124 in the Beeman catalog...it started a 30-year relationship that's still going strong.

To answer the old gun magazine question, "If you could own just one airgun, what would it be?" Well, even after 30 years, if I could only own one airgun, it would still be the Feinwerkbau 124. In my opinion, it's still the standard against which all other air rifles are measured.

Airguns are too easy!

by B.B. Pelletier

I have a lot of interests besides airguns. Recently, a friend gave me a small electric RC helicopter that awakened a desire to fly. It's good when I get to encounter new things, because it reminds me of the difficulties new airgunners face when they enter our hobby. Keeping that in mind helps me write more clearly.

Well, with RC helicopters there's a lot to learn. You don't just take up this hobby and immediately move up to the biggest and best equipment. You can't, because flying an advanced RC helicopter takes experience and skill. If you were to buy the biggest whomptydoodle RC helicopter on the market, you wouldn't even know enough to get it prepared to fly! That's good, because the moment you did you'd crash.


A newbie doesn't stand a chance flying one of these.

The same cannot be said about airguns. Any fool with money can buy an FWB 700 rifle identical to the rifle an Olympic shooter would use. Or, he can buy a USFT rifle without a clue how to use it or what it even does. He would be at no risk to himself or his equipment to own and shoot an Evanix AR-6 rifle, as long as he practiced the basics of safe shooting.


But anyone can shoot one of these.

With a .90 RC helicopter capable of 3D flight (that's a really big radio-controlled helicopter that can fly full aerobatics that even full-sized helicopters cannot duplicate), a beginner would have a flaming mass of ruined parts in no time. Life would severely correct the beginner's lack of experience and start him or her on a very expensive learning path.

But, anyone with money can buy an RWS Diana 350 Magnum - shoot it for an hour - and then complain to the world that it doesn't do everything the reports said it could. The air rifle doesn't burst into flames or reach back and slap the silly shooter in the face.

That's where the questions come from. Here's one I get all the time. "I'm having a hard time choosing between a .177 Benjamin Super Streak or a Career III 707 in .22. I want something that'll be accurate out to at least 75 yards but also quiet enough to not disturb the tenants in the next apartment. Which airgun should I buy?"

You SHOULD buy an IZH 61 or a Beeman R7 and learn how to shoot before talking about shooting 75 yards with an air rifle. That's what you SHOULD do!

But you don't want to do that. You want to go to the head of the line by starting at the top of the hobby. Tell me - where in your apartment do you even have 75 yards to shoot?

If we were playing violins, you'd want to own a Stradivarius, despite the fact you sound more like a jug band. Thank God a Strad costs millions of dollars, so only the very best violinists can afford to play them. And half of them don't even own the instruments they play - they're on loan for a lifetime by others who appreciate talent.


Even a Stradivarius requires talent to make beautiful music.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that you should be denied the best equipment until you prove yourself as a shooter. I'm simply saying that in our hobby it's too easy to own the very best without the skill to use it. Then, when he gets his Strad, he scratches the bow across the strings and says, "I don't see what everyone is talking about. This thing don't sound so purdy." No, it don't!

Now, that small RC helicopter my friend gave me is at the bottom of the heap of beginning RC helicopters. It is the RC helicopter equivalent of a Crosman 760. It doesn't even have the ability to hover. But guess what? After flying it for three months, I discovered that on my own, and I learned something about RC helicopters. I'm now ready to move up to one that can hover. But I'm far from being ready to fly that whomptydoodle model that looks so sexy in the hands of an expert. I may never get that far in the hobby - but at least I know it. That's what three months of experience has taught me.

My bio information listed at the top right of this blog says there are no stupid questions. I'll stick by that, because I want you to be able to ask about anything. That's what this blog is here for. But sometimes questions are asked before the person doing the asking has bothered to learn anything about the subject. I don't call those questions stupid, but they're uninformed. Here's an example, "I want to be able to hunt whitetail deer with an air rifle. I notice that a round ball shot out of a Big Bore 909 goes faster than a 200-grain pellet. I want to be able to kill deer out to at least 250 yards, so would I be better off using round balls instead of pellets?"

No - you would be better off:

1. Moving out of your apartment in Manhattan, where the whitetail deer are scarce.

2. Learning something about ballistics before using just one fact - velocity - to invent a universe that doesn't really exist.

3. Learning to shoot.

4. Waiting until you're 18 years old, so you can do all of this legally.

Today's blog sounds like a rant and it probably is. But I had to get it off my chest. I still love all of you and I want you to continue to ask your questions and try new things.

I, on the other hand, will concentrate on hovering.

When bad things happen Airgun accidents

by B.B. Pelletier

I'm talking about airgun accidents today - real accidents, not just the lies a kid tells when he's caught shooting another kid just to see what will happen. Bob C. asked for this one, but I bet a lot of readers will be interested.

Starting with springs
Mainsprings are usually under a lot of tension even when the gun isn't cocked. If you're not careful when you release the spring, something bad will happen. The first time I disassembled a Beeman C1 made by Webley I didn't use a mainspring compressor. The end cap that weighs several ounces got away from me and flew six feet before hitting a wooden desk drawer divider, which it broke in two. Now, this was not an accident. This was a "stupident." An accident happens when something you could not control goes bad - like a bridge collapsing during an earthquake. A stupident is when you do the wrong thing and get caught by fate.


The C1 end cap hit this desk divider to the right of the crack (see the dent in the wood) and busted it in two.

Another spring tale
A gentleman was disassembling a spring gun at an airgun show and did not have the use of a mainspring compressor. The spring got away from him (stupident - not accident) and flew across the aisle, hitting a person in the head. No real damage was done, but the hittee didn't appreciate the event! I heard this report from the person who was hit.

Spring gun stupident
At another airgun show, a dealer had loaded a spring gun with a pellet and realized he had nothing with which to extract the pellet. The gun was a low-powered pellet rifle, so instead of going to the trouble of walking outside the show and shooting into the ground, he put the palm of his hand over the muzzle and pulled the trigger. After all - it was just a low-powered spring rifle - how bad could it be?

Here's how bad - a friend had to drive him to the emergency room of a nearby hospital so they could dig the pellet out of the hand. It penetrated out of sight. I heard this report from an eyewitness. Ironically, the person who committed this stupident also committed the one before.

Two for one stupident
Sometimes it isn't enough that just one person is stupid. Two people are even better! I had a loaded Daisy No. 25 pump BB gun on my table at Roanoke (stupident number one) and while I was away from the table a guy came up and pumped the gun. He didn't want to buy it, he was just kicking the tires. My wife, who didn't know it was loaded, told him to uncock the gun, but of course that's not possible with a Daisy 25. So he put the muzzle on top of his shoe (to cushion the piston, I presume) and fired (the other stupident)! The result was instant and painful. He felt so embarrassed that he bought the gun. I only heard the story after returning to my table - whereupon I checked all my other guns to ensure they were unloaded!

CO2 stupident
At another airgun show, a dealer was disassembling a CO2 pistol that discharged during the work. The pellet that was in the barrel struck the leg of a man standing 20 feet away. The breech of the pistol was open when the gun discharged - otherwise the pellet would have penetrated the man's leg after passing through his jeans.

The worst CO2 stupident
I was sworn to secrecy on this story. The teller who committed the stupident told me I could tell people it happened but I was never to reveal his name. When you hear what he did I think you'll understand why he wants to remain anonymous. He was working on a Benjamin 252 CO2 pistol, trying to solder the sight fixture on the front of the barrel to the CO2 tube below. He knew there was a CO2 cartridge in the tube, but he thought he could do the job quickly enough that it wouldn't matter. You see, as CO2 is heated, the pressure increases. Soldering temperature is above 400 degrees F, so that raised the pressure of the gas high enough to blow the threaded CO2 cartridge cap off the gun! It buried itself in a wall but fortunately no one was hurt. He probably wouldn't have been just hurt. He probably would have been killed.

One from my wife
My wife remembers a stupident that could have been deadly. Here's her story: At the Little Rock Airgun Expo, a man in his 30s told me he liked to teach youngsters how to use and handle guns. One day, he had a pellet pistol while outside with a group of kids, when the gun jammed. He tried to unjam it but couldn't figure out what was causing the problem. For a closer look, he held the muzzle close to his eye and repeatedly pulled the trigger so he could examine the mechanism! He didn't realize what he'd done until much later, but the horse was already out of the barn, as all the kids in the neighborhood got to see how to "safely" handle a loaded gun! I am stupefied that he managed to live to adulthood!

Wrong gas stupident
PCPs run on air, but the hospital employee had access to tanks of oxygen. Oxygen is like air, isn't it?

NO!

But this kind of stupident is not that uncommon. Apparently some hospital employees are not trained in the dangers of pure oxygen gas.


This is what happens when a VERY HOT flame is held against aluminum for a long time! It looks like a cutting torch has been used on this gun from the inside out.


Note the discoloration of the anodizing. Forensic scientists use clues like this and the bending of the steel barrel to determine how much heat caused the damage and how long the fire lasted. An oxygen fire is a dangerous thing. This rifle was returned to Pyramyd Air as defective.

Recent stupidents
I have committed a couple stupidents in the past five years. One involved a Chinese rifle I was testing, and the other was a vintage German gun I bought. The pictures below tell the tale.


I shot the couch! Because the aimpoint was four inches above the couch, I didn't move it out of the line of fire, and a Tech Force 99 made this hole. It's been there four years, as a reminder of how stupid and lazy I can be. Believe it or not, my wife never said one bad thing about this stupident because I think she knows how bad I feel.


I let my guard down and the trigger of my new/old BSF 55N slipped when I closed the barrel the first time, putting this hole in the ceiling of my office. That's why I advise BSF owners to not adjust the triggers too light.

Stupid is as stupid does. I tell you these tales in the hopes of increasing your awareness of the potential dangers of our hobby.

Parker-Hale Dragon

by B.B. Pelletier

Okay, the field target course will have to be postponed until 2009. We didn't get the students we need. But we'll select some dates very soon and everyone will know when the first class is next year. I'm also looking into ways of reducing the length of the course to make it easier on the students.

Hey - what they ought to do...
How many times have you heard someone "invent" a gun he thinks ought to be made, only to discover that it actually was? I know this is a common occurrence for me.

One gun I hear about a lot is a powerful single-stroke pneumatic. After they discover the powerplant, some shooters become enamored with the fact that the single-stroke is pneumatic, so it shoots without vibration or movement and it takes only a single stroke of the lever to charge the gun. The only thing the makers forgot to do was make it powerful. So, these hopeful shooters do that in their mind and then wonder why the engineers overlooked such an important thing.

It's the same as wondering why the car manufacturers won't release that 100 mpg carburetor, now that we really need it.

Why don't "they" make a powerful single-stroke pneumatic air rifle?
"I would buy one in a heartbeat if airgun manufacturers would just get off their collective butt and design what 'we' want. We want a single-stroke pneumatic air rifle with enough power for hunting." That's exactly what Parker-Hale did. Or rather they accepted the design of an independent airgun designer and put it into production. A single-stroke pneumatic rifle with enough power for hunting.

Well, I lucked into a chance to see and operate a Dragon at the 2008 Little Rock Airgun Expo, and I knew I'd be reporting it to you readers someday. When a reader recently saw one for sale on the American Airguns free classified ads page, he asked about it. I answered his question and asked if he'd like a report, which brings us to today. Since I've never tested the rifle the report will have to be thin, but I've added some detail photos that you won't see anywhere.


The Parker-Hale Dragon is a large single-stroke pneumatic rifle that shoots like a PCP. The owner shoots his rifle at the 2008 Little Rock Airgun Expo.

Enter the Dragon
The Dragon is an 11-lb. single-stroke pneumatic air rifle that looks like a PCP with a pump added on. It shoots at just under the British legal limit of 12 foot-pounds, so those .22-caliber Crosman Premiers will probably be going out the muzzle between 575 and 590 f.p.s. Being middle-weight pellets, they have to be lower in energy so some super-heavyweight doesn't push the rifle over the legal limit. The lever is attached to the right side of the action and pivots near the muzzle. It swings through about 105 degrees of arc to compress all the air it takes to generate 12 foot-pounds.

Make no mistake, the rifle has the firing characteristics of a PCP. There is zero recoil and vibration when the shot takes off. Because of the low muzzle energy, the report is relatively low, too. About like a Sheridan Blue Streak with five pumps of air. Thank the longer barrel for that. And thank the weight of 11 lbs. (before adding the scope) for the stability of a field target rifle. The weight seems to come from the extensive - nay, dare I say universal, use of steel components and parts. The Dragon is a lead-sled, compared to a normal PCP. Most of that weight is in the extra pumping mechanism, but the use of steel in the parts is a driver, too.

Make ready!
Ever watch the film Patriot and thank God you didn't live at the time of the American revolution? Getting a flintlock ready to fire was no simple task. Well, if the rifles had been Parker-Hale Dragons instead of flintlocks, the revolution would probably have lasted a few more years. Compared to a flintlock, making the Dragon ready to fire is a chore.

I forget all of the steps to making the gun ready, but here are the ones I do remember. First, you simultaneously lift up on the safety button and push the trigger forward to set the valve. Then, you pop the pump handle away from the stock, but that requires you to pinch two sheet-steel cams together while simultaneously pulling them away from the stock. Once the lever joint has been properly freed, you swing the lever out and up to the top of its arc, just past the muzzle of the rifle. Next, you close the lever, compressing the air. Then, you cock the rifle, which retracts the bolt, allowing you to load a pellet. Close the bolt and you may be ready to fire. I forget if the safety comes on automatically at this point.


Before you push the trigger forward to close the firing valve, the safety button in front of the trigger is pushed straight up.


Once the safety is up and out of the way, the trigger is pushed forward to close the firing valve.


The next step is to pump the gun, but before that, the pump lever link is simultaneously squeezed together and pulled away from the stock to free the joint.


Now the pump lever is swung forward past the muzzle and then returned to the resting point alongside the stock. After that, all that remains is to cock and load the gun.

It may sound as if I am criticizing the Dragon's design as I describe the process to make it ready, but that's not my intention. I was given a rare opportunity to examine this strange and almost handmade air rifle mechanism, and I vowed to report the process to my readers, if and when I wrote about the rifle. Where else are you going to get this kind of information? I know for a fact it wasn't reported in the airgun magazines when the gun was new, because I was interested in this rifle for myself.

The trigger is light and crisp - just what you'd expect from a top-grade PCP. In its day, the Parker-Hale Dragon was on the pricier side of the cost spectrum, but it didn't last very long. As I recall the gun was available for only a year to 18 months before it was pulled from the market in 1997. Parker-Hale stopped making firearms and airguns of any kind in the year 2000. The Dragon is not a common model. That's why I told the reader who inquired that the $600 asking price for a non-functional gun was a no-brainer. It's no doubt worth twice that and more.

The bottom line
At this point a few thousand of you readers know a little something about an exotic airgun that had a very short life. That will not prevent someone from saying, "You don't understand. When I said I wanted more power I meant 30-40 foot-pounds. When is someone going to make a single-stroke rifle like that? And I'd like the weight to be 8 lbs. with a scope. Yeah, that sounds about right!"

Improve your shooting with the two-bag rest technique

by B.B. Pelletier

Troubleshooting
Today, I'm helping a couple readers with some problems. First is Frank B., who owns a Marksman model 70 that he asked a question about. Seems his rifle is missing the trigger adjustment screw. So, Frank, I pulled the screw from my BSF 55N rifle, whose trigger unit is very similar, and I photographed it. For you photographers, I painted the screw with light. I didn't get a perfect exposure, but it's good enough for this job. Also, this is a macro done with my nicer camera.


The shank is 10mm long.


I told Frank the screw was 2.5mm, but seeing it enlarged like this I think it's a 3mm screw.

I hope this helps you locate a screw for your trigger. Remember, the BSF trigger that your rifle has is very prone to slipping off when cocked, so never let go of the barrel when its broken open.

Discovery problems
Today's blog is really an emergency report to help our reader, Andreas, who is having an accuracy problem with his new Benjamin Discovery. Normally, that wouldn't be so bad, but Andreas lives in Cypress and doesn't have the same airgun opportunities that we have here in the states. He bought the Discovery after reading my reports, and I want him to enjoy the gun to the fullest.

Room to improve
On Saturday, Andreas sent me the links to some groups he'd fired with his rifle. They look okay, but since they were shot at just 18 yards, they do have room for improvement. Andreas doesn't have access to JSB 10.2-grain Exact domed pellets, which my tests showed were the best in the .177 caliber he owns, so he is shooting 10.5-grain Crosman Premiers, which are pretty close.

Premier benchrest technique!
I want to share with him and all of you the best technique for shooting a firearm or a pneumatic rifle to get the most accuracy. This technique was developed in the late 19th century. It's called the double bag technique. To use it, you need two shooting bags.


Look at the arrow that indicates how the rear bag is to be adjusted. Sliding it back and forth raises and lowers your aimpoint. You never have to touch anything but the trigger.

The front bag should be long enough that the rifle, when rested on the bag, won't fall off. A rolled blanket or towel usually isn't good enough. A bag with "ears" is always best for this, though if it is too long it won't allow the rear bag to work its magic.


These Beeman benchrest bags are perfect for the two-bag technique. The front bag is on the right.

Rear bag controls the gun
The real secret of this technique is the rear bag. It stabilizes the rifle so you don't have to hold it to your shoulder. I've watched several of you caffeine-hyper shooters on the range, and I know that not holding the rifle can be a real plus! The rear bag also adjusts the muzzle of the rifle, ever-so-slightly, because of the angle on the bottom of the butt. You can raise and lower the crosshairs by very small amounts by sliding the bag forward and back. That's how you center the sights, and since you aren't touching the rifle anywhere other than the trigger, the sights stay on target. Your breathing and heartbeat cannot move the rifle when you use a two-bag rest.

I should have shown you this type of rest long ago, but so many of you shoot spring guns. You can't use this rest with a springer because it has to be handheld.

Andreas, please let us know if this helps you with your Discovery.