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FX Wildcat FAC .22


Hamster
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Would have loved to report back saying this is the most accurate.....dadidadida................considering I bought it based on good internet vibes and Ted's Holdover Youtube test where he claims it as being the most accurate off the shelf rifle he's used to date but unfortunately after some 4 hours of bench rest shooting over two days the results have been less than impressive.

 

Basically it is accurate of sorts but it just won't put a whole clip of 8 into a tight enough group meaning there are just too many fliers and I'm experienced enough to know it isn't me. It groups A Arms Field 15.89 grain OK (with fliers), groups Accu Pell 14.3 grain OK (with fliers), groups Baracuda Hunter Extreme 19.09 grain partition things surprisingly well for a gimmicky pellet at a little bigger than the others but again too many fliers, RWS Superdome 14.5 grains were dangerously erratic at around 6 inches :| - this same box of pellets has also been awful through a FAC AArms S510 and HW95 so wasn't expecting anything, best groups come from 16 grain Exact Jumbo's but fliers as before.

 

It isn't that it's wildly inaccurate as such because even the poor groups including the fliers can be covered with a 2p coin but considering the distance is a measured 31.7 m (34.67 yards) off a rest of cushions on top of a table, I would expect better. It often places 5/6 pellets inside a ragged hole coverable by a 1p coin but never a full clip !

 

The major headache though is that it just seemed impossible to zero to the point that after every re-charge you just knew it was going to have a different POI :hmm: . Other flaws include a very poor magazine/port where getting it to feed and load the first pellet is just about impossible on first attempt, the side lever operation/smoothness is also quite industrial and not in the league of AArms or HW100. The good points are the light weight which is a boon for hunting, excellent trigger, fair to good ergonomics, definitely doesn't need an extra silencer (one of the main reasons I got rid of the S510) will go 8 clips (64 shots) before power drops.

 

If I had to guess I'd say the fault lies in the SmoothTwist Barrel, either it's just a bad example or it's loose somewhere, either way it's gone back because for a gun costing over a grand repeatable accuracy is a pre-requisite. Lets see what FX do to fix it.

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Have you given the barrel a good clean out Hamster? I had a sub 12 fx Verny mk2 with similar issues and it went back to FX.

Report came back that they gave the barrel a good pull through and nothing else was done. After that it was sub 1/4 inch groups at 30 yards and one point put 6 through the same hole.

 

May be worth a try if you haven't already already.

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Have you given the barrel a good clean out Hamster? I had a sub 12 fx Verny mk2 with similar issues and it went back to FX.

Report came back that they gave the barrel a good pull through and nothing else was done. After that it was sub 1/4 inch groups at 30 yards and one point put 6 through the same hole.

 

May be worth a try if you haven't already already.

 

To be honest it didn't even occur to me :) I do have a pretty decent set of pull throughs too but have never found them much use on air guns. I may have used it once or twice on the S510 but can't recall that it was in search of accuracy. I just thought a new gun despatched by the importers would likely have had that done already but could be wrong.

 

It's a rather odd thing because as you say some shot strings would be truly tidy then suddenly open up by a stray shot and double in size. These tins of pellets have all done better through the S510 so I know it isn't the pellets and I know what a pulled shot feels and looks like. The AArms wasn't hold sensitive either, I found with the new gun it didn't seem to like the left hand holding/controlling the butt end, groups seemed to improve a tad when the front was hand supported, unlike almost all other PCP's I've so far owned.

 

At one point when shooting the tenth clip off a charge when the power had obviously dropped, the gun suddenly felt more sorted and easier to shoot, as though it had hit its sweet spot :yes: so may well end up having to experiment by taking the stock off and reducing the hammer strength to drop power a tad. I still have a hunch the barrel is the weak link, it's as if it somehow can't stabilise every pellet. I might be imagining it but I think I've read the odd less than impressive remark about SmoothTwist before. I will keep us posted.

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Did you put it over a chrono. Reports I've read say in sub12ft lbs it's useless with the smooth twist but in FAC at the right speed it's very accurate. Seems to be very fps sensitive to get the best out of it.

 

It may also be damaging some of the skirts loading the pellet by what you saying it won't load first time from a new mag.

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Did you put it over a chrono. Reports I've read say in sub12ft lbs it's useless with the smooth twist but in FAC at the right speed it's very accurate. Seems to be very fps sensitive to get the best out of it.

 

It may also be damaging some of the skirts loading the pellet by what you saying it won't load first time from a new mag.

 

Didn't chrono it because it's meant to have a regulator but it would throw the odd pellet higher which was odd and threw some patterns lower than expected (hence being hard to zero). The thought of pellets being damaged did cross my mind but in theory shouldn't be possible because the lever failing to go forward should mean it hasn't made any contact with the pellet yet but in fairness I just don't know.

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Air guns experiment channel on you tube was shooting a FX and he couldn't find a pin point accurate pellet for the one he had. When you have all the usual too line pellets and struggle to get an accurate group rested something with the gun is amiss.

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Air guns experiment channel on you tube was shooting a FX and he couldn't find a pin point accurate pellet for the one he had. When you have all the usual too line pellets and struggle to get an accurate group rested something with the gun is amiss.

 

I resorted to the instruction manual at one point :lol: to see if there was a knack to how the mag is offered up to the port and was surprised to find the manual isn't even model specific but did see that they offer so called FX SmoothTwist pellets in 16/18 grain, would be interesting to try some of those but quite what they are meant to do is baffling.

 

Hopefully the importers do something more than just clean the barrel, don't fancy having to chase around finding someone able to fit a normal barrel or accurize it.

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The pellets are a bit different from the normal shuttlecock shape with no tapered waist and straight sides. Looks like you may have to get tins from 5.50 through to 5.55 and see what head size suits the barrel. Your tin of pellets may have had some size differences giving the flyers. Might need a bit bigger head size.

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The pellets are a bit different from the normal shuttlecock shape with no tapered waist and straight sides. Looks like you may have to get tins from 5.50 through to 5.55 and see what head size suits the barrel. Your tin of pellets may have had some size differences giving the flyers. Might need a bit bigger head size.

 

Yes all options are open but the idea behind ST is that they're meant to be unfussy pellet wise, as mentioned the AArms managed all those pellets a little better so the evidence seems to suggest otherwise at the moment.

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After owning a couple of smooth twist guns I have found that they seem to be about the same as normal rifling with regard to pellet sensitivity. My .25 FAC FX bobcat hates H+N possibly due to their lighter weight. But JSB exact are giving <1/2" groups at 45 yards.

To be fair to ASI when I sent my Verminator back and wasnt happy with the groups before it came back after they had gone over the barrel I did get test groups with several different pellet types.

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To be fair though Figgy I haven't benched mine at 100 yards the group quoted was off sticks under field conditions. As the pellet is 1/4 inch in size I felt a group of under 1/2 inch was good.

The ideal pbr for my Bobcat is 47 yards according to figures plugged into chairgun so that was the rough zero I set.

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Zetter not knocking your groups, was just saying that some air rifles seem to be so accurate, wonder why all are not the same, considering modern machining is so precise, they should all be spot on.

At 1/2" your not going to miss what you shoot at.

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I know what you are saying Figgy. The trouble is with the internet sometimes it doesn't a lot of the time allow for the nut behind the butt, unless you clamp a gun or put it on a dedicated rest there is still shooter interaction affecting the end result from pulse, beathing, trigger control ect.

 

I have read on a lot of the forums "this does pellet on pellet all day long ect" the trouble is I am not the worlds greatest shot and have only achieved this twice at 30yards putting 5 shots through a hole the same diameter as one pellet (I kept both the targets :)) despite owning over the years a fair few top end airguns from the likes of Daystate, Air Arms ect.

I am not saying this is the case with Hamsters gun as he obviously knows what he is expecting having shot other stuff before but I do wonder how many rifles go back or newcomers give up as they cant replicate the types of groups put together on some of the internet sites by people who have probably been shooting week in week out for 20 odd years or are shooting from a gun vice or lead sled.

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Zetter if your gun is pellet on pellet accurate, it takes that aspect out of the equation so even if your not the best shot you will still be more accurate with it than a great shot using a gun that isn't very accurate.

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I have the wildcat in .22 sub 12. I can put 8 pellets through a 5p hole at 35 yrds. However this was not straight from the box. I have found that the more pellets I have put through the better it gets. It has also been my experience that 16 grn 5.52 work the best. I have tried numerous pellets AA JSB and Daystate Sovereigns.In order of accuracy Sovereigns close 2nd JSB then AA.The AA gave me the fliers.

Edited by Esca
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Hope the pics come out OK, as mentioned previously the better erratic groups from the initial outing would be coverable with a 2p coin, having had a quick session with the returned gun I have now managed a few more decent groups. Both Exacts as well as AArm Fields can often be held inside a pound coin which is an improvement.

 

I still can't understand why the rifle is so reluctant to group Powapells because save for the one or three flyers the main body of the groups seem on the money ! I still think the weak link is the barrel configuration.

 

The best 5 shot group so far managed was with Exacts. I have managed to borrow a second hand Huggett silencer to see whether the extra weight aids bench rest stability, it certainly looks the part.

 

On the magazine front the jury is still out :|, it does load somewhat more easily now but a couple of glaring oddities/faults stand out. When fired and loaded from a stable position the rifle loads fine but if you tilt the rifle to fine tune the scope the lever suddenly stops loading :hmm: I repeated this several times to make sure I wasn't imagining it and sure enough it's a teething fault which I initially was going to return the rifle for but I'm going to wait and see for a while because having thought about it I believe the reason can be traced back to the clever floating hammer. It's annoying but you can live with it. The other odd omission is the fact that with the magazine having no marker whatsoever it is all but impossible to know how to insert it whilst making sure a pellet is picked up and pushed into the barrel unless of course it is full to capacity. This means that if for any reason you remove a magazine that is not yet fully spent the only sensible route is to load it back up - not something you want to be doing in the dark or generally out hunting or for that matter even on the bench rest.

 

If you read a test report on this rifle that doesn't mention these less than perfect traits :whistling: chances are either the writer isn't very knowledgable or reluctant to be critical.

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