About how my Pneuma wasn't selling, now I'm thinking maybe that was a good thing. After all the stuff I've done to it, this is a SWEET rifle! I really haven't shot it much at all since replacing the stock and finally fixing the air leak, so today, I made the time to rectify that situation.
First, the trigger is even better than I remembered, tiny bit of slack, then a crisp, clean break at probably a little under two pounds. Did some groups with a few different pellets, JSB Heavies were NOT good, around an inch at 25 yards. CPH's and Eun Jins were okay, around 1/2" or a little less. But the big surprise was JSB Exacts! Ragged one hole groups were the norm, but what really got me going was the fly. One landed on my target, so I decided to try to hit it. I've tried before, but I think I've only ever hit one. Anyway, bug guts all over the target, nailed it. Giggled, then went back to my groups. Pretty soon one of his cousins showed up for a free meal of fly guts, and just added to the mess. Hey, one is luck, two a coincidence, but of the 7 I shot at today, I got 5. At 25 yards. Hey, that's good shooting in anyone's book :-)! What really makes it amazing, though, is the velocity. Average velocity for a 20 shot string was 1030 fps, for just under 20 fpe! I've had Kodiaks tolerate that kind of velocity and still give good accuracy, but not that good. And the EJ's averaged 828 fps for about 24.5 fpe. Actually, the EJ's aren't as good as I'd expected them to be in this rifle, but they're still nothing to sneer at.
And from the looks of my shot graphs, I had the fill pressure wrong on both pellets. 3000 psi for the EJ's was too high, I had some valve lock, and at 20 shots, it was just starting to hit the peak. Filled to 2700 for the Exacts, but that was too low, it was dropping almost from shot 1. So somewhere between 2700 and 2800 psi should be just about perfect.
After today, I only have two questions in my mind about this rifle. The first is, did my fix on the air leak hold? Don't know yet, after I fixed it, I filled it to 2K psi and let it sit. The needle on the gauge didn't budge in over a week, but I hadn't shot it or run it up to full pressure. Did that today, now I need to wait and see if it held.
The other question is, why the hell did I want to sell this rifle!? Oh, yeah, I wanted a high power .22 repeater. Well, that's covered by the Evanix Renegade I have on the way, so it looks like this one goes back in the rack. I've checked with Umarex for parts cost to turn this into a .22, pretty easy change and the parts total around $100. I suspect this would be even better as a .22, but for now, I have no more issues with it as a .177. Later.
Dave
