Accuracy with Silencer Fitted

I've not had rifle for donkey's years though I have a number of pistols.  My wife eventually relented provided I joined a club and shot nothing live but wild rats. Fair enough though I have a sneaking admiration for the rat's survival instincts.  I bought the XS78 .22 on impulse as I have severe neck & back  problems (I'm a 59 year old retired Fire Officer) making me somewhat disabled and I needed something with little or no recoil and fairly light.  What a cracking piece of kit it is, though I find the outside temp a bit restricting on the CO2.  I'm hooked, so I'm trying to make it 'pretty' and started by enquiring about onw of Jon's brass biolts.  The stock has finished and polished nicely and the gun was pretty good out of the box anyway.  It shoots well now it's all bedded down.  The major problem I have is accuracy with the SMK silencer fitted.  Crosman Accupels are the only pellet that give anything like accuracy with it fitted - AGS Elites are good without the silencer but fly anywhere with it.  Is this a normal thing?  Or, is it just a poor silencer?.  

Why is it we have problems getting CO2 adapters for bottles in the UK?  I thought I had cracked it when Inchgreen said he could make me an adapter to use Sodastream CO2 bottles. Well I looked at a bottle in Tesco today and there is no way that is going to fit my gun with a straight adapter, it's 2" wide and HEAVY!  I think he must be confused with the xs79. I am trying to get hold of a MaxZbulk from Honolulu, the only problem seems to be how to actually pay the guy as he has no web site facilities for payment.  I'll get there eventually. I had heard that there were PCP conversions about and I notice that they have been alluded to in other threads.  Are they at the commercial stage yet?  I had been using Crosman 12g CO2 caplets but I bought 50 unbranded from Tyreinflators for about £16 delivered and put a couple of drops of Silicone lubricant in the reservoir and on the end of the caplets.  So far they seem to rate as the Crosmans which has brought down running costs considerably.

All in all I am very pleased with what appears to be a nice gun.  A little rough round the edges but it scrubs up well with a bit of TLC.  Importantly it shoots well.  On my first club outing I was hitting a 1" spinner consistently at 35 metres.  One or two of the other members were a bit slack jawed at it's performance and couldn't resist having a go.  I paid £69 for the gun and bought a 3-9x40 scope and a silencer.  The silencer is my only disappointment.  Given all this, why are these guns not popular in clubs?  Is it the 'designer label' syndrome and is the XS78 considered a bit of a 'Skoda' (with apologies to late model Skoda owners ) or is the temperature limitation with CO2?

[-=ed]

The "S" word is looked down upon in common discussion here, and discussion is sort of moderated concerning it. It is called a "moderator" or just a "mod" in Britain, and that might be a good habit to acquire when talking about such things. Just a suggestion.

[JMG]

Hmmm basically the QB78 is a chinese gun. And all the chinese airguns have gotten a bad rap because of their qaulity control. Most chinese airguns you buy you will have to tinker with out of the box to make them decent shooters. Once the tinkering is done for the most part they are about 95% of the gun that they were copied from at a much much lower cost outright. The QB78 is basically an exact copy of the Crosman 160. It has been around for a while now and the aftermarket pieces for it are very broad. There is a gent in the UK that specializes in Qb's and he is also a member here at the GTA. I would go to his website here, and wander around and look. Maybe even talk to Ian because he is a very knowledgable fellow about these guns. As far as HPA or PCP conversions there are several online companies that offer these services for the QB guns. Check out our GTA mall for links to these guys. I am glad you are liking your QB I like mine also its a fun little shooter that has gone beyond my expectations of Co2 guns.

John

[ribbonstone]

IF you were to remove the front sight of an AR2078...reverse it...re-pin...move the barrel weight forward...would end up with an odd gooved "spigot" sticking out from the front. Those gooves hold 0-rings just fine.

Which works out as a common PVC pipe has the right internal diamter to be a tight fit on those o-rings...tight enough that it's never moved in 1000's of shots.  Dirt cheap, easy to work with, and easily detachable.

Waht I've found is that so long as the weight hanging on the barrel is the same (and to a lesser extent, the length), the rifle shoots the same. that extra weight could help a particular pellet or hurt it...not unlike slapping a couple of ounces of lead to the muzzle of any rifle might do.  Empty hollow tube or as complicated on the inside as you desire.

[Big_Bill]

WELCOME Steven,

To the FRIENDLIEST AIR GUN FORUMS ON THE WEB !

If you go to this web site, you can see some of the adaptors available.

http://www.airgunartisans.com/flyingdragon/

I have just read that many barrels come from the factory are bent ?

I have also read that if the moderator is off center, the pellet can hit it and cause it to deflect, more or less depending on how hard it hits them.

Mike has a section for tips, some of the best information that I have read, I'll need to read it two or three more times to capture it all in my mind, check it out !

This fellow, Ian,http://www.qbtune.zoomshare.com/ , is outstanding, and he is in the U.K. and sells moderators. With luck he'll stop by and add his input.

[IJL]

Hi Steven and welcome.
I have a possible answer for you. Remove the Lead Dust Collector (This is a US site and their government is sensitive about things like the S word) and look through it. If there is an obstruction i.e. you cannot see a circle of light all the way through then it is an LDC that uses wipes and is not suitable for an air rifle as the pellet is too light and slow therefore gets deflected from it's path. The cure is to talk to Portland Jon about an LDC or if you want the rifle looking at I can measure, fit and test one of Jons while the other work is being done. There are a number of these LDC being sold here at the moment and it's far from the first one I've heard of.

We are still getting the PCP conversion right. Safety is a big issue and I dont need any clams from widdows and dependants due to a PCP converted rifle exploding so it has been re designed again and it going back to the machine shop for more work.
Chinese guns are not popular with some here in the UK but they can make great little guns with some effort. They'll never be Theoben, BSA etc but not those prices either.

Email  me if you want to talk about it, I know you know where to find me.     :emoticon:

Ian

[mikeiniowa]

Don't worry about the S word as long as you are in the UK, legal is legal....Ian help this chap out if you can OK ......it's most likely clipping the pells as they come out, a slight enlargement of the exit hole will help......a bit of crown work helps also......just a light smoothing is all they need most of the time

To -=ed.

What does "S" word mean, send me a PM, (I'm 57 years young, Ex-Marine) so I can take it?

Just do not want to say something inappropriate on the forum.

Roy, the "S" stands for a thing that one could put on the front of one's firearm, or in this case, airgun muzzle in order to make it be not as loud as if you didn't have it on there ;~D

Hope that helps.

Bryan