Well, spent the morning setting up my new .22 Discovery. Took her out of the box, unwrapped her gently and spent some time cleaning her up. The stock is nice, no dents or scratches and I really like the grain and color of the stain. The bluing is pretty good, not the best I've ever seen but pretty good. I did have a couple of tiny fine lined scratches on the air tube right near where the barrel band is attached,,,, it appears as though they happened when the barrel band was installed. But to be honest they are very tiny and they don't really bother me,,, especially since I bought the rifle to take in the woods hunting and she's gonna no doubt get a scratch or 2 eventually anyway. Other than that the rifle is in great shape. I'm very happy with the QC. After that was done I put the pump together. I got the 3x9x32 AO Leapers scope off the shelf that I had saved for her, but I figured I'd better charge her up to 2000 psi and make sure all was okay before installing the scope. I had pumped up the rifle at Cobra Airguns yesterday so I knew the process, but all did not go as planned.
It took exactly 100 pumps to get to 2000 psi and it really wasn't bad at all. I was worried that the herniated discs in my back would object to the task, but it didn't bother my back at all. I slowly opened the bleeder valve as instructed to let out the residual pressure in the pump hose and instead of the residual pressure in the hose bleeding off all 2000 psi in the gun bled of too !! :(
I stood there in amazement, and not too happy, but I figured I must've done something wrong so I hooked up the pump again and pumped the rifle up to 2000 psi a second time. When I was done I again slowly opened the bleeder valve and again all 2000 psi bled out of the rifle. I re-read every page of the instructions and tried the procedure a 3rd time,,,,, and had the same results. Now I was really unhappy !! :(
I made myself calm down and called the Crosman service # listed in the owners manual. I was pleasantly greeted by a very nice woman named Angel,,,, yup, that was her name and she turned out to be just that !! :)
She went through the problem with me, then asked me if I minded being put on "hold" for a few minutes while she conferred with a service technician. I told her no problem. In about 2 minutes she came back on the line and told me that the service technicians had heard of a few customers having the same problem I was having, although they said they hadn't been able to re-create the problem during their ongoing research. The good news was that they said that they had found out that instead of opening the bleeder valve slowly, like the instructions say to, they recommended opening the valve quickly all the way and that should correct the problem. Sure enough, they were right. I tried it their way 2 or 3 times, opening the bleeder valve quickly and all the way, and it worked perfectly. I was VERY impressed not only with their quick solution to my problem, but also with the professional, polite way I was treated.
Now that I knew the rifle, and pump, were working I went ahead and mounted the scope. Everything went well, scope went on with no problems and I was very satisfied with the overall feel of the rifle with the scope mounted. The rifle is very light and the added weight of the mount and the scope just made the rifle feel better to me. The only thing left to do was sight her in, so I decided to take a ride to the duck farm to do that since the rifle is just a tad bit loud for repeated shooting in my back yard. My neighbors don't mind that I shoot, but the rifle is louder than my springers and I'm not looking to annoy such nice neighbors, so off to the duck farm I went.
Conditions at the farm were far from optimal for sighting in. There was a really stiff wind howling through the farm and it was rather cold, but I set about doing the best I could. I started at 10 yards, with a target pinned on a dead pine tree, and quickly got the rifle on paper using CPL's. I backed off to 25 yards and started shooting for bullseye, making scope corrections as I went. Didn't take long until I had the rifle shooting pretty decent groups but I could tell the wind and the cold were effecting my shooting. I brought only 2 types of pellets with me, CPL's and CPH's, so I thought I'd try the CPH's. I immediately saw the groups tighten up on the target,,,, seems the rifle really likes the CPH's. Ok with me,,,, I have tons of em and I like them for hunting. :) I did the best I could sighting her in for the CPH's considering the wind and cold, but I got to the point where I was satisfied that it was as good as it was gonna get today so I screwed the caps on the scope turrets and headed off to find a critter to to shoot at.
Well, I roamed the duck farm for an hour and 1/2 but simply could not find any pests to shoot at, so I settled for a couple of old soda cans. At distances from 10 yards to 30 yards I was killing soda cans like they were going out of style. I finally gave in to the cold and headed home. I'm looking forward to a nice calm, windless and warm day so I can take my time and sight in the rifle proper,,,, but I'm very pleased with the rifles performance during todays short field shooting session. I still have more shooting and testing to do of course, but so far I think this rifle is going to be just perfect for what I bought her for,,,, small game hunting. On my next sighting in session I'll set up the chronograph and see what kind of numbers she gives.
I took a bunch of pics of the rifle before I went to the duck farm. She looks so pretty with her new scope :)
Jeff
