A big week for the little .20 Ghost....
Sniper Class American Field Target at Extreme Benchrest
On Thursday I campaigned the JSB .20 Heavy (15.89) at the long range/high power version of field target at EBR. The Sniper class is .22 and below, but to the best of my knowledge I was the only competitor shooting a caliber other than .22. The .22/25.4grain Monster RD is the pellet of choice for long range .22 in high level competition such as this. Most people shoot those .22/25.4s in excess of 940-950fps, which puts them up around 50fpe. In contrast, the Ghost .20 pushes the 15.89s to 915fps for best accuracy, resulting in exactly 29.55 fpe. In other words, I was competing with 60% of the fpe as the rest of that class, the veritable "knife at a gun fight."
Surprisingly it went well for me, all things considered. There were a total of 40 shots, 8 of which were standing bipod.
On the first lane I lost one point, but didn't miss any kill zones. I watched the pellet fly into the middle of the desired impact point (kill zone). It was an aligator target around 50? yards, with a kill zone that was probably 2.5-3 inches across. For the Ghost, an absolute gimme, since it'll shoot 10 shot groups into dimes at that distance. This was my first inkling that I was going to have trouble with my measly 29.55 fpe. Simply not enough energy to knock down some of the targets. Score = 7/8.
The second lane was the 8 standing bipod shots. I clean missed three of them, two misses were on the same target... a maybe 1/2 inch kill zone at around 28-32yards. The third miss was the last shot of the lane, and wasn't a hard shot, I just pulled off of the kill zone as the trigger broke. So, 5/8 on the offhand lane. Going 5/8 on the offhand lane ultimately broke the 3 way tie, in my favor. Score at this point is 12/16.
The third lane had the longest targets. One of which was at 102 yards. I made it fall on one of my shots, and the wind got me on the second shot at that target-watched the pellet get pushed away from kill zone and impact the face plate. I also missed both shots on the 90ish yarder, last target on this lane. Clean misses, wind got me and pushed me out of kill zone to face plate hits. So now I'm up to 17/24, still happy that I've only lost one point due to not enough energy.
On the fourth lane I went 8/8. Cleaning this lane had me feeling my oats. The target I remember the most here was a howling coyote, seems he was around 80 yards. I had to hold left of kill zone for the first shot, and the wind switched and I had to hold right of kill zone for the second shot on him. Both were correct wind reads and he fell for both shots. Up to 25/32 now.
The fifth and last lane didn't go so well. Two of the targets would not fall, despite watching that pellet sail right into the kill zone multiple times. One of those two was the last target of the course and I still had my mulligan so I used it. I hit the kill zone of that target 3 times and it simply wouldn't go down. In field target if it doesn't fall, you don't get the points.
So, all said and done, official score of 29/40 with 5 points lost to bringing that knife to the gun fight (simply not enough energy). 6 absolutely clean misses. Based off kill zone hits, my score was a 34/40. Which would have been good for 2nd place in this class. The .20/15.89 has the accuracy and precision to hang with the .22/25.4grain Monster RD, but it has an obvious deficit when a certain threshold of fpe is necessary. Officially I was 5th out of 30 shooters.
Ultimate Field Target Night Match at Phoenix Rod and Gun Club
I ended the same day with another long range high power field target competition, across town at another shooting range. Slugs are allowed at this event and so I chose to run the .20/18.9grain NSAs, at about 875fps for roughly 32fpe. Also a possible 40 points in this match. 23 total shooters at this match, 17 pellet and 6 slug. I scored a 35/40, good for 3rd place in the slug class and also tied for the 3rd overall highest score. High score of the match and slug class was Thayne Simmons. Second place in slug and second high overall score was Steve M. Both of them are very talented shooters and I don't feel too bad about being beat by folks that shoot as well as they do. My 35/40 was enough to win a gift certificate to Utah Airguns. The 5 misses here were clean misses, all the kill zones I connected with made the target fall. Misses were due to unsteadiness in some cases and b/c I was looking at the wrong dope sheet for a couple of the shots. In a minimal wind situation I'm confident that the Ghost can shoot a clean 40/40 at one of these Ultimate FT matches, using the .20/18.9grain slugs. And I've not shot many gun/barrel/projectile combinations that have made me feel like a clean score at a UFT match is possible.
Pest Birds at The Dairy
I had some down time on Friday so met up with a buddy at a dairy for some bird shooting. I chose to run the .20/13.73s for the dairy shooting, obviously lots of cows around, but also buildings and equipment and simply b/c 19.5fpe is more than enough for such a situation. Furthermore, less fpe = more shots. In past dairy shoots, the volume of shots is almost unbelievable, so I knew lots of shots was what I wanted and needed for this. I shot a bunch of Euro collared doves, a handful of starlings, and a huge pile of pigeons. For the first hour or so I moved around a bunch, but the last hour was focused on pigeons. I'd gotten a couple out in the middle of a pen and the dead ones were decoying in more targets. Sat right there for an hour or so shooting bout as fast as I could load. At one point I scanned over the pile of dead pigeons, trying to get a tally. I lost count somewhere in the mid 70s. In roughly two hours I shot most of a 500 count tin of pellets. Which made me realize I've been vastly underestimating the shot count of the 19.5fpe tune with the 480cc bottle. I shot down from 240 to 200bar and refilled back up to 250, I then shot for the rest of the time on that single fill. So, I started with a mostly full tank (240bar) and for a total of 400-425 shots I filled only once. I'd estimate a full 250 fill, and shooting down to reg pressure of 128-130bar is netting me more like 200-220 shots @ 19.5fpe.
This pellet tin was full when I started at the dairy.
2nd Ultimate Field Target Night Match at Phoenix Rod and Gun Club
Saturday night was another UFT match. We had 14 shooters for this match, 8 pellet and 6 slug shooters. The wind was brutal this time around. Even with a BC up around 0.09, 20+ mile an hour gusts are hard for an airgun to contend with. I was only able to come up with a 27/40 this time, which was good for 2nd in slug class and 3rd high overall. Again Thayne Simmons was high score, and again my score was good for a gift certificate to Utah Airguns.
Conclusion
Over those 3 days I used all three "tunes" and enjoyed the heck out of the Ghost in a variety of situations. By simply spinning the hammer tension to desired setting I was able to shoot 19.5fpe for high volume shooting. 29.5 fpe with a high BC pellet for long range precision in a pellet-only competition, and finally for 32fpe with the slugs when competition rules allowed. That hammer tension adjustment was all that was needed. I used the same scope zero for all three scenarios. In fact, I have enough faith in the Ghost's ability to hold zero that I didn't even shoot any sighters for the EBR event. By having my dope sheet for each configuration pretty well worked out, it was easy peasy. The Ghost is good about that, producing repeatable fps when the available adjustments are repeated.
