EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!

Gary Wain witnesses test results that defy his predictions

Apre-Christmas order to my good friend, Tim, at Pellet Perfect has seen me stocked up with enough lead to start a small war, or as perhaps would be preferred, enough lead to facilitate my ballistic testing well into 2020, and as I get all my pellets from a single UK-based supplier as opposed to the manufacturers themselves, you can be sure that my tests are always totally unbiased.

This month, I will be looking at a range of .22 pellets from Serbian manufacturer, Power-Force. You might have come across these pellets before, and already have an opinion of them based solely on their price; certainly, they’re cheap, but that doesn’t mean they’re not any good. They were certainly good enough to hush a few nay-sayers who claimed that Tim had an unfair advantage because he owned Pellet Perfect and had access to better pellets. For his part, Tim took the brand at random, selected, weighed, sized and cleaned the pellets and then went on to take the crown at his club’s 2013 Bench Rest Championship with 200/200 x14, so they can’t be that bad can they!

THE CONTENDERS

As usual, starting with the lightest, the first pellet I’m going to look at is the 15.4gr Power-Force Sport. The Sport is a 6.3mm long, traditional-looking wadcutter. Viewed from the underside, the Sport has a narrow skirt thickness and a high waist.

The second pellet in the line-up is the 16gr Maxima – the pellet that took the bench rest Championship mentioned above. This domed pellet measures 7.6mm in length, and inspection under the magnifying glass shows it to be very well made. Like the Sport, it has a thin skirt and quite high waist, which should give it good stability. In fact, closer inspection shows the Maxima’s waist to be in exactly the same position as that of the Sport.