are modern pellets good enough?

[riku]

Modern pellets are basically the same design as they were around 100 years ago, just made more consistently and accurately on modern machinery. As a result of the design not changing they still have high drag giving low energy retention and poor wind behaviour and ballistic properties meaning that if the pellet and barrel are not a perfect match you get a shotgun group size.
Still, if shooters are happy to keep buying the same old stuff why should the manufacturers bother to change anything?

Well said. That is changing though as long range shooting gains popularity in USA and other parts of the world. We already have gun manufacturers coming out with guns designed to shoot lead bullets at long range.

[Steyr]

There is simply no better material than a quality lead pellet. Alloys..tin...copper.....they just dont come close. Tins are fine...its the transportation and poor handling thats the issue
Crossman used to see in cartons with lots of foam and I wouldnt have said the defects were any more than a std tin of JSBs if shipped right.
ANY projectile HAS to like the barrel and that can be purity of the lead. Design and shape of the projectile.. length head size skirt shape weight ballistic coefficient head size to name but a few. Damaged skirts get 11.5 FPE shoved up so unless its mauled I dont think its a huge game changer. I try to avoid an oval skirt more the due to the fact the head may also be damaged rather than anything 180 BAR cant blow out a skirt to the lands.
Lead is king. Long live the king in this arze ole world we live in where everything is cotton wool and dictats that tell me what is good for me or what isnt. Well #$@€ that.

[angrybear]

Well said. That is changing though as long range shooting gains popularity in USA and other parts of the world. We already have gun manufacturers coming out with guns designed to shoot lead bullets at long range.

Yes, but not at sub-12
at sub-12 the diabolo/shuttlecock shape is still best.

[ballisticboy]

Yes, but not at sub-12
at sub-12 the diabolo/shuttlecock shape is still best.

Sub-12 or over 12 makes no difference. A subsonic projectile doesn't care if it is over or under 12. Aerodynamic overturning moments don't really care what the muzzle energy is either. The main problem with bullets for air rifles has been the low twist rates and the fact that most of the inventors have not known what they were doing. The design of a successful bullet shape requires the correct balance of aerodynamic and inertial moments coupled with a long wheelbase for inbore behaviour. To design such a projectile needs a knowledge of aerodynamics and ballistics which all too often has been sadly missing resulting in poor designs leading to missleading assumptions on families of projectiles.

[Muskett]

The above may have some truth but what has been made, well the designs that keep selling, do their job well enough.
10m pellets are capable of Olympic level of pellet on pellet.
25 practical able to do tight one hole in ideal conditions.
After that many are suited to the barrel and "hold it there".
There is only so much that can be done at these velocities which are mighty slow. Anything more would be minor.

To get more out of barrel and pellet would take a massive cost in development with minor improvement. Sure the consumers have to put up with what is offered but what is offered isn't that shoddy. A well matched combo will out shoot the shooter. That odd rogue pellet is barely worth anyones cash to remove.
There has been progress and pellets have never been better. They will get a tad better over time. However, progress will come as machinery and manufacturing techniques improve elsewhere and just filter down to the small gun market. I can't see some great leap coming in barrels and muitions anytime soon. Just slow small increments of improvement. What we have is pretty good already. We aren't yet going to be shooting lasers anytime soon.

Improved barrel and rifling to match improved pellet design to match velocities. All thre to get a tiny improvement. Shooters can't even decide which velocity they require. Gets expensive to fine tune it all for one of several markets.

[ballisticboy]

The above may have some truth but what has been made, well the designs that keep selling, do their job well enough.
10m pellets are capable of Olympic level of pellet on pellet.
25 practical able to do tight one hole in ideal conditions.
After that many are suited to the barrel and "hold it there".
There is only so much that can be done at these velocities which are mighty slow. Anything more would be minor.

To get more out of barrel and pellet would take a massive cost in development with minor improvement. Sure the consumers have to put up with what is offered but what is offered isn't that shoddy. A well matched combo will out shoot the shooter. That odd rogue pellet is barely worth anyones cash to remove.
There has been progress and pellets have never been better. They will get a tad better over time. However, progress will come as machinery and manufacturing techniques improve elsewhere and just filter down to the small gun market. I can't see some great leap coming in barrels and muitions anytime soon. Just slow small increments of improvement. What we have is pretty good already. We aren't yet going to be shooting lasers anytime soon.

Improved barrel and rifling to match improved pellet design to match velocities. All thre to get a tiny improvement. Shooters can't even decide which velocity they require. Gets expensive to fine tune it all for one of several markets.

At 10m the dominant factor is going to be the pellet barrel interface and the quality of the launch of the pellet as the aerodynamics will have insufficient time to make any corrections to the initial conditions. 10m is only equivalent to about one precession yaw cycle. The nutation cycles should damp out somewhat but they appear to have little effect on the impact point at the target.
25m will give time for the aerodynamics to effect flight but, under ideal conditions and with a perfect launch brought about by finding the ideal pellet for your barrel, there is nothing for the ballistics to correct. It is under less than ideal conditions such as variable wind speeds and directions etc. that projectile aeroballistics can make appreciable differences. At distances from 35-50m the potential improvements increase and may not be a minor improvement. Improving the machinery and manufacturing techniques will not change the basic ballistic properties of the diabolo pellet which will remain poor, so in this case I would agree with you that improvements will be small. That would be the engineering approach to the problem.
What is needed is a scientific as opposed to an engineering approach, but, while consumers are prepared to put up with poor wind performance, the odd fliers and the need to continually test pellets to ensure the pellet barrel matching it is simply not going to happen.

[Muskett]

Its not going to happen soon. The old guntrade is slow to brimg changes. Consumers too don't exactly rush to take up new ideas either.
It really depends who comes up with something better, the gun makers or the shed tinkerers. Then if found will it be taken up??

A slow old process this progress thing. Heck plastic black rifles still get grief!

[Geezer]

Its not going to happen soon. The old guntrade is slow to brimg changes. Consumers too don't exactly rush to take up new ideas either.
It really depends who comes up with something better, the gun makers or the shed tinkerers. Then if found will it be taken up??

A slow old process this progress thing. Heck plastic black rifles still get grief!

That’s all true.

The diabolo lead round head pellet has longevity. Within certain parameters, it functions well. Quality (and therefore accuracy) reached a new level about 25 years ago with the early Premiers. Modern JSB and similar are only a small improvement.

Every attempt to create improvements through pellet design alone (Sabo, Prometheus, Defiant, “NATO” bullet, etc) has either failed utterly, or produced a projectile that varies (most of them) from inferior to nearly as good, but not quite. In all cases, more expensive than lead round heads.

The problem, I think, is that better performance would need not just different projectiles, but different barrels (twist, especially) and probably actions. The large-bore high-power stuff in the US is showing the way. But it would be a bold maker that brought in a new mass market sub-12 gun that only worked well with a proprietary projectile, and badly with conventional pellets. In addition, you might well find that such a thing was over 12 ft-lbs, albeit inaccurate, with lightweight diabolos. Catch 22.