Bench rest with wadcutters?

[Heugher]

At my airgun club we hold an in-house competition with a twist.
It is benchrest 25 yards outdoor, using wadcutter flat head pellets using either .177 or .22. Using.22 the scores are marked on outer, and with .177 on inner rings.
For personal pride, I choose to use a springer, so currently shoot it with a Diana 56TH 177 producing 10ftlb (800 fps with 7g pellets) with a Sightron SII 36x42 scope.
I have sometimes witnessed the pellets' trajectory and believe it distorts during the last 5 yards, even in still conditions. I have tried several pellet weights and they all seem to jump about.
I suspect there's a balance between sufficient power to withstand the outdoor atmosphere, weighed against a wadcutter's inherent instability at that range. There is of course also a significant dollop of operator error...

My questions for the ballistically wise are:
1. Would a match rifle shooting at lower velocity say 550-700 fps calm the pellet down? A FWB 300s, FWB 600, or Anschütz 250 for example?
2. Should I give in from championing .177 spring or ssp and use a .22 pcp instead?

[lightning22]

I was pellet testing a new (to me) rifle the other day, part of the test pack was QYS Training wadcutters.

They weren't the best through the rifle which is just a shade over 11ftlbs, but certainly not the worst. When pushing the range out they were quite badly effected by the wind, so we're hitting in a horizontal line either side of the aim point. At 50 yds this was really quite marked.

[AdeC]

25 yards for a wadcutter is pushing it a bit. What results do other people in the competition have?

[Heugher]

25 yards for a wadcutter is pushing it a bit. What results do other people in the competition have?

The current winner uses a pcp but I'm not sure at what power level. I just wonder what is the best power to keep wadcutters on a straight trajectory. I haven't tried the QYS yet, so will give them a go.

[thirdwheel]

Shooting a LP50 pistol using R10's at 25m for standard pistol competition you will get a
group size of just larger than the one pellet indoors when testing and the pistol clamped in a pistol vice. A target pistol is set to put out less than 7.5 joules of energy which equates to about 5.5 ftlb in the old imperial measurement. It is not the power that is important but the consistency of the pistol or rifle - amount of air on each shot and the quality of the barrel, don't use cheap pellets no matter what you may think you get what you pay for.
But you are doing it for fun so improve what you can and just enjoy doing what you are doing, especially with a spring powered jobbie.

[Mark Palmer]

I shoot wadcutters out to 25 yards in my Anschutz 9015 that's a standard 6ft/lb gun, it will 6mm group 5 shots at that range indoors, with RWS R10s, I've found the QYS Training start to tumble at that range (teardrop holes), I mainly shoot in a 15yd competition and both the QYS and R10s will give sub 5mm groups at 15 yards. My 10.5ft/lb Ripley Elite will match the Annie at 15 yards with R10S but at 25 yards they make a real mess!! With streamlined 9.56gr, its sub 6mm.I conclude from this that Wadcutters "dont like it up em!" Lol,

[32:1]

Our local range introduced a silencer rule for all airguns which ruined my setup, and slowly reducing fps saw accuracy improve, and the hft5 was best at 9.75ftlb