Now There’s New .177 Caliber Airgun Slug BCs Available

Now there’s some new .177 caliber airgun slug BCs available in the Hard Air Magazine Ballistic Coefficients database. It’s the ultimate source of airgun BCs on the web!

The opportunity to make this test coincided with our review of the BRK Ranger XR2 Recon air rifle that arrived in the HAM offices. As this was in .177 caliber and specifically featured a “slug barrel”, we rounded-up all the .177 caliber slugs we had from H&N and JSB and ran this BC test.

In addition to four types of slugs each from these famous European manufacturers, we also included 12.6 Grain Daystate Howlers in our review. This was for two reasons…

Firstly, this was the slug type used by Airguns of Arizona to test the gun before sending it to us. Thus we were able to validate their test.

Secondly, we had tested these Howlers before and this gave us the ability to compare the old and new results. In fact, the BCs we recorded on both occasions were identical: the BC was 0.063. That proved the consistency of our test protocol.

Here’s how these .177 caliber slug BCs stacked-up…

As the “trend line” in following chart shows, broadly, the Ballistic Coefficient increases as the weight of the slug. Heavier slugs generate higher BCs. That’s not too surprising.

However we do see something interesting if we look at the manufacturers’ own Ballistic Coefficient claims. Here they are represented below.

It’s not surprising to find that the manufacturers’ BCs do not exactly match with the HAM-generated numbers.

All Ballistic Coefficients are notoriously dependent on the precise test protocol under which they are generated. That’s why I believe there is so much value in Hard Air Magazine BCs. They form the principal source for airgun BCs on the web because they use a strict, standardized test protocol which is applied to pellets and slugs from many manufacturers.

As we can see from the chart below, both JSB and H&N use their own test protocols. And both are different!

In all cases here, the .177 caliber airgun slug BCs generated by JSB are lower than the HAM BCs. Likewise, H&N BCs are all somewhat higher than our figures.

Again, this is not a slam on either manufacturer, it’s just confirmation that JSB, H&N and HAM all use consistent, structured BC test protocols that are slightly different from each other.

We’ll bring you a full HAM review on the BRK Ranger XR2 Recon air rifle in the near future.