Precision airgunning is becoming more and more popular with shooters as some startling little-known facts are becoming more and more apparent. Firstly, it's fun. It's also the best practice you can get - airguns are extremely accurate and give much more feedback to the shooter to help develop the skills required for great marksmanship. It's convenient, there's no need to drive any distance to get to your local range. And it's a year round activity - unlike most shooting sports it doesn't matter if there's snow piled up outside.
So - helpful folk that we are here at PCE we have put together this page with everything you need to develop your own personal range - target traps, carriers systems, targets and pellets. If you have any further questions please contact us at info@pilkguns.com.

What You Need for a Home Range

1. At least 36 feet in distance.
2. Somewhere to hang a target trap.
3. Preferably peace and quiet.
4. Last but certainly not least - a SAFE environment for your family and pets. Ideally a range should be in a garage or basement, not where there is likely to be unsuspecting traffic.
Remember the 10 meters starts just in front of your foot and ends at the target face. Target center should be as close to 55 inches in height as practical. It's nice to have a bench to rest your gun and gear on (between shots that is), and if you don't intend installing a target return system, it's nice to have a spotting scope on the line.

Gehmann Rifle Target Trap, suits 10x10cm targets.

Gehmann Pistol Target Trap, suits 17x17cm targets.

Homerange v2.0 By using a manual target changer you can more closely simulate match conditions, as breaking a shooting cycle by walking forward to change targets is far from ideal. It also precludes the need for a spotting scope, as shot groupings can easily be checked by winding the target carrier back a few feet from the wall.

RIKA World Champion Target Return System

Targets

We stock Edelmann targets, which we believe to be the best available. Printed on the finest cross grain card it will punch clean clear holes, allowing easy scoring even with a loaded target.
As well as standard single bull targets we have a selection of strip targets to further reduce costs for home practice or club use. For full details of Edelmann targets see our complete

.

This is a typical factory test group from a match air pistol. Some factories will specify which pellet size was used, as well as brand of pellet.
This is the ten ring of an air pistol target - the inner ring is the x ring. Size is relative to both groups shown.
This is a relatively poor group shot from a rest, using a less-than-ideal pellet size for the pistol. As you can see, every shot would still easily break the x ring.

As long as we're talking good quality match pellets (such as H&N, RWS, Vogel, etc) even the worst grouping pellet will still easily hold the x-ring on a pistol target. This means that even a high level competitor is not likely to ever benefit much from batch testing to find the ultimate grouping pellet in his pistol. Having said that however, it's a nice feeling to know that your gun/pellet combination shoots a tight one-hole group, and the effort of testing for peace of mind could be considered time well spent, if only from a self-confidence point of view. But you should never have the illusion that it will make a noticeable difference to your scores.

Air Rifle is a little different, since a ten ring of .5mm makes the best possible accuracy far more important. Anything less than a tight slightly oval hole would mean perfect scores are not possible.

Just to further cloud the issue, simply knowing the diameter of the pellet used in the factory to shoot the best group does not mean your gun will always shoot the best group with that diameter. We see just as much variation between pellets of different batches, even if they are sized exactly the same. So you may well have one testing session when a 4.49mm .53 gram pellet may shoot the best. Twelve months later, with different batches, the winner could easily be a 4.50mm in .50 gram. There is no way of knowing in advance.

Our advice? By all means if you can test your gun easily, do so. If you shoot a pistol and have no way of testing it, stick to the factory test diameter and be happy. If you shoot something like an IZH, which comes with no test target, try standard sized good quality pellets and you will have great accuracy. Testing single stroke pneumatics and spring powered guns is very difficult anyway. But try to keep the whole concept in perspective, it's not worth losing any sleep over.

Training
Vogel Sport pellets, available in 4.49 and 4.50mm

Competition
Vogel Match Pellets;
Yellow - .50 gram for old single stroke pneumatics and spring powered pistols, available in 4.48, 4.49, 4.50 and 4.51mm Green - .53 gram for pre-charged pistols and all rifles, available in 4.48, 4.49, 4.495, 4.50, 4.51mm