"Uncle Don" strikes from the past

[Rover]

http://michaeljedelman.com/PDFs2Post/daisy717.pdf

NOW what's your excuse.

[tceva]

He could shoot x's with a potato gun.
great clip.
Alex

[jglenn]

still have my 717 with that very modification

worked pretty darn well

[thirdwheel]

I'm very thankful Don's writings have been able to be saved via the medium of the internet and available for us all to have the benefit of. His writings on vision has helped me out a lot, especially how he did not trust the accuracy of the lenses that had been made up so tested them with his own lensometer, this is a precision sport and vision is in the top draw of things to get right. I now have a lensometer and an accurate set of trial lenses to double check everything, and guess what Don was spot on and it took less than 30 mins to sort out a problem I had had for 18 months of an inaccurate lens causing front sight to go in and out of focus, right prescription poor quality control on lens.

[Bsquareng]

I am the proud owner of one of "Uncle Don's" well thought of 717 relatives, mine is a 747. When I first got it, I thought it to be horribly nose heavy and didn't like the "one size fits all" grip.

I am cross-dominant, so I made a new grip with 7 degrees of rotation about the vertical axis, a proper shelf for the middle finger, as much more grip angle as I could get, and a snug fitting palm shelf. Voila!! Somehow the pistol is no longer terribly nose heavy. The sight picture jumps around a lot less and even though muzzle velocity is still only about 365 fps, somehow the pellets land in the middle of the black just about as often as they do from my IZH-46M. Now, I like the Daisy a lot.

As far as the nose heavyness is concerned, the 747 balances about 15mm in front of the trigger. The IZH-46M balance point is over 30mm ahead of the trigger and everyone raves about the Russian. With a little grease on the sear, the 747's trigger is OK and adjustable to 510 grams or so. Not too bad. For about 15% the cost of a top PCP and a little effort one can have a pistol good enough for the limiting factor on scores to be the archer not the arrow.

[spektr]

My first air pistol was a 777, a wedding present from my wife when they were brand new on the market. I've added a 717 and just recently a 747. They dont see as much use lately as my P44 is sort of the go to pistol now. Everything about them is just a bit unrefined, but what a deal for the dollars. They will really reward a smooth shooter with a good hold because the velocity is so slow it seems to be in the barrel forever. They also dont go away quietly, I shot my PB with the 777 while I was figguring out my FWB P44, and it took a bit to out shoot it. I make it a point to shoot em every so often, and they still teach me things......