X1 Pro Kit: Every Part, and the Setup Mistakes to Skip

The X1 Pro kit ships with everything to hang a moving steel target on a cable except the posts and the lumber. Three things in it cause most of the support calls: the remote is packed inside the foam and gets thrown away with it, the carriage makes a hissing noise when it is run off the line, and a motor plug can work loose in transit so one wheel does not spin on the first test. All three take under a minute to sort out once you know. The batteries arrive at 66 percent and take three to four hours to fill from empty, so the charging starts the day before the range day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBs5FZRhTDU

Watch: Everything Inside the X1 Pro Moving Target Kit (26:25) on YouTube. The kit in the video is a US federal purchase package, so it has a spare battery and a second charger that the base kit on the site does not. Everything else is the same.

Chapters in the video: 1:21 Unboxing: QC checklist and manual | 5:03 Kevlar cable vs steel cable | 5:45 Rubber straps and hand winch | 7:40 Hardware, antennas, tools and spacers | 13:11 Charging the batteries | 16:17 Installing the battery | 18:24 Function test and the motor-plug fix | 21:44 Attaching target lumber | 22:02 Swapping to the AR500 shield

What is in the box

• The QC checklist: every item in the box, the tests done, who packed it, and an internal tracking number for any issue later. Then the user manual with the assembly diagrams.

• Two spare pulleys. The pulleys sit slightly proud of the AR500 shield and can take a chip; a chipped one still runs, but two spares are in the box.

• The battery and its charger. The federal package adds a second battery and a second charger so a course can swap packs at night without leaving someone behind to babysit one charger.

• Two cables. Kevlar: cut with a knife, ties in knots, quick to set up, but it stretches a little, does not like sun, and the pulleys slip on it more. Steel, 1/8 inch: the cable for a run you leave up, and it needs the cable clips that come in the kit.

• Rubber target straps for hanging steel. High-powered rifle hits, a .308 or a .300 Win Mag, need the isolation the rubber gives so the carriage does not jump the line. Never screw steel straight to the lumber.

• A hand winch with its clip. A ratchet strap or come-along does the same job if you have nothing easy to screw the winch to.

• A 33 percent IPSC steel target to start on. The system is rated to 20 lb of steel; a first-time setup with a cable that is not quite level makes the top of that range hard to reach, so start small and work up.

• Timber bolts for the winch, one antenna for the remote and one for the carriage, three Allen keys, an 8 mm wrench for the cable clips, a 13 mm wrench for the top bolts, spacers for the AR500 shield with one spare of each length, and a parts bag: a pulley, two eye bolts, two D-rings, cable clips for the steel cable only, and wood screws for the target lumber.

• The carriage, the long-range directional antenna, the AR500 shield under the lip in the bottom of the box, two corrugated plastic target sheets, and the remote, which is sandwiched in the foam with its batteries already in.

First thing out of the box: the QC checklist, who packed it, what was tested, and the manual with the assembly diagrams.

Everything on the table before the first battery goes in.

Two cables. Kevlar for speed and knots, steel for a run that stays up.

Steel hangs from these, never straight off the lumber. The rubber is what keeps a .308 hit from jumping the carriage off the line.

The tool roll: Allen keys for the carriage, 8 mm for the cable clips, 13 mm for the top bolts.

The parts bag. The pulley is for running the cable from a low winch up to the top of a post.

The carriage as it ships, with the aluminum cover. The AR500 shield is in the bottom of the box.

The batteries

• They ship at 66 percent because of air-freight rules. Charge before the first day out.

• The charger looks like a laptop charger with a standard North American wall plug and pushes about an amp and a half, so a dead pack takes three to four hours. A lunch break does not fill one. Two packs is the answer for a full day.

• Run time is about an hour and a half, and it depends on use. Motor hold, which locks the wheels so the carriage cannot roll on a slack or sloped line, feeds current to the motors the whole time and eats the pack. Between shooters, park the carriage at the centre of the line and switch motor hold off; it almost never rolls from the centre.

• Never charge the pack while it is in the carriage. Pull it out: the male plug goes to the carriage, the female plug to the charger.

• The pack has a low-voltage cut-off. It does not slow down as it fades; it runs normally, then stops. That is the cut-off, not a fault. Green light on the charger means full, red means charging.

Putting the battery in and the first test

1. Flip the carriage, take out the four hand-wheel screws, and open the battery compartment.

2. Find the connector in the well, plug the pack in, and push it in. It is a tight fit by design.

3. Switch on. The motors jolt and a dim light starts to flash.

4. Screw the unlabelled antenna to the carriage and the labelled one to the remote. They are not interchangeable; strip the label and keep the white tab as the marker. Pull the antennas off for storage, because they are the weak point in the box.

5. Press the 1 m button on the remote, then 0. All three wheels should spin the same way. If one does not, look down at the three motor plugs before you do anything else; the foam pulls on them during shipping and one can unseat. Push it home and test again.

6. Do not test at 5 m or 10 m off the line. Off the cable the carriage hisses and can stop; on the cable it runs normally. The manual highlights this and people still call about it.

Four hand-wheel screws, the connector in the well, then the pack pushed in tight.

If one motor does not spin on the 1 m button, these three plugs are the first place to look.

Two more things from the box. The second hole below the antenna is a USB port for programming, not charging; nothing charges through it. And the kit carries spare motor leads with the plugs already on, plus heat shrink, for a field splice with a pocket knife if a lead is ever cut. The way to never need them is to hang the steel offset in front of the carriage, so the splash from the plate goes forward and not up into the electronics.

Target lumber and the AR500 shield

The lumber is a sacrificial piece that hangs below the carriage and carries the target. The large holes in the cover take a bolt; the small ones take wood screws. Most people leave the aluminum cover on. The carriage sits well above the target, and inside 50 to 100 yards a round has to be so high to reach it that it would be clearing the berm. The AR500 shield is there for the ranges that want it.

1. Take the top off with the 13 mm wrench.

2. Swap to the shorter spacers and their bolts. Place the bottom spacers first, lay the shield on, line up the holes, and drop the bolts through.

3. Never stack the shield on top of the aluminum cover. One or the other.

4. Put the top bolt back in. The cable passes through that top bolt when you hang the carriage, and the system should always run with it in. Bottom bolts snug, top bolt finger tight.

Shorter spacers under the shield, bottom bolts snug, top bolt in but finger tight.

One thing that is only in the video

The remote is hard to read through polarised sunglasses even at full brightness. It ships with a cover; take the cover off if you shoot in polarised lenses.

The kit is the X1 Pro (AR500). Standing the posts and running the cable is in Set Up a Moving Target System Without Digging Post Holes, and the earlier kit walkthrough is What's Inside the X1 Pro? Full Unboxing and Kit Breakdown.