Spraying gel with Preval sprayers

[US1Fountain]

I removed 2 vhf antenna mounts and am trying to spray gel with the Preval sprayer to finish the repair. Work is being done with the boat in my slip. 1st attempt was with new gel thinned with styrene at 10%. It more or less just spit the gel out for a 60 grit texture and I couldn’t get a nice even coat down. Didn’t take much effort to sand but I went too thin in a spot so I reshot it with the styrene at 15% thinking 10% was to thick. 2 nd attempt the sprayer wouldn’t even shot. Tried 2 new sprayers, nothing clogged, gel still liquid. With the gel being painstaking color matched and my last amount, I had to brush it on before the gel would start to gel in order to save the batch. I have another spot elsewhere m going to regel once I get the gel tinted to match that area and would like to attempt the sparayer use again. What am I doing wrong that the Preval isn’t working for me? I see numerous stories saying they use the sprayer for gel without these issues for small spot repairs.
Thanks