Tyler is reviewing a real showstopper this week, the Athlon 8x34 Argos with its first focal plane illuminated etched reticle. This advanced feature means your reticle zooms as you zoom in on your target, meaning you never have to change your holdovers at ANY magnification! Who wants to adjust when you can zoom and boom perfect shots all day long?
Athlon 8-34X56 Argos FFP Rifle Scope Transcript:
Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder, I’m Tyler Patner. Today we're going to be taking a look at a brand new scope offering here on Pyramyd Air, the Athlon Argos 8-34x56 rifle scope.
So as I said guys, Athlon optics is brand new to us here at Pyramyd Air and the cool thing about Athlon is that they have first focal plane scopes, and this is the first time we've had first focal plane optics here at Pyramyd Air, all of our other stuff has been second focal plane with the exception of an oddball entry into our lineup here and there, but the vast majority of the stuff is second focal plane, and we'll discuss what the differences are, but right now let's just go over some of the features of the Argos 8-34x56, so starting at the back of the scope, notice we have some rubberized flip covers, they seem pretty sturdy haven't had any problems, you get one for the back and the front of the scope. And underneath that, we do have a fast-focus eyepiece to bring the reticle into focus for your eye. Also at the rear of the scope, you notice we have an 11 step rheostat, basically your illuminated reticle feature. 11 steps of brightness. It is read-only and we will show you exactly what parts of the reticle get illuminated. It's pretty much the vast majority of the reticle, it's a very nice feature and they've done it very well in this particular scope. You don't get any flashing around the outside or anything like that so it's really, really solid. And just up in front of that, we do have our magnification ring. And you'll notice they do have this extended piece right here, give you something to grab onto when you're going ahead and making those adjustments. Goes from a low setting of eight times the naked eye all the way up to 34. So something to that will be checking out here is seeing how much darker it gets on that 34 times magnification setting. The Argos BTR is built on a 30-millimeter monotube, all aluminum of course, and talking about our adjustments or windage in our elevation, it is quarter MOA adjustments and you get about 60 minutes of adjustment for the entirety for both the windage and the elevation, so that's about five revolutions with both. So 12 minutes per turn. Then on the left-hand side of the scope we have our parallax adjustment, obviously side parallax adjustable. Nice and smooth operation goes down to 15 yards on that 34 times magnification setting. Doesn't go all the way to 10 but 15 certainly good enough for what most folks are doing, especially with something that they has the capability of 34 times magnification. Overall the Argos is a pretty heavy scope, about 32 ounces. So take that into consideration when you're thinking about what gun you're putting it on. But up at the front here we do have our front flip cover, which is nice and tight, also plastic but seems to be working very well. And a 56-millimeter lens on the end there, so it's gonna definitely require high mounts for most guns, so something to consider as well when you're thinking about how you're mounting it. We do have it on an Ataman M2R here, the tactical carbine in .25 caliber which we're gonna be reviewing at a later date for you guys, but I thought this would be a nice combo, as this is gonna be a gun you're definitely gonna be doing some long-range shooting with probably. So wanted to mount a first focal plane scope on there. And really when we're talking about first focal plane just so you guys understand. The only difference between a first focal plane and a second focal plane scope in terms of the physical scope itself, not how it works but the scope itself. On a second focal plane scope, the reticle’s housed back here, okay. On a first focal plane scope, the reticle is actually housed up at the front of the scope. So that's why you get that first focal plane effect which we'll take a look at here in just a second. But before we get to that, let's take a look at the reticle itself, it's a very unique glass etched reticle, and then we'll head out to the range, do a box test for you guys, and show you the real difference between first focal plane and second focal plane in terms of what you're gonna be seeing. Let's check it out. Checking out the ATM our first focal plane reticle closely you guys will notice right away that the 8x image and the 34x image look distinctly different, and that's because on a first focal plane reticle, your reticle scales with the magnification so as you zoom in you get a more zoomed image of the reticle as well. now on this particular reticle we have two MOA markings and that's all of those hash marks regardless of what side of the centerline they fall on. So basically two inches per marking in a hundred yards. Now one of the features, outside of having a lot of markings, that I really like about this reticle is that suspended plus sign right in the center. It gives you a nice focused point to aim at when you're dead center. But the cool thing about first focal plane and the reason first focal plane is so significant is because the reticle scales with magnification, your holdovers are never going to change regardless of the magnification that you're using. So let's show you what that looks like compared from a second focal plane scope to a first focal plane scope, check this out.
So we're taking a look through a second focal plane rifle scope here, and you'll notice it has a half mil dot reticle so we have the hashes and then the dots and that will come into play a little bit later on, but we're gonna go ahead and confirm our zero at twenty yards on 8x. And you see we've put two shots basically right through the black on that target, so we know we're zeros twenty yards. Now where the second focal plane difference comes into play is when we go out to 45 yards, so we'll go ahead and take two shots here, and you'll notice we're about a hash mark low and a hash left. Now I left the scope not centered intentionally so that you could see it when we go ahead and hit that target. So with that hash low hash left setting on 8x, we go ahead and crank to twelve, and you notice how all of a sudden with a little bit more magnification our adjustment using a mil dot holdover is going to take now a hash and a half. So we're going to be between that first hash mark and that first mil dot on 12x, and then when we crank it back out to 3x we're only a half a hash mark away. So you can see how as we change the magnification even a little bit, our holdovers are changing pretty astronomically to the point where you may miss a target at that distance if you use the wrong hold. So very important to note. I'm gonna go ahead and use that hash low hash left hold on a 8x and you'll see I'll put one just to the right, but definitely in the center of that bullseye, which would be a kill zone on any of your small game animals at that 45 yard distance, but you can see we do have to compensate quite a bit, you know almost two and a half inches almost at that 45 yard distance compared to our 20 yard zero, and that's never gonna change but when we go ahead and crank it back up to 12x, now I have to hold even a little bit more a hash and a half to go ahead and put another pellet right through that center bull. So now with our first focal plane Athlon scope in this APMR reticle we're gonna start out on 20 yards with a 20x setting on the scope. Now we're gonna put two shots into the bull just to confirm we're zeroed. So same zero distance as our second focal plane scope, so we should experience the same two and a half inches of drop roughly at that 45-yard mark. Going out to 45 yards that's exactly what we see. Two shots of 20x confirm we're about two and a half inches low of our center and we're just off to the right. Now I'm gonna go ahead crank that scope up to 34x, and as we go ahead and magnify that image you can see we're zooming in on the reticle as well, so everything is scaling together which is exactly what you are gonna see out of that first focal plane scope. So our holdover which is about two to three hash marks low, doesn't change regardless of the magnification. So cranking that on in, now we're gonna hold just off to the left of that bull to compensate for being a little bit to the right and between the second and third hash mark, and we're gonna put that pellet dead center. That's the beauty of a first focal plane scope, no matter what magnification you're on, your holdovers never change. It really gets no easier than that when you're talking about being out in the field and having to use holdover for a target.
For those of you that don't know, a box test is performed to see how well the scopes clicks are tracking. Basically to make sure that everything is as it should be. So the Athlon has a quarter of an MOA adjustment, which at 25 yards, which is where we're shooting, equals one-sixteenth of an inch in terms of actual movement. So we're gonna adjust things 24 clicks per adjustment. So we're gonna take two shots on just 24 clicks two shots and other 24 clicks in the other direction. So we're gonna create a box here is what we're doing, and you see that taking shape now. What we're looking for is an inch and a half between those groups and that is exactly what we have with this Athlon scope, which means it's tracking perfectly. So this box test is a success. All right guys the Athlon Argos BTR 8-34, I'm taking this one home with me. A very nice scope for the money, at a sub $400 price point, guys a lot of magnification, pretty nice glass, a really slick reticle, and first focal plane. You're not gonna find that many places so. Box tested like a champ, obviously going down to 15 yards you got to know that going in. And it's a little on the heavy side, but overall really impressed with this scope at the price point. If you haven't tried a first focal plane scope before I would definitely recommend getting your hands on one, particularly for the hunters out there, you know if you guys have ever had to screw with having multiple range cards for different magnifications, and all that, you know, they know your holdovers, that is over. Okay first focal plane is the way to go. So definitely check it out on pyramydair.com, for the Insyder I'm Tyler Patner, we'll see you guys at the next one.
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The Air Venturi Power Booster creates independence from conventional fill sources. Finally, freedom from the SCUBA shop! The Power Booster is capable of operating in conjunction with an existing shop compressor to provide up to 4500 psi
Air Venturi Power Booster Transcript:
Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder, I’m Tyler Patner. Today we’re going to be taking a look at a brand new product for filling your PCPs from Air Venturi, the Power Booster. Now, the Power Booster’s pretty unique, this is a very interesting new product from Air Venturi for two reasons. One because they just came out with a compressor, so wasn’t really sure where this was gonna fall, but after using it, I think you guys are gonna be pretty impressed. This is a booster, as the name suggests, not a compressor, so a stand-alone compressor is just that, a stand-alone unit, you plug it into the wall, it is capable of generating up to 4500 PSI, and we know the Air Venturi one operates very quickly, you guys have seen it in use in our PCP 101 videos. Now, the Booster though, this is a very intriguing product. It does not require electricity, most of the other boosters on the market do require electricity so that’s a very nice feature here that you don’t need. All that this requires is first stage input. So what I mean by that is a shop compressor that’s capable of generating 60-90 PSI and hopefully a flow rate of 5 SCFM or more. So this unit is gonna be perfect if you already have a shop compressor, but maybe can’t afford to get up into that price point of a stand-alone compressor and that’s really where this falls in. Obviously it’s gonna operate a little bit slower than a standard stand-alone compressor unit, but still a very manageable piece of equipment that is very simple to operate. So let’s check out what all comes in this package. So going over the parts of the booster, you obviously have your on/off switch, your output adjustment screw, as well as your air pressure gauge on the top of the unit. And just so you guys know, the gauge does read in PSI and bar, which is a very helpful thing.
Looking at the front of the unit, you guys will notice there’s a lot going on here. The first thing I want to point out is in between the oil feed there and the moisture filter on the input is your oil plug screw, and we’ll show you what that is needed for in just a second. But very important to note that so you’re not trying to twist off the bottles or anything. We do have a male intake connector, just like you’d find on a you know any of your air tools that you’re trying to plug into your shop compressor at home. Then you have an input gauge as well, which is going to tell you how much pressure is coming into the booster, and then when it’s operating, it will also tell you how much pressure is being used per stroke, which is also a nice little interesting feature. You’ll also notice on the front of the unit we have a fill hose as well as a female quick disconnect fitting, and in that female quick disconnect fitting you’re going to find a test plug as well. And the reason that there’s a test plug in there is so you can calibrate the unit for other PSIs outside of that normal kind of 3,000 PSI range, you might be filling a gun too. And of course, as well you’re gonna have your bleed valve. And on the sides as well as the top, you’re gonna have a couple of handles, so if you want to carry it on the sides or on the top. The unit is about 23 pounds in total, so you do have a few different options for transporting. First thing we’re gonna do is take a flat head screwdriver, and go ahead and loosen up that oil plug screw. Now the booster comes with a little bottle for oil. Now you’re going to want to get that full compressor oil, is what we’re recommending in here. Just gonna go ahead and fill that up halfway or more. Now obviously you don’t want it to overflow, you can’t fill it too much, as long as you keep it in there. And then you just go ahead and tighten that screw back down turning clockwise until it’s nice and tight. Alright, so looking at our output adjustment, the Allen key is going to come with the booster unit, and you’ll notice your booster is going to come preset at 3,000 PSI, give or take 10% at the factory. Now you will also notice that the markings on the outside, the 2,000, 3,000, and 4,000 marking are approximations. So that is good to know. And also the nice feature that this has is it's going to dead end at 4500. So not only is it going to come preset at close to 3000, but it’s gonna dead end at that 4500 mark. So, again, approximations on the outside, what you’re gonna want to do is once you get that setting found, for whatever pressure you’re trying to fill to whether it be 3,000, 2,000, 4,500, go ahead and make a little mark on that outside grey ring there so you always have that quick reference point to go back to adjust your output.
So the first thing we’re going to do is make sure the on/off switch is pulled up to the off position before we go ahead and put pressure in. Next, you’re going to attach your hose from the air compressor to the male input fitting on the booster. And you see that gauge actually come to life there, um once we have air pressure flowing in, we have about 75 or 80 PSI coming in, again, anything in between 60 and 90 is gonna be more than enough. And then you’re gonna wanna make sure your bleed valve is closed, just hand tighten that’s all you need. Then we’re gonna go ahead pull back the collar on the quick disconnect fitting on the end of the hose, make sure it’s nice and tight on the end of the gun, and that the collar is forward. You notice that we’re starting at about 170 bar on this fill and it’s a 500 cc tank and you see how quickly the air pressure in the hose builds to match the pressure in the gun, and obviously sped up quite a bit here, but gonna come in just under 4 minutes, and we’ll see that on/off switch pop up when it’s ready. Then we’re gonna go ahead and bleed the pressure in the line. And then simply disconnect your hose, pulling the collar back on the quick disconnect fitting on the end of the hose. Alright, so you guys have seen it, this filled the Sumatra with no problem from about 170 bar all the way up to 200 or so, pretty quickly, about 4 minutes, you know topping off guns this guy’s gonna be perfect. It can also do your small bottles, big bottles, it has that capability as well, obviously it’s going to take quite a bit longer with the larger cylinder size you go to, but overall, pretty stout unit, functions well. As long as you have a compressor at home that’s capable of that 60 to 90 PSI and 5 SCFM, you are gonna be good to go. This unit is gonna make your life a heck of a lot easier. So check it out on pyramydair.com, for the Insyder, I’m Tyler Patner, we’ll see you guys at the next one.
Tyler was just about to box the Galahad back up for its return trip to joy old England when he realized he promised to run this airgun through a test of its three different power settings. Boy, are we glad he did!
Air Arms Galahad Power Level Testing Transcript
Hey guys welcome to the Insyder I'm Tyler Patner. Today we're gonna take another look at the Air Arms Galahad. You see I've had this gun at my desk for maybe uh wow since we reviewed it basically. I've been using it for pest control you know around the house, I've been shooting it here on the range, been doing a lot with it and it's just a fun gun that I really enjoy shooting. But I realized as I was packing it up to send it back today that we promised you guys a video doing medium and low power shot string results. So we are gonna head out to the chronograph make sure we get you guys those results. So let's head out and see what it does.
Alright guys so we came out here to the range and I figured you know what doing the chronograph testing just is not enough. You guys need to see if this gun's accurate on that medium and low power setting. Now I really don't expect it to be super accurate all the way at 45 yards forward and shoot it at that distance anyway on low power. I expect medium power to still be pretty good with these JSB 18s but I'm certainly expecting that that low power is gonna fall off considerably, you want to use a lighter weight pellet so. Let's do some shooting and see what happens.
Alright guys, down here 45 yards we'll check out our group. The medium power group at about 22 foot-pounds for five shots still do a half inch, does about the same thing that the gun does on high power. So very good grouping. Then dropping it down, the low power though obviously, things opened up considerably with our five shots landing in about an inch and a half group low. But what I think is really interesting is between that medium and that low setting if we're using our whole point at the center of this target, you're looking at about just over 23 inches so almost two feet of drop between that medium and that low power setting. And obviously with that group opening up this is gonna make that low power setting really and maybe a 10 to 20 yard setting for most folks. You know a basement usage type of thing or close range in the backyard so. A very interesting results so definitely still viable on that medium power for small game hunting and all that so. Obviously, the Galahad has got a little bit everything, now let's head back up to the range and chronograph, and you can see how many shots we can get.
Starting with the medium power results, you can see we're writing about 22 foot-pounds with those JSB 18 grain heavies. And you're talking about 60 shots with you know sub 10 foot per second spread. It's really impressive numbers off this regulated Galahad and now for 250 bar fill you know to be able to use that down to about 125 bar, it's gonna give you plenty of shots. This is gonna be perfect for maybe backyard pest control or if you're in a tight space, maybe in a barn, and you don't want to punch through small game, and you know going through a roof or something like that, this medium setting is gonna be perfect for you. And on the low power side at roughly 400 feet per second, you know only six foot-pounds of energy this is gonna be your basement plinking mode or maybe even blinking in the backyard with it at short distance. Gonna give you a ton of shots on a fill over 140 good shots on the reg and obviously because it's a little lower powered while the reg is set right around 125 130 bar, you're gonna be able to shoot it a little bit lower with still pretty good consistency. So we shot it down to 100 bar before we really started to see some drop-off there. But again about a 10 to 15 foot per second spread. There's not really a trend one way or another stays right around 7 or 390 or so for the entirety of the string which is just super impressive, and obviously if I was gonna be using this more frequently on that low power setting, and probably opted for a lighter weight pellet, but overall very impressive results out of the Galahad. Alright guys, coming back in from the range, I'll tell you my thumb is a little bit sore from cocking this gun so much, but you guys saw it for yourselves, about 60 good shots at about 22 foot-pounds on that medium setting and about 6 foot pounds worth of energy and 140 plus shots on low power. Certainly makes the Galahad one of the more versatile rifles on the market. We already know it does about 45 shots at 32 foot-pounds on high power with those JSB 18s but to be able to go you know to 22 and then all the way down to 6 as well, I mean this is this gun does it all. If you want to shoot in the basement during the winter, if you want to go take, you know, pigeons and don't want to worry about overpenetration, I mean you got a ton of options with the Galahad. And really puts it at the top of my list for one of the nicer guns and that high-end PCP market especially on the bullpup side so. Give it a look on PyramydAir.com. For the Insyder, see you guys at the next one.
Air Venturi continues to innovate with products designed with the end user in mind with the world's first portable spring compressor--the Air Venturi Rail Lock Spring Compressor! Weighing in at only 1.5lbs this spring compressor allows airgun smiths and tinkerers to disassemble their spring or gas piston rifles anywhere they choose.
Air Venturi Rail Lock Airgun Spring Compressor Transcript:
Hey guys today we're going to show you how to take apart a spring piston or gas piston airgun. Now in the past, you would need a very large spring compressor to do this. Basically to safely remove the pretension or preload from the spring or the gas piston and then reapply it once you go ahead and put it back together. Now usually those units are you know quite large, very long, and they take up a hell of a lot of space. But Air Venturi has brought us something brand new, the rail lock. Now this is a spring compressor just like any of those big units are. The only difference is it clamps onto your dovetail or your Weaver rail and allows you to do the same exact thing. So if you need to take apart your spring piston gun to replace a broken spring or your gas piston gun to replace a blown piston seal or you just want to get inside the gun, maybe do a little lube tune on your spring gun or take apart the gas piston gun you know for whatever reason you want to see what's going on inside that gun, the rail lock is going to allow you to do that. So this is gonna be a great new addition to the airgunner’s tool kit and we're going to show you how to use it today.
So from the diagram, you guys can already tell there's a lot of parts to the Rail Lock Spring Compressor. Just gonna highlight a few of the important ones. The first and foremost is the rail mounting grooves that are in the front of the unit there. Those are going to be super important, those are clamping on to your dovetail or onto your Weaver Picatinny rail, they're precision machined and they're gonna hold solid as long as you go ahead and properly tighten down those front and rear rail screws. And just above that rear rail screw, we have the rotation locking set screw, and on top of the tube there we have our quick release button. Now that's probably the most unique feature of the rail lock unit and we'll show you exactly how that works. And within that housing, you have the threaded rod and in the back of the threaded rod you have your hole for your Allen key that you're gonna end up using to turn, and well counterclockwise and clockwise to loosen and then tighten your rod, once you get butted up against the back of the gun. The first thing you're gonna want to do is loosen the front and the rear rail screws just enough so that they'll slip over the dovetail. There's no need to go too wide on these. The next thing we're going to do is make sure that the rotation locking set screw is nice and loose as well. Before we go ahead and mount it to the gun we're gonna go ahead and depress the quick release button and slide the threaded rod back to give us enough room to actually be able to mount it. Now we're gonna go ahead and align the groove portion of the Rail Lock Compressor with our scope mounting rail. Now you want to make sure that the grooves are all of the way on to the rail so you don't want anything hanging off the back at all, you want those fully engaged on your scope rail whether it's a weaver or a dovetail. Once you have it aligned properly, you're gonna want to tighten the front screw just enough so that it stays secure and then head to the back screw and tighten that as well, and then kind of alternate in between the two until they're nice and tight on the rail. Before we go ahead and tighten down the rotation locking set screw, we're gonna go ahead and check our fit first. We're gonna depress that quick release button and slide our rod forward into the back of the gun. You want to make sure it's relatively centered before we go ahead and tighten that rotation locking set screw. Once you have the fit checked, you can slide it back out and then you're gonna go ahead and tighten that set screw. This next step is gonna vary from gun to gun, but on the Kral N-11 we're just gonna go ahead and remove this rear trigger pack holding screw and it's also our rear stock screw. Because the crawl has a hole in the back of the end cap, we're gonna go ahead and use a coin or a washer to prevent our end cap of the threaded rod from going into that hole, just to make sure everything's more secure you want a nice flat surface on the back of the gun. Now we want to make sure that the quick release tab is popped up that's how you know everything's locked and secured so we're just gonna give it a quick back fourth wiggle making sure everything is tight, just to get it to pop up there that way we know everything is nice and secure before we go ahead and put tension on the rail lock.
Next, we're going to insert either of the Allen keys into the hole at the back of the threaded rod starting to turn it clockwise, as well to put tension on the rail lock unit and that's going to alleviate the tension that the end cap has on that rear pin in the action. Now, this is also important because it's going to be the last opportunity you have to make sure that your rail section on the scope rail isn't slipping. Now we're going to go ahead and take a punch and knock that rear pin out, and once we have that rear pin out of the gun all of the tension is on the rail lock unit, and as you can see it's holding solid. Using the Allen key in the back of the threaded rod, we're going to start to counterclockwise, which is going to bring the back end and everything out and release that pretension on the spring. As we do this, you'll notice that I kind of put my hand in there just to make sure the end cap as it gets looser and looser doesn't end up slipping off or anything on me so. It's okay to do that just to make sure that you keep everything aligned as you go ahead and release that tension. Pulling the guide out of the gun, we have a predominantly metal guide which is really impressive on a gun in this price range, and then that big beefy spring you guys can see it. This is why you need the rail lock, you are not going to be able to safely take tension off that spring or put it back on without a spring compressor and the rail lock does it with ease. Alright so we're gonna get our spring and our rear guide put back in again, reassembly is going to be on you in terms of doing it properly, so please make sure you guys are paying attention to it as things come apart. But what you'll notice is that we're gonna attempt to realign everything so that our hole for the rear pin, as well as the hole in the top that that stock screw sits in, are going to be properly aligned once we get everything turned back in. You'll notice we've put our washer back in just to put a little bit of tension on it and give us that flat surface, and now we're gonna start to make sure that everything is aligned as we go in. Ao we're gonna take that Allen key, put it back through the hole, we're going to start to turn clockwise. And obviously as you turn there's going to be more tension on everything as you go, so really important to make sure that as you go that back end of the gun goes in aligned with the compression tube. Because if you find out that you get a little bit too close, and then you have to adjust things, it's gonna be under too much tension to do so. So again as you see now you want to make sure that everything's gonna be relatively well aligned as you turn it in. That's gonna be the biggest hurdle you're gonna have to overcome here. And you guys will see now we have all the holes lined up, we can see daylight through the other end, so now we're gonna be able to go ahead and put that pin back in. I'm just gonna go ahead and take a mallet and give it some taps on in there. Once it’s flush, we're good to go. So once the pin’s back in, it is holding all the tension now, just as a safety precaution we're going to counterclockwise screw the threaded rod out with the Allen key there, and then once we have all the tension off of it, we can just simply go ahead hit that quick release, and slide everything back, and then we can take our rail lock unit off just by turning the front and rear rail screws counterclockwise, and pulling it off. It is that simple. We're gonna go ahead and replace that rear stock screw and trigger pack holding screw there, make sure it's nice and tight and we'll go ahead and get the stock back on.
So we've got our N-11 reassembled here. You guys have seen it, the rail lock is a very stout little unit, I'm really impressed by this. For the size, you know right around nine inches to be able to take apart a beast of a spring gun like the Kral N-11 here is really incredible, and all it does is climb up onto the dovetail. This is a really versatile unit, this is gonna make taking apart your spring piston or gas piston guns really easy and relatively affordable for the home tuner or if you're looking to replace it, maybe an older gun you can't get parts for anymore, you know this is really gonna be a great tool for every airgunner out there that wants to get inside their spring or gas piston gun, so check it out on PyramydAir.com. We'll see you guys at the next one.
Hatsan Nova QE Air Rifle Video Transcript:
Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder, I’m Tyler Patner, today we're gonna be taking a look at the Hatsan Nova in .25 caliber.
So the Nova is one of the newer offerings from Hatsan here in the US. This is the .25 caliber also available .177 and .22. In the .25, they're claiming about 46 foot-pounds of energy and about 88 shots per fill. Now this is a 500cc air cylinder. A lot of air capacity and it does fill the 250 bar. But 88 shots is quite a lot, so I obviously we're gonna get this on the chronograph, because I'm very eager to see if it's gonna hit that mark. One way to find out though guys. But let's check out some of the specs on the gun. Up front is Hatsan’s QE technology, that's quiet energy, see it on pretty much all of their guns now. 23 inch barrel under here and then you have the moderator suppressor, if you will, setting off the rest of the gun and it is baffled inside of this chamber here. A very quiet gun for the type of energy we're talking about, you know 40 plus 50 almost foot-pounds. It is pretty darn quiet, I'd say you know 1-2 area in terms of loudness, we'll put it on the sound meter for you guys as well. Moving back, we do have a 500cc aluminum cylinder on this gun. Not removable, you don't need to remove it. Fills via the hole right here and does come with a probe that is threaded to 1/8 pspp which is pretty standard, all the Hatsan guns use the same probe here. We got ours with a quick disconnect so we can just hook it right up to our hose and fill. And as I said, this does fill the 250 bar, so it is a little bit higher than most of the other Hatsan guns as well. And you notice we have a bipod on this gun as well. The gun does come standard with a weaver Picatinny rail on the bottom. It is plastic so any metal bipod you're gonna mount on it, it's probably gonna have a little bit of give in that rail so just make sure you got it tight down very securely, and obviously this one flips forward. Just got to here for the stand, we'll put it on the bags though when we test it. And you also do have some swivel studs as well in the front and the back of the rifle. That allows for a sling as well so you don't have to pick between a sling or a bipod, you can do both with this gun. Also on the underside of the stock, we do have our gauge here so you got the colors displayed there. It's a 250 bar fill gun so about 3600 PSI. Most guns are going to go to about 3000 in the Hatsan, this is one of the ones that goes higher and with that bottle that's why you're getting that higher shot count there, so obviously we're gonna put it to the test, but 250 bar make note of that. And real quick just to show you. The gun actually does come with a fill port protector, which I think is a real real nice feature here from Hatsan. I'm just gonna take the probe and push it on through, but you can see it comes with this little protector so that when your fill probe is not in the gun you're not getting any dust or debris into that probe area, which is a very nice add-on from Hatsan.
So on top of the breech block here, we do have what is very common on the Hatsan guns. It's a split rail and what I mean by that is that you have an 11 millimeter mounting option for the dovetail and then a weaver mounting option. Because it's not standard Weaver spacing though, I would recommend going with the dovetail setup, it's gonna give you more freedom to set the scope to the proper eye relief for you. So the Nova, like a lot of the other Hatsan PCPs, is a side lever. I like it a lot, it's not very fancy or anything it doesn't look very sleek but it works, it's very functional. Side lever just comes back like that, straight back into the cockpit and you will know you also have an automatic safety as you find out with most the Hatsan guns. Not a huge fan of the automatic safeties on PCPs. That said it's located in a place that when you do shoulder it, you just flick it off, it's not very difficult. And our magazines are the standard Hatsan mags, now these are 9 round magazines and the gun comes with three of them, so that's a lot of shots right out of the box, and Hatsan knew you know with the extended shot count of the large bottle on here and higher fill pressure you're gonna need a bunch of mags, so they just went ahead and gave them to you. Now to load these magazines, very simple, you see you have this little catch lever here, you're just gonna pull it back and lock it into that upward position. Throw your mag in there and then you just flip it down, and once it's positioned right, this will snap back into place holding it. You may have to rotate the mag just a little bit to cycle it to that next position so you can get that bolt back through, but very easy to load, simple mechanism once you do it once you'll never forget it. The Nova does feature Hatsan’s Quatro trigger, very crisp clean let off on this trigger and it is adjustable so I mean you can you know work with it to get it set up for you. I think as a hunting trigger this is actually one of the better triggers on the PCP market, so picking the gun up here, you'll notice obviously Turkish walnut stock. You do have some nice checkering on the grip and the forend of the stock. It's very fine though, it's not giving you too much feedback tactile-wise, and a raised cheekpiece, adjustable butt pad, it's got all the hallmarks of a comfortable gun here. Let's get out to the range, see how she does. Let's go shoot.
Alright guys, so we went through about six, seven different pellets in .25 here. Ended up going through all JSBs just purely because they shot the best. The King's the 25.4s, they did pretty well, not great, you know six of those nine shots are in within about three-quarters of an inch, so I think it's gonna be gun to gun in terms of which King it likes best. But obviously the Mark two heavies, whoa, half inch, I mean this is by far the pellet to go with in the Nova, and this Nova in particular. I think you get a lot of reasonable groups, and obviously the big surprise I think for myself and probably most of you guys as well are these Predator GTOs. I've been trying these than a lot of guns lately, and they did quite well in the Nova, about an inch group there for nine shots, it's pretty damn good, you don't get a whole lot better than that. Obviously the King heavy just blew everything else out of the water, so we're gonna use those for the chronograph testing, see how many shots we get, and then we’ll do it for the sound testing as well.
So looking over our chronograph numbers here, now you notice we started shot 30 and 220 bar here on this graph. That's because when we filled it to 250 bar, the velocity was right around 650 feet per second or so and it actually came up into that 700 range. So really those first 30 shots are pretty useless in my opinion, but as you go that's when you start to see things even out, and as you guys can see we got a 92 shot sweet spot, pretty much between 725 and 750. Those 92 shots are super consistent now Hatsan obviously rates this with 88 shots, but we're getting 92 in the sweet spot, 140 total from 220 down to 100 bar and that's within 50 feet per second. For an unregulated gun, super impressive.
Only 93.7 decibels, 93-94 decibels, that's pretty darn quiet. This gun is definitely backyard-friendly.
Well guys the Hatsan Nova, you saw it on the range, performed very well. This isn't my grocery list, this is the shot string, I mean this is ridiculous, over 140 shots on this thing within fifty feet per second which is like seven or eight percent variation from the high velocity. This is obscene, like I'm stunned by this. Hatsan blew away even their own claims on this one so. Very impressive they're obviously accurate, half inch, this guns got a little bit everything. It's not the most powerful in the Hatsan lineup but you feed it the right pellets and 42 foot-pounds in .25 caliber is gonna be more than enough for almost anything you're gonna do. Definitely check it out and my only gripes with this one though, length and the weight or just it’s it's a bulky gun so know that going in. Certainly got the performance to back it up and well worth it you know, for that kind of middle-of-the-road price point. And this Leapers UTG bubble leveler scope, I'd also check that one out, that little bubble level inside makes it really helpful for making sure you're aligned, and you're not canting the rifle every shot. Overall I think this set up as a whole if I was going to be shooting maybe a little bit longer range or going after game from a fixed position, this would definitely be on my list of considerations. But for the Pyramyd Insyder, I’m Tyler Patner, we’ll see you at the next one.
Not sure where to start? Tyler discusses the basics of Pre-Charged Pneumatic airguns. If you want to shoot 10 meter, field target, or hunt with airguns, PCPs are the next generation.
Episode 1 - PCP Airguns 101:What are PCP Airguns? Video Transcript:
Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder PCP 101 series. Today we're going to be helping you guys get a little bit more familiar with PCP airguns.
PCP stands for pre-charge pneumatic. And what pre-charge pneumatic means is that the gun is pre-charged from an external source. So a hand pump, a tank, even a compressor. With high-pressure air, or nitrogen is also usable, to a specified pressure for each individual gun into a cylinder like this or a bottle on some guns. One of the reasons PCP air guns are so attractive to folks today is because there's a wide variety of things you can do with them. They come in calibers available from .177 all the way up to .50 cal, which means you can use them for 10-meter target shooting, plinking in the backyard, you can go all the way up to big bore hunting with them with a 45 in the .50 caliber. And their prices range too. Anywhere from a hundred and fifty dollars all the way up to four thousand dollars, so there's a gun to fit just about everybody's budget. Now let's take a look at some of the features you're gonna be finding on PCP airguns.
There are many common features you'll find on airguns in general, not just PCPs. The stock, the barrel, the breech, your safety, the trigger mechanism, and of course a mounting rail for optics. But there are unique features to PCP airguns that you'll find as well. Probably the most notable features that are going to set PCP airguns apart from other types of airguns are the air cylinder and your fill port or your fill connection. Other features you might be seeing on PCP airguns are magazines, side levers or rear bolt actions for cocking the gun, shrouds to keep the noise levels low, and a lot of people like that on their airguns, you know it's one of the reasons why people buy them, because they're nice and quiet, and backyard friendly. This should give you a general idea of what some of the more common features on PCP airguns are.
One of the most significant features that PCPs have over most of the rest of the market aside from their power capabilities, is the fact that there are many options to go multi-shot. So this you'll notice is a side lever breech, which we would consider more of a standard bolt-action style. But this is a 12-round magazine on this gun in particular, and they'll range anywhere from six or eight shots all the way up to 18. Magazine gives you the ability for quick follow-up shots and that's what's making the difference for those guys doing pest control or hunting. That's what they're really looking for and it's a huge advantage over your traditional break barrel or even some of your multi pumper or co2 guns as well. Now, of course, there are many other features we could talk about here, but this is going to give you a basic understanding of what a PCP rifle is. So when you're going ahead and looking at them on pyramydair.com, you have a better idea of what you're looking at and that's really important. On our next episode, we're going to be talking to you guys about fill methods. So stay tuned for that one and we'll see you guys then.
Episode 2 - PCP Airguns 101: PCP Airgun Fill Methods
Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder’s PCP 101 Series. Today we're going to talk about different methods to fill your PCP. And they are plentiful, as you can see in front of me. Now this is just a limited selection of the available products that Pyramyd Air offers to fill your PCP airguns. But first, we're going to start the most economical, the most affordable. Those are the hand pumps. Now we have our Air Venturi g6 pump here and our Hill hand pump here, and the reason we have two different pumps on display for you is because they use two different kind of connections, and this is important when we talk about filling PCPs. How do you link the gun to your pump or your tank or your compressor. This is all something that you have to be aware of.
So we're gonna use our Benjamin Wildfire here, and this uses the same foster quick-connect system that most of your Benjamin guns use and a lot of brands are going to this. It's a quick and easy system. Now on the end of our hose, this is a male fitting here on the end of the gun, and on the end of our hose on our G6 pump we have a female end, okay. So we simply snap the female end on to the male and we're able to go ahead and fill. And in a future episode, we will actually show you how to fill the guns. It's very simple, it's a hand pump, I think you guys can get the idea, and the tanks, and obviously the compressors have a little bit more complication to them in terms of operation. But very simple to do but what about a gun maybe like this Crawl here that uses a fill probe. Now fill probes are something that a lot of the European companies use. They're usually two O-rings with a hole in them and that hole is where the air flows through. But you have to fit this threaded end onto something. Now oftentimes I'd recommend going ahead and getting yourself a quick disconnect adapter so the fitting on this is actually the same as on the Benjamin we just showed you. But oftentimes a lot of folks will go ahead and get themselves a Hill hand pump which is actually threaded to the same threading base that the probe is. So this is one-eighth BSPP male this is one-eighth BSPP female. So you're actually able to go ahead and just thread that right in, now you would want to wrench tighten this, and this is just as an example just to get it started in here. But then we would simply take our gun, we find their fill port right about there. Go ahead and plug the probe in and then we're able to fill. It would function the same way with the tank or with the compressor in terms of fitting that adapter on it. Now we're gonna move on to our tanks for you guys. Now there are many different sizes and variations of tanks here. What we have for you guys today is a 74 cubic foot tank. Now this tank is not regulated, so what that means is that if you open this valve it's gonna let as much air as the valve will allow to come through out. Now, this is important because it's a bit of a safety feature, now our 90 cubic inch tank does have a regulator on it, which will regulate the output to about 2900 PSI. Nice safety feature but it does limit the guns you can fill. With a lot of guns starting to fill the even higher pressures than 3,000 PSI, you really do need a tank like this. Now the other nice thing about this tank is that it'll fill that any pressure really easily with just the opening of the valve, and you can throttle this valve similar to how you would throttle a motorcycle. It's all about feel. So you can open it up a little bit and fill your 2000 PSI gun safely or you can open it up a little bit more to fill the 3,000 or 4,300 PSI guns as well. And all of our tanks are gonna come with a female quick disconnect on the end of the hose, so that's really important to note as well that all of the Air Venturi tanks that are sold on Pyramyd Air are gonna have this adapter. The last thing I'll mention, you guys when you're looking at tanks, it's important to note that whether you're buying them on PyramydAir.com or maybe getting one used or however you're gonna go ahead and get your tank, it's important to note that the carbon fiber tanks have to be hydro tested every five years, and they have a 15 year lifespan. So that means that from the stamp date on here, which on our tank here is 11 so November of 2016, that you are going to have 15 years from that date to the month of service out of this tank. But in order for somewhere to fill it, whether it be a scuba shop or a fire department or paintball shop, wherever you're gonna have it filled, that's something to consider is that every five years you are gonna have to have it tested or they're not going to fill it. And a lot of places will require a visual inspection yearly as well. So something to keep in mind with the testing and upkeep on these tanks. Very sturdy, firefighters are going into burning buildings with these on their backs, this is not a true safety concern. You don't want to leave it in your car overnight and you certainly don't want to go dropping it anywhere of course, but if you take care of it it's gonna take care of you and all your PCP needs.
And last but not least we're gonna talk a little bit about air compressors.Now this isn't so much gonna be a mass-market thing, but it is certainly gaining popularity and it's important to understand what a compressor is. So wanted to show you guys one here. Now this compressor this is the brand-new Air Venturi compressor. Now this has the female quick disconnect on the end so that you're able to attach it straight to a gun, to a tank, you can actually get a it comes with a little adapter so you can hook it right to your hose on your tank, and you can actually fill through the hose in the tank which is a really nice feature. Works on 110 volt electricity. You fill it with water, you fill it with oil, keep everything nice and lubricated, and you're good to go. Now it does also have an adjustable output, so what that means is it'll automatically shut off wherever you go ahead and set it. Now you can fill a 2,000 PSI gun directly, you can fill a 4,500 PSI bottle, obviously you're not going to get up and walk away from this while it's running, but it's important to note that you can actually set this and it'll run and then shut off when you get to the appropriate pressure. Now obviously the Air Venturi isn't the only compressor out there on the market, but it is one that we've been using a lot here in-house. There's Nardi compressors, you have the shoebox compressor, which is more of a booster unit there are many many, many different options on the market, and something to be aware of because when you walk into your scuba shop or paintball store with your compressed air tank they're probably going to have a compressor sitting in the background, and if you don't have somewhere local to fill your tanks or fill your guns for that matter you can always purchase a compressor and become totally self-sufficient. So it's something to keep in mind something to be aware of. And now that you guys know what we're using to fill the PCP airguns that we're shooting all the time here on the Insyder, we're gonna show you guys how to fill them at the next episode, so stay tuned.
What are the best options to fill your PCP gun with air? Tyler explains the many methods to getting air into your new airgun, from beginner handpumps to advanced fill systems, and everything about adapters.
Tyler shows us how to fill your PCP airgun using the most popular methods: handpumps, carbon fiber air tanks, or the Air Venturi 4500psi Compressor.
PCP Airguns 101: How to Fill your PCP Airgun Video Transcript:
Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder PCP 101 series. Last time we showed you guys all of our various fill types, we got hand pumps, tanks, and we even showed you guys a compressor. Today we're gonna take all of those and show you how to actually fill the rifles with them. Let's check it out.
So our first fill method that we're gonna show you is gonna be with the G6 hand pump here from Air Venturi. Now we got our Benjamin Wildfire here. Selfishly I chose the Wildfire because it only fills to 2,000 PSI. I really don't have any intention of filling a gun all the way to 3,000. But filling procedure with this, in terms of hooking it up is pretty simple, we're just gonna take our end cap off, exposing our male quick disconnect fitting, and the G6 comes with a female fitting on it, so we're just gonna go ahead, hook those up right here, snap that over. You want to make sure the collar is locked into place, and then we're gonna go ahead take it to the ground and fill it. Alright guys so we're bout ready start pumping, now the guns got about a thousand PSI in it, so these first couple pump strokes are gonna be purely just filling the hose with air to get it up to that thousand mark. Now you notice I'm bending my knees, I'm not just bending at the waist like this, it's considerably easier when you put your full weight into the pump stroke. But now I gotta pump, so we're gonna speed this up for you guys. All right so it looks like we're at about 2,000 PSI on our pump gauge. Now let's double check with the gun. Yeah sure enough right in about 2,000 PSI. Now we're gonna go ahead and bleed the line, so we're just gonna grab a hold of our bleeder and twist counterclockwise. That's all, the air pressure’s out. You know it's good, you just simply detach your quick disconnect fitting and you're all good to go. I'd be honest with youm these pumps man they're not, not easy. That was just 2,000 PSI by the way, I don't know how many strokes that was, feels like a lot, feel it in my arms, not a pleasurable experience, certainly doable. If you guys have to do it you know if you don't have somewhere that can feel close to you, certainly a pump is an option, but no it comes at a physical expense, and that's not what air gunning is all about. So my preferred option, let's check out how to fill from a tank. Alright guys so real quick before we go ahead and fill this Crawl, punch or breaker with our tank here. Just to familiarize you guys a little bit with the anatomy of the tank just a bit more. So again, we still have our same female quick disconnect fitting on the end here. We do have a gauge up front, now this is an output gauge, this is gonna tell you what's going out of the tank into your gun when you open this valve. So the valve is very simple, on off and you throttle it just like you would a motorcycle, dirt bike, whatever. So you've got to have a little bit of feel when you open that up, and you obviously got to pay attention to the gauge, and we'll show you guys just exactly how that process works. And lastly we have our bleeder here on the side so when you are full and ready to go, you simply open that up and you're gonna bleed and exhaust all the air in the in the line, so you can go ahead and disconnect it. Now our Crawl here already has about 150 BAR in it, but we want to go ahead and top it up to 200. So we're gonna go ahead and insert our fill probe into the fill port there, and then we're gonna take our female quick disconnect to pull back that lip, and then attach it over the male end and then snap it forward. Now you always want to make sure this is snapped forward, and that there's not really any give in that fitting itself. Just like we did with our pump, we're gonna come over and make sure our bleed valve is nice and tight. Now what you guys are gonna see as we go ahead and open this valve is that gauge, is that needle there, is gonna spike. What that's doing is just filling the line with air, we're gonna see it stop and equalize out once we actually equalize the pressure in the line with the pressure that's currently in the tank. So we should see it about 150 BAR here. I'm just gonna nice and easy slowly open that valve, and there you go. You see it equalized out there and that's why it starts to slow down. And then we just go ahead and give it a little bit more. Get it right up to about 200 BAR. It's normal to see a little bit of fall-off here and it's okay just to leave it connected there, just get a little bit more in. Maximize your fill there, then we're just going to go ahead like we did with our pump and bleed the line. Disconnect our fitting here. You can actually pull out the fill probe with it, two separate pieces again now. We're good to go shoot. So we've got our Air Venturi compressor here. Now you can fill tanks or guns directly, we're gonna fill this Air Arms S510 here with it. And go ahead and take our hose here with the female quick disconnect fitting, hook it right up to the adapter on the Air Arms. Now the gun has about 150 BAR left in it so this fill should go really really quick. Just like with our tank and our pump we're gonna go ahead and make sure the bleed valve’s closed. Next step is gonna be to adjust our output pressure. Now you can adjust anywhere from zero to 4500 PSI with this unit. Now really realistically it's 2,000 for your lower fill pressure guns and then about 4,350 for your higher pressure or 4,500 for your tanks. But we're gonna go ahead and adjust the gauge to 200 bar which is the max fill on the S510. And then we're gonna go ahead and switch our cooling system on. Now this is gonna operate the fan and the water pump as well. You'll hear that come to life here. Once that's up and running, we're going to go ahead and flick our compressor switch on, and that's when our fill is going to start.
All right, so shut off automatically, 200 BAR about 2,900 psi. First thing we're gonna do, we're gonna go ahead and flip our compressor switch to the off position. Very important. Next thing we're going to do is bleed the line in the hose. So does take quite a bit and there is a little bit of moisture that's gonna be expelled, so put a little piece of, you know cardboard or paper or something there just to catch that. Go ahead and open the bleed valve, it's gonna be a little loud. All right, and the gauge and everything's returned back to zero. So we're gonna go ahead disconnect the gun. All right. And with the gun disconnected now and our temperatures back in a reasonable range, we can go ahead, shut the compressor cooling system off. We're good to go, it's that simple. So now that we showed you guys how to fill the guns, the various methods, next episode we're going to talk about some of the advantages PCP air rifles have over the various other types of air rifles that are on the market.
An improved version of an already impressive airgun, the BSA R-10 SE brings you everything that worked with the BSA R-10 MK2 and adds an improved regulator and updated shroud system that moves the R-10 SE into a class of its own.
BSA R10 SE PCP Air Rifle Video Transcript Below:
Welcome to the Pyramyd Insyder, I’m Tyler Patner, today we're going to be taking a look at the BSA R10 SE in .22 caliber.
So we have the .22 R10 SE here today, is also available in .177 caliber for those you looking as well. But just a little bit about me real quick. I'm a big BSA fanboy, like you're just gonna be upfront with you guys, there may be a little bit of bias in this review. Largely because I've owned an R10 before, so I've owned actually most of the guns in the modern BSA line, and I'm just a huge fan of their designs, the looks of the guns, so please understand that going in. But let's take a look at some of the features of the gun. So starting at the front of the gun probably the biggest change on the R10 SE from the R10 MK2 is the new shroud system. Now this is a fixed route and suppressor on the end here. Big change, it was just a full shroud system, just one piece unit the length of the gun, but this new moderator, they're claiming it's half the noise level of the MK2. And I just tell you guys from the initial testing, I would agree with that statement, I don't know exactly what half is but I can tell you it's definitely quieter than the MK2. And, of course, under the shroud is the BSA cold hammer-forged barrel. These barrels are world renowned as being some of the most accurate out there. They will stand up to Lothar, Walther, Green Mountain, I mean any of the big barrel manufacturers. BSA’s cold hammer-forged set a very very high standard so I'm expecting this gun to be very accurate. And under the barrel and shroud setup, we have a 200 cc bottle, nice, small profile doesn't add too much weight to the gun overall, really like the size of the bottle. And that connects right to our regulator. Now the R10 has always been a regulated platform but the SE has a new regulator design that BSA is claiming boasts 25% more shots. Now whether they mean more shots in general in terms of the whole fill or if they mean more regulated shots. I would assume that's what they mean, obviously we're gonna chronograph the gun and see just how efficient and how many shots that's gonna give you guys. And underneath to track that, we do have a gauge here and there's also a fill port here. Now it does come with a standard 1/8 pspp threaded probe. Important to note that if you are gonna have a quick disconnect setup on the end of your hose, you're gonna want to get that quick disconnect adapter. And that just plugs right into the end of the hole here. Now one of the things that BSA is done on the SE version that they didn't do in the past is provide a little fill port plug so you can keep dust and debris out. And I really like this upgrade. It's a small little thing that is a value added, in my opinion, on any gun, and one I would like to see from pretty much any manufacturer that uses a fill probe.
You'll also notice we have front and rear swivel studs, so if you want them on a bipod on that front one or you can go ahead and mount a sling up to that. Up to you of course, you don't have to use them at all. And you'll notice immediately, nice walnut stock. I mean this is just...it's a sexy gun, I think it's a sexy gun at least. You got the Rosewood cap here, on the end at the bottle you got the Rosewood grip, you know on the on the bottom of the grip there. It's just the Minelli makes the stock for BSA. It's a gorgeous stock and really, I mean this is what you're looking for when you're looking into that thousand dollar plus price range. You know it's got to have some good looks and I really really like it. Some people might say this is a like an aggressive looking stock, you know the lines on it, the checkering, all that but I love it, I'd it's just me again, but your mileage is gonna vary. But really nice walnut stock on this gun. And moving up to the breech block we, do you notice we have our breech opening there for our magazine. Now the gun does come with two magazines, that's a first for BSA. And one thing I do want to point out on these mags you'll see this little white dot in the hole right here. Now that's actually gonna let you know that you're out of rounds in empty. That's important. The magazine is also numbered on top to tell you how many shots you have left but that white dot is what lets you know that it's empty after you load that last round and that's really helpful in the field. So loading the magazine in is quite simple. Just go ahead and slide it into the open breech and obviously you have to pull the bolt back. You'll feel it lock into place because there's a little hole on the other side that it protrudes through and it just locks in nicely. Now to keep that secured, BSA makes you flip this little lever guy back and really lock that mag in place, so now even with the bolt open you can't pull it out, and that's going to keep it nice and secure, make sure you don't lose it when you're hunting, target shooting, whatever you might be doing. So wanted to show you guys also real quick this trigger. Really nice trigger unit, now it's a little heavy for my liking, we're going to flip the hunter-style safety off and I'll just decock it for you guys so you can see. But a very long take-up, that's all first stage there and it is that's a lot, I was not expecting that so personally if it were me I'm gonna adjust that out, but very clean break right there. So I I really like the way it breaks, the way it feels, it's maybe a little on the heavy side for what a gun like this in my opinion should be, but of course it's fully adjustable, and this is just out of the box to give you guys an idea of how it's going to come to you. And on top of the breech we have an 11mm dovetail for mounting your optics. And we've gone ahead and mounted a Hawk AirMax 30 here the 4 to 16 to be exact, we've used it a lot here on The Insyder, it's a scope I'm a big fan of which is why I mounted it up here. And overall gun comes into the shoulder really nicely. One thing I want to point out though is that they did also upgrade the butt pad on this one, it was formerly just vertically adjustable, now you have that horizontal adjustment as well so really nice feature. I found that I didn't really have to adjust it for myself, you know you got this raised cheekpiece that brings you right into the line and line of sight with the scope, it's a really nice feeling rifle in my opinion, just about seven and a half pounds or so. And you even got a nice little cut out here on the grip for a more thumb up position which I'm a big fan of as well, as opposed to wrapping it around, so overall really like the way this gun feels. We're gonna go get it gassed up to the fill pressure 232 bar, go put some rounds downrange at 45 yards, see how she does.
Alright guys so we opted to do all the testing just straight at 45 yards. With a gun like this, you know in that thousand dollar price range, there's no reason to go any closer. And we went with ten shot groups, so they're a little bit bigger than usual but you know you got the JSB 18s right about an inch for ten shots at 45, not bad I expected a little bit better as a lot of the BSA that I've owned in the past usually like those JSP 18s, but this gun didn't happen to. Surprise one for me. The Crosman Ultra Mags, 10 shots at about an inch as well. Quite good for a relatively inexpensive pellet. And then when we got into the better shooting stuff, the Predator GTOs, again another gun that's just super surprising. You know at under 12 grains this guy's flying pretty quick, and a 5/8 ton shot group, I mean this this gun laces them in there nicely. And very impressive but if I was gonna pick a pellet the Beeman Kodiaks, that's still a 5/8 group for 10 shots but give you that little bit of extra knockdown power and a little bit heavier weight. Now with those then the GTOs, we're gonna take both of them, throw them over the chronograph, and also do sound testing with both. See how much of a difference there is. Let's check it out.
Looking over our shot strings here you can see immediately that we're doing a fair number of shots right around 45 or 50, and I can tell you guys just from experience that the MK2 version of the R10 was only doing about 35 good shots. So you know looking this over we do some pretty flat strings here, a little bit wider standard deviation on the Kodiaks, as well as a larger extreme spread but not by much. Certainly good enough to give me pinpoint accuracy out to about 50 yards and probably further than that. So definitely some nice tight shot strings out of the R10 SE.
Well guys I'd like to think you can see why I'm a BSA fanboy. You got the supreme accuracy you know five eights groups of 45 yards with a couple different pellets. Really phenomenal shooting, you know, nice trigger breaks, super clean, and obviously fully adjustable, take out some of that take-up or at least I would. The new regulator seems to be doing its job right around 45 good shots, 45-50 depending on the pellet used there. So you're getting quite a few more shots, about eight to ten more than you were on the previous version on the MK2, so the SE's definitely got a lot going for it, and obviously the new shroud system is much quieter and super backyard friendly. I definitely recommend checking this one out guys, if you're looking for a new high-end addition to your airgun collection the R10 SE should be at the top of that list. So give it a look on pyramydair.com. For the Insyder, I’m Tyler Patner. We'll see you guys at the next one.
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