Hand pumps cost a couple hundred dollars and compressors start at 3000 and go up. So PCPs are for your serious air gunners or those like me you have problems with springers and CO2 that keep your buying CO2 cartridges over and over. There are refillable cartridges but they have not been adopted widely or at all. So if you are a avid airgunner you could spent a small fortune just on CO2 alone, up to twenty dollars a day just on CO2. At that pace you could buy a hand pump instead of ten days of CO2, or 160 days for a low end compressor. The PCPs history goes back further than Lewis and Clark where a PCP was used during the Louisiana Purchase Expedition 
The celebrated expedition headed by Lewis and Clark (1804) carried a reservoir air gun, later believed to be the Girandoni Military Repeating Air rifle in Dr Robert Beeman's Collection.[citation needed] It held 22 round balls in a tubular magazine mounted on the side of the barrel. The butt stock served as the air reservoir and had a working pressure of 800 PSI. The rifle was said to be capable of 22 aimed shots in one minute. However, that air rifle is measured to have a rifled bore of .452" and a groove diameter 0.462".[1]
Today's modern air guns are typically low-powered because of safety concerns and legal restrictions; however, high-powered designs are still used for hunting.
These air rifles can propel a pellet beyond 1100 ft/s (330 m/s), approximately the speed of sound, and produce a noise similar to a .22 caliber rimfire rifle. Using lead pellets, some current spring powered .177 pellet guns can break the sound barrier. Most low-powered air guns can be safely fired in a backyard or garden, and even indoors, with a proper backstop.
In the past few years .177 has become popular because of concerns of people using the air guns in the suburban use IMHO. I tinkered with .177 and .20 cal's but found the .22 to have the knock down power that I preferred. I shoot small targets at the limits of air guns range. I look forward to moving up to .25 cal. With my shoulder injury I find that using a springer is not as steady as it could be, and the CO2 just does not have the range or power I wish to have.
The is a saying the the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys, but airguns are no longer considered as toys. Your "High End" airguns are priced higher than some firearms, but as the price of firearm ammunition goes up air guns look better and better. So this is the year of PCPs in airguns and .25 caliber's is becoming a popular pellet. Be sure to go to Pyramyd Air and see the new products are this year. The community and industry is finally being recognized among the gun community. Air guns are now being used widely as the need to keep agencies in practice and hone their skills, at a lower price to us, the community and taxpayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment