Sorry for the pause. It was for dinner and cocktails, not for dramatic effect. So Kip gets Robert on the phone and we exchange offers twice before agreeing on a price. I won't say exactly what the price was because I didn't clear it with Robert first but I will say this. I got the rifle, plus a set of nice scope rings and a very nice Optisan EVX 6-24x56 scope out the door for less money then I paid AOA for my Daystate .22 Red Wolf Safari. Plus Kip went through the gun and replaced any rubber parts that looked suspect. The understanding I had with AOA was they could and would replace anything that they had parts for like the O-rings. But I was on my own for any unique, hand built one of a kind Ripley parts. That's understandable and acceptable. After all the rifle is old enough to legally buy a drink anywhere in the states. (21 years old the best I can tell). I was a happy camper. Robert din't give it away and I didn't feel like a sucker when I walked out the door. The condition of the rifle overall was very good but it was obvious that it had put MANY pellets down range. My hope was that is gun would shoot very well, for a 21 year old gun. Ripley Rifles with the 9 shot rotary magazine are known to be "pellet sensitive". This, I learned from the Ripleyrifles.com website is because when you order a rifle from Steve Wilkins one of the options you have is selecting what power you want the gun to shoot at and what pellet you want to use. He then builds this rotary magazine to accept your pellet. Try to get any other airgun manufacturer to do that for you. ( I hope I got all that right). The problem I had was that I have no idea what pellet this magazine was build for. They are not marked. Given the fact that the gun was shooting at such a high power Kip suggested the H&N Baracuda Match 21.14 grains. This is an exact match (I believe) to the Bisley Magnums that were made 21 years ago and were the big dogs on the block back then. This Bisley is also the pellet the writer of the article on the Ripley website used to test the gun back in 2000. Great! I happen to have some. (I could not fine any Bisley Magnums for sale in this country).
Time to shoot. Yep, the XL's rotary mags are pellet sensitive. In fact you have to (1) point the barrel at the ground while you load the mag or the pellets could fall out. (2) be very careful when you swing the mag into battery. If you have a pellet skirt protruding out past the edge of the mag, even just a fine red hair, it will catch on the breach and damage the skirt and we all know what that does to the accuracy. Not knowing what pellet this gun was designed to shoot was the issue here. It also made the two 8 round side loading gates unusable. The contour of the pellet head has to be an exact match to the previous pellets skirt. (I hope that makes sense). When the magazine rotates and an empty chamber comes inline with one of the loading gates a plunger with a spring behind it pushes another pellet into the chamber. 9 in the mag, 18 rounds in the two side gates equals 25. Hence the XL25. Or in my case it's an XL9. I'm sure with the right pellet this system works great. Nine at a time works just fine for me. You can single load pellets but you have to jump through several hoops. The gun was not designed for single loading. Time for a break. This was two hours and three cups of coffee in the making.
