Just bought a RTI "The Priest". Have a few questions

I'm on the East end. Can't answer your questions on the Priest, Going to practice in the morning (Sat) for a Field Target match on Sunday at Morro Bay/SLO. I hunt, too. Contact me at tlevta @ att.net.

Check this out .
You can ask that guy (Rob) about it , he's a well season air gunner, and owns a lot of air guns.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/message/1484182028/AR20FT+and+Priest

http://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=120089.0

Hopefully, nobody will say anything about sharing information from another forum.

There are a few guys from Ventura Co., maybe they'll chime in about places to go hunting.

Does the priest have a anti bounce hammer system?

It will be good to hear your thoughts on the gun. Pls ceep us posted

The TT bottle is not a direct swap, wrong threads.

While it looked very hopeful and maybe a serious contender for the Impact, (at least pricewise!) unfortunately it seemed to turn out to be a real disaster, and a dangerous one at that too!
See the review about that (in Dutch, so you'll have to Google translate it) here: The reviewer cut his review in many smaller parts, so don't think after the first page or two that it is not too bad after all. It gets worse and worse...

http://www.luchtbuks.net/index.php?showtopic=107706

To sum it up: many VERY sharp edges, not only on the exterior (where it could hurt the shooter) but on the inside as well where it hurts the o rings. (no smoothing done to prevent damaging them) And ver thin walled piping where the pressure is high, with very few threads to hold hi pressure things together. And to prevent leaks (because of the sharp edges and so) ample use of Locktite.

DISCLAIMER: The review is not mine. (<<<Read this again. Do not attack me if you disagree with the review (altough I couldn't fathom why you would anyway, the facts speak for themselves...)

Unfortunately very disappointing... :-(

They already fixed the sharp edges for the o-rings. The units sent to USA was delayed for this very reason, so that is a thing of the first early Priests. 

Here's a good review in english http://talonairgun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=36170

I know it isn't really in our nature to learn from the past but I really believe that reviews are more meaningful if you wait a couple of months.

It gives people a chance to calm down from any excitement about a new toy or anger about any initial problems. It also gives people a chance to see if any issues are just early teething noise or genuine design faults.

Also, some times it takes a few weeks or months for certain issues to become apparent. A gun that seems great on day one might be leaking or not holding zero by month two. 

I'm sure many people here have also felt differently about some guns after a few months of ownership than they did when it first arrived when they were full of hope and expectations. 

I gave one gun a 5 star review on the PA site after a few days and two weeks later it broke beyond repair. I had others that have grown on me over time too. 

Also, reviews from Europe might be on the 12fpe version. I don't believe those reviews are transferable. It becomes a completely different gun if you from 12fpe to 30 or 50fpe.

Zebra,
you have a good point in that best meaningfull review is done after a few months, especially in this case, as it seems that the Dutch reviewer could be testing an early version....but the review starts on January 4th, so its pretty recent.

the reviewed gun produces 40 footpound and above (reviewer test on several levels... the Dutch dont have limitations on power (yet)

BUT, and this is a big but, the findings of the Dutch review seem to be very disturbing.
if you own or have ordered a priest, it is highly advisable to read (translate) the review, so you can decide for yourself if your version is a much-improved version, and you dont have to worry...
Translating the review may not be easy, as its been written in very elaborate descriptive Dutch, and includes indepth technical aspects... but worth it if you value your life - at least that is my impression after reading the review of this particular gun.

"DutchMike"Zebra,
you have a good point in that best meaningfull review is done after a few months, especially in this case, as it seems that the Dutch reviewer could be testing an early version....but the review starts on January 4th, so its pretty recent.

the reviewed gun produces 40 footpound and above (reviewer test on several levels... the Dutch dont have limitations on power (yet)

BUT, and this is a big but, the findings of the Dutch review seem to be very disturbing.
if you own or have ordered a priest, it is highly advisable to read (translate) the review, so you can decide for yourself if your version is a much-improved version, and you dont have to worry...
Translating the review may not be easy, as its been written in very elaborate descriptive Dutch, and includes indepth technical aspects... but worth it if you value your life - at least that is my impression after reading the review of this particular gun.

Click to expand...

For me, what's important in a review is that: the reviewer has spent some quality time with the product, the product has been out for sufficient time for any issues to present themselves, there are multiple data points (I.e. not just one person's opinion as there can be isolated faulty units or personal agendas), the reviewer is properly independent and...

perhaps most importantly, a quality meaningful review needs to be comparative.

Most modern air guns are not good or bad in isolation. They can be good for the price but only in comparison to what else is out there. It becomes very important to know what else the person is comparing it to and what they are using it for. Is it their first $1000+ air gun or are they comparing the build quality to a Thomas etc...

I'll admit that I'm not the most trusting person in the world but I've seen too much nonsense on forums and from so called professional reviewers to pay attention to just one review. The value of forums like this is the ability to get tons of mini reviews to confirm or deny every detailed one.

There was a complete **** head on here last year who wrote pages and pages on the problems with the Mutant and it turned out that he'd never even seen one. The real Mutant owners came out in force with the truth though.

Zebra
Very good point on the Mutant, Just a waiting game until the owners of the gun come out and tell the truth,
The Mutant really got trashed on this site by people that had never seen one,
But the truth did come out, Its a amazing gun at its price point, Nothing better,
That's pretty much what I am doing is waiting for the owners to come out and talk about the gun, One bad report means nothing to me when I am reading hundreds of other reports , I do think the priest is a gun that will evolve , The people that build the gun seem to listen to the owners , Much like the Vulcan.
we will see with time.
Mike

"iride"Zebra
Very good point on the Mutant, Just a waiting game until the owners of the gun come out and tell the truth,
The Mutant really got trashed on this site by people that had never seen one,
But the truth did come out, Its a amazing gun at its price point, Nothing better,
That's pretty much what I am doing is waiting for the owners to come out and talk about the gun, One bad report means nothing to me when I am reading hundreds of other reports , I do think the priest is a gun that will evolve , The people that build the gun seem to listen to the owners , Much like the Vulcan.
we will see with time.
Mike

Click to expand...

I never understand some people's need to be the first on these things. I mean we obviously need someone to be first but they always seem to act surprised when they have to deal with issues like it wasn't expected. I felt the same about those people who waited outside the Apple Store all night to be the first to get an IPhone. It's not like they didn't already have a phone.... I'd be ashamed to tell anyone that I was stupid enough to wait outside a shop all night for a phone but for some, it's a badge of honor (or something). 

For me, the Mutant and Cricket have been a pretty good cure for air gun impatience. Instead of excitement about new models, I usually think "let's wait and see if it's as good as the Mutant before spending the money". 

Plus, you can get some amazing deals if you can wait a little. I saw an FX Impact for $1400 a few days ago. The group who constantly go after the shiny new toy high will flood the market with them as soon as the next shiny new toy is available for pre-order. 

The thing to think about is that, despite what the manufacturers and reviewers tell you, there are no major developments in PCP rifle technology. There are small gains and a few new features but for the most part, the basic design has been around for centuries. If you have an accurate gun, you should keep it because there is no guarantee that the new one will be as good.

Zebra, mate, you and me think alike... i just got a brandspanking new r3m 25... I figured it got all the great things of Edgun, and all issues have been ironed out by now.... 

But on the review of the Priest: the Dutchman doing the review on this early production version (serial 0003) has been asked by respected airgundealer to do this review. Hence the indepth and more-than-usual coverage of technical aspects and construction of the gun.

"DutchMike"Zebra, mate, you and me think alike... i just got a brandspanking new r3m 25... I figured it got all the great things of Edgun, and all issues have been ironed out by now.... 

But on the review of the Priest: the Dutchman doing the review on this early production version (serial 0003) has been asked by respected airgundealer to do this review. Hence the indepth and more-than-usual coverage of technical aspects and construction of the gun.

Click to expand...

Yeah but come on... everyone knows you can't trust foreign people.... just kidding. I'm not questioning the credibility of the reviewer. I don't know anything about them. It's that it's just one data point and the review was done too soon imo.

As an example, let's take two FX Impact owners. One received a fully working hyper accurate gun and can't wait to give a great review. The other received a problem child. He can't hit a barn door and has had to send it back to the shop several times but it still keeps coming back with issues. You don't have to look very far on this forum to find either example but if you only had one review, you simply wouldn't have the true picture.

IMO, the "pro reviewers" reviewed the Impact (and many other guns) far too soon and if you watch them now, it's hard to believe they are talking about the same gun. They ended up leaving out crucial info and therefore have no credibility for me.

When someone receives an early production version that's full of problems, if a balanced review was the goal, you would find out how widespread the issues were and / or if they were being fixed. You may even decide to delay publishing the review until you knew.

To be honest, it's been a long time since I have seen any review that has been something I could use to make a decision. All I ever want to know really is how they compare to comparable competitors in a similar price bracket. 

That's what a review used to be like when I was a kid. Every time a new fighting video game came out, we read reviews in magazines that told us things like "this game is ok but not as good as Streetfighter 2 (the benchmark fighting game of the day). They give us comparative baselines so we had context to make a purchasing decision. 

In fact, I think some manufacturers seem to have forgotten that they even have competitors looking at some of the products they are bringing out and the prices they are asking for them.

I guess we should be greatful to see a bad review of anything (even if it had to be translated from Dutch). Our "reviews" here seem to be carefully orchestrated around the "no child comes last in the egg and spoon race" mentality. Thankfully we have the forum so we can get the truth.

We've seen some early positive reviews on this site of the Priest so at the very least, the Dutch review is not representative of every unit (or every opinion). 

All you have to do is ask.
Here's the seriously bad review of the "Priest", translated by a real human being:
http://www.airgunforum.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/218848-RTI-Priest-new-airgun/page6

Ok, Hi, I am a Dutch guy. And I read the whole thread in Dutch.

The reviewer shows with pictures and a very good explanation why you should NOT BUY this gun.
And I whole heartedly agree. If you want to have your family contact a priest for your funeral. By all means... It is somewhat telling: the name of the gun... however the aim is not on the target but on the shooter :-(

The story goes on and on with fatal construction errors. I mean, in the end it is not funny anymore. And I do mean: not funny anymore. 

The reviewer does not believe that the designers have the skills to correct their errors. In other words: these are engineers without any engineering experience in reality with creating airguns. After reading the whole thread I tend to agree: I got a very queesy feeling in my stomach. It is just unbelievable that it is possible to produce such a thing and sell it to customers.

In my opinion it is telling that guns are send off to a potential distributor in a country. One error you can correct. But so many? 
If I am a knowledgeable manufacturer I would create an outstanding gun that is a reference model for my production. And I would send my reference guns of to a potential distributor. These reference models would have tolerances that far exceed the expactations so I can dial down when going in production -if I have a mean streak- As a customer with current day machinery I would expect nothing less then a reference model as a production model. The reviewer shows without a doubt that this is not the case.

In Dutch we have a saying "Een gewaarschuwd mens telt voor twee". In English: Forewarned is fore armed...

Just because someone says something it doesn't make it true (even if they sound convincing). 

A lot of airgun companies are started by people with no engineering background. There is also a lot of people outside of these companies that think they know better.

I'm not saying it has or could never happen but I have not yet heard about any fatalities that were a direct result of poorly engineered PCP guns. I've seen plenty of air guns that break or have common issues with certain parts. I've even read about an exploding tank on a cheap Chinese PCP gun but no deaths or major injuries yet. 

I'm not saying it couldn't happen with the Priest. I haven't seen one yet but I think QC is generally poor across the industry. I'm fairly sure that if someone with expert-level engineering knowledge went through our air guns with a fine tooth comb, they would identify problems with a large percentage and probably most of them. That's one reason why I won't worry about the concerns of one reviewer about the Priest specifically.

The other reason is that I never buy newly released guns so if someone is killed by an exploding priest, it won't be me!

If it does happen though, it will make a great news paper headline. "Exploding Priest kills first penguin!". I'd read an article with that headline!

Is it wrong that part of me wants it to cause an injury? Nothing serious or permanent obviously. Just one that is enough to cause a small lawsuit that becomes the catalyst for an industry wide improvement in QC across all products. aghhh...,maybe it is a little wrong of me...

The guy (Leo) that reviewed the priest is one with a high practical level of engineering! Leo is a technician by all means, no sales crap or hiding things under the bed, he will tell it the way it is. He was asked to do an in depth review on the technical aspects of te priest. The overall sharp edges on the priest were least of his concerns. By comparing the technical aspects to norms where "normal" companies have to comply to, the priest seems to be utterly dangerous and it is waiting for accidents to happen. Unpropper used threads, wrongly used components, improper use of ventilation holes which cause stress on the wrong places etc. All of these things add up to a high probability to accidents and leaks.

Looking at the not failing airguns you've mentioned: Let's not forget the .30 impact probe that went flying, which is a serious design flaw. In the Netherlands there were two issues with the chinese Huben K1, one of them propelled the manometer instead of the pellet (luckily nobody got injured) and the other one had an exploding breech. The breech exploded in the cheek of the person shooting it and scratched the face with flying parts and left some hearing damage. Both accidents were due to poor manufacturing and quality control! 

As far as I know, most decent airgun brands are all started by people with proper knowledge on manufacturing and testing: FX, Daystate, Steyr, Air Arms, FWB, Weihrauch, Anschutz, diana .... you name it.

I agree on the QC for airguns! More and more companies are developing airguns in a too small time-to-market timeframe which can lead to serious injuries.


I hope that the manufacturer of the Priest takes these comments of Leo by heart and either stops manufacturing if the knowledge is not sufficient of makes sure it has the proper knowledge for future developments. High chance that if one blows up and creates and injury it'll lead to a million dollar claim. I'm not bashing to company, I'm just concerned of the safety (or lack of safety) they've taken into account.

Zebra, have you read the translated review at all? It's worthwhile to do so, even if you're not considering ordering one.