Oh man that sounds great! Lord willing I will be there for another great match in Tulsa.

The Sportsmatch mounts are only available from AOA I think. They are good mounts and won't slip.

I use them on my D34 and they work great. I have them on every pellet rifle I shoot with a scope. I've never had a mounting issue. I have had many issues using an array of other mounts, rails and rings.

If the scope slips in the rings it's usually due to uneven/improper ring torque or a poor interface between the scope and ring saddle. A drop of lacquer or some CA glue works great to get a slippery mount to hold. I've never needed it with Sportsmatch or Burris rings. But you can get creative and make almost anything work.

The Burris Signature rings with the inserts are dandy. You can't go wrong. They solve every mounting issue you may have. They are just a few bucks more than Sportsmatch and (IMHO) even better. You can get offset inserts to correct an alignment issue with the Burris. Thats a big deal with a springer. The Sportsmatch rings don't have that option.

c_m_shooter said:

You are thinking backwards as far a straining the powerplant. Light pellets will be closer to a dry fire. Heavier pellets should soften the impact for the piston.

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Jim Maccari of ARH mentioned to me; heavy pellets in .177 cal. will diminish spring life.
He said this regarding a R1 in .177 caliber using greater than 9 grain pellets .
Don’t go too heavy ….. as Ron said, listen to your shot cycle and look at FPE numbers.

I did attend and was able to talk with folks at Serpent Arms & Baker Airguns. The Lebanon Fair Grounds was hopping on the 12th, took me a little bit to locate where on the grounds the show was, when I spotted a Taco Truck parked outside one of the buildings, I deduced, I was Close.

Niksan Ozark < $400
Accurate, less than 1/2" groups at 45 yards. The TW version has a very nice wood stock and adjustable butt stock. Wood needs a bit of sanding and linseed oil.

Reximex Silent Force moderator for < $50 from Sharg.pl.

I am shootinf 34gr slugs from mine. Though not sure which barrel it has, as I had Martin build mine for me.

@zerochance Is FT Airguns still in business? Have you received your order from them?

The Midwest Airgun Show is this weekend. Saturday, (9am to 3pm). In Columbus, Ohio. And Sunday there is a small demonstration of sorts at a gun club where you can try a couple of air rifles out at the range. Bakers Airguns had brought a " Air Arms " Revere the last time I was there. It was sweet, no doubt about that. I'm going again. I hope to get a lead on a local airgun smith while I'm there.

Arrival rime at Oakdale Gun Club airgun course is 0900. This is the first match of the year so there will be some time required for cleanup and target placement. The match will start as soon as the work is done. Weather looks good. Hope to see you there. PM me with questions. Uj

While I do not leave my guns cocked while in storage I do often store magazines when full of pellets. Storing the magazines full does leave a spring stressed for the period of storage. So if I wanted to be consistent perhaps I should not do that either. But magazines are relatively inexpensive so if I were to soften the spring to the point that it not longer worked properly it would not be as big an issue as if my hammer spring softened and would not open the valve at higher regulator pressure. So risk is different. I also do not do anything in tuning my gun that changes the force on the spring in the magazine. Whatever stress it sees was addressed in the design of the magazine and it should be well within it's elastic limits. That does not totally eliminate possible creep in the spring but it eliminates the spring taking a set from exceeding it's elastic limit. But the hammer spring in my P35-25 is turned up to the maximum it can be and still be cocked including adding shims under the spring. That almost certainly was not addressed in the design of the hammer spring.

If the spring is well designed and not overstressed by modifications by the owner it should not exceed the elastic limit of the spring and take a permanent set. But it will still creep. That is a much smaller effect but it will occur and more stress on the spring will increase the rate of the creep. I don't see increasing creep as desirable but I can accept an opinion that is not significant as reasonable, at least in a well designed gun. I worry a little about the design and the materials of my inexpensive Chinese made guns. I think they work very well and I like them but I see more reason to be concerned and therefore not over stress them without a good reason.

But the biggest reason I do not store the guns cocked and especially not cocked and loaded is I do not think it is safe. I do not store any gun with a round in the chamber. I know others do, especially with PBs the owners want available for home defense. I have decided I'd rather take the risk that the few seconds to chamber a round is important than increase the risk a grandchild could find the gun and an accident could happen. I am much more concerned about safety than any potential damage to the hammer spring. My airguns are not what I would want to use in an emergency so there is just no reason to store them cocked or loaded. There is always plenty of time for that when I am preparing to shoot. All my grandkids have seen my airguns and the oldest has shot the Prod under close supervision. I lock them up (or at least I try to remember to lock them up) when they are around but I want to stay several steps removed from an accident.

OldVet said:

I tried to get him to reply. No dice

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He might be busy, honestly I don’t know Where he’s been. He was a regular fixture around here. Been much quieter as of late. he Builds and upgrades guns, one of the more popular is the Zelos customs he puts out.

on eBay ‘C88Machining’ offers the fx barrel conversion kit and you’d have to get the 500/600/700 mm liner you want for it. 1:24 twist superior, 1:18 superior heavy, or 1:16STX SLUG. are the most recent out. He sells a high Flow tp And valve, which is pointless unless your expanding your ports. You can obviously buy the bottle adapter and bottle, and an additional side mounted plenum. if you want to get a lot of power out of it. personally I think the 45 foot pounds it can easily put out stock with just reg adjustment is enough. I’m shooting 22gr hybrid and 21 gr javelin slugs at that Power, it’s plenty.

ShootingTargets7 said:

Hello Steve, it is not clear to me the intent of this post if it is an informative post about mild steel targets or questioning the
durability of ours.

To clear that up....

I have no doubt your statement is correct but to be clear our 1/8" targets being shown here are
not mild steel, they are AR400. There is a 3x difference in strength as seen in the table below.

They also ring much louder when hit due to the hardness difference.

Steel Type	Tensile Strength (psi)	Difference
A36	58,000 – 80,000 psi	–
AR400	180,000 – 200,000 psi	~3x stronger

I hope this helps clear up any potential confusion.

Mark
ST7

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Mark,
Perhaps stating that your targets will not be distorted over time by soft lead pellets, would clear up any doubt that may exist. Unfortunately, this is an issue with many makers of steel targets.

FWIW, the iris with adjustable rear optic gave me less clarity than what I could get with the iris alone. I use a standard iris drilled out to 1.3 mm for shooting 10m offhand. Seems less sensitive to eye position than the standard 1.1 mm.
Chuck

bigHUN said:

The signal update between the windmeter to Strelok on the tablet/android feels like instant or for sure shorter then 1 sec. Both the reticle view also the direction view.
This speed is acceptable but must slow down the spin on the wind blade - you can see I put lead shots in the head ball.
A huge difference how the air moves and changes direction much faster in my relatively closed space backyard where I was testing these projects only - or my shooting range where is wider open room a wind is more consistent direction.
If the blade "nose" is very light the motion is very sensitive. Need to balance the head weight also the tail-tape length.


For the gun range I use this Samsung 8" tablet for all my outdoors needs: both the FX radar and Labradar / Strelok Pro / WindMeter / Xreload / all my data logging....
The larger screen have different layout for these apps and I like it much better.
I have a second StrelokPro license for my cellphone, using it for printing NFC dope cards only. This how I know the GUI between the two.

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Love it. Have my 10 guns programmed into Strelok pro. Fantastic research on wind. Great work.

X rings i suppose ( not impact owner ) is used to seal the gauges.

We've seen posts on various models of airbows over the years. They seem to take two separate paths of development.

There are specialty arrows like the Air Venturi Air bolts designed for use in air rifles of different calibers .357 to .50 cal. with barrels over 21". The main selling point there is the obvious convenience of using a regular large bore airgun that can also shoot arrows, current price ~$20US each.

Then there are the high-power Airbows that are designed and marketed primarily for hunting. And they keep on coming. I just noticed that Airforce is offering a new arrow shooter called a Talonbolt ~145fpe max. The Umarex AirSaber airbows ~165fpe max aren't very expensive and not very difficult to learn to use either. That would be substantial power for an airgun hunting slug at modest ranges, but it is truly exceptional power for an arrow.

This old FPE hunting chart below from Easton Archery is interesting. There are many pellet/slug airguns available today with shot power >65fpe, but I wouldn't want to hunt anything really large and dangerous with even a 75fpe airgun. This chart assumes broadhead razor tip arrows. An arrow with a target point might still go all the way through and out the other side but the hole would be too small to bleed enough.

Arrow power needed (at the point of impact) for -->
<25 ....... Small game.
25-41 .. Medium game, deer, antelope.
42-65 .. Large game, elk, black bear, boar.
>65 ..... Toughest game, cape buffalo, grizzle bears.

So modern airbows seem to offer a lot more shot power than is needed for hunting. Even the short and lightweight Umarex AirJavelin (CO2 and AirJavelin Pro (PCP) arrow carbines produced over 30fpe and could easily robinhood arrows from a rest at 20 yards.

All of this crossed my mind recently when I noticed that there are two different versions of the FX Redback 8-shot repeating gatling style airbow for sale. It reminds me of a similar development in the breakbarrel airgun market when Gamo finally began to offer multishot magazines in some of their models. Finally, after over 100 years. I can only think of one model of 1 crossbow and 1 model of airbow which have a double shot capacity. A sudden advance to an adjustable power, 8-shot repeating airbow from a major vendor is a major technical advance in an admittedly small segment of the market.

The large commercial vendors offer it as the FX Redback Standard, specs 41.5" long, 7lb 6oz, max ~145fpe using 375 grain 23" Air Venturi Air bolts. The price is ~$1,730 and air bolts are extra at ~$20 each.

The Gogun site has their own branded variation of the FX Redback. It appears to be a Standard Redback with 12 inches taken off of the barrels (31.5" long) to make it into a carbine at $1,550, or $180 less than the Standard model. And add a 10-pack of 12" vaneless arrows at $90 per pack (~$9/arrow).

So the Gogun version is a foot shorter than the Standard, weighs about 9 ounces less, with max power ~80fpe using plain 12" hollow carbon fiber arrows weighing about 250 grains. And it costs (without arrows) ~$180 less than the Standard model.

Both of the FX Redback versions cost over 3x the price of a new 2-shot Umarex Airsaber Elite X2, which is the only other multi-shot airbow I'm aware of.

I've had so much enjoyment watching Jörg Sprave's Slingshot Channel on YouTube and his early development of the Redback prototype that I like to support his shop when I can. This time around Gogun appears to be the only one offering a compact version of a truly unique commercial FX product.

There aren't many reviews of the Redbacks yet and I'm curious about any recent experiences that other people may have had with them. Gogun only had one Redback in stock this morning ... and before I had finished my coffee, there were none.

JP

Won’t take much work for them to go the long haul in competition. You do need to do a few things though. First reinforce the paddle. Pretty cheap and simple if you can weld (don’t have to be good at welding. Swap out the pins with some #8 (or #10 can’t remember) bolts and nylon nuts. Then start swapping out the face plates with thicker ones as you go. I do believe the Gamo style targets are the best, just cheaply made so you have get do a few things to get them right. You need to test them. One problem some of them will have, say 15-20%, is they won’t fall down reliably. That’s an easy fix if you know what to look for. The paddle leg, where it meets the frame, in some cases needs to be shimmed. Do that and your are golden. I ran a lot of these when I started a FT club. Heck, everyone does as they are the cheapest way to get started. As time went on and I became established I bought better targets (mainly Rhino). I still think the simple Gamo design was the best once I went thru them and got things sorted. After each target was sorted now more issues. Also add a leader with a fishing swivel at the end to connect you string. I used electric fence wire for my leader as it was cheap and I already had it. Near the end we swapped it out for fancy cable. Neither worked better than the other. Cable looked nicer. You have a lot of nice targets and a great start. They will need to be reinforced as time goes. That said when I first got started I bought some early produced Gamo targets (without the add on KZ reducer). They were made with thicker metal. We used some of those on our target range in the beginning for everyday practice. Never had to mess with those and they held up to serious abuse. I bought them used from somebody. The old ones you couldn't swap the face plate (if I remember correctly) but they were solid. PM me if you want to discuss and I will give you my phone number.

Little love for the Commander XR! Good looking gun, disregard the cheap bipod!

ChuckHunter said:

Shoot me your address and I'll send you a tin! Just paying it forward brother

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Thanks for the offer but I already bought some.

Nothing like taking care of tree rats
good shooting

A few months ago I couldn’t resist the urge knowing how good these rifles are. I ended up with a second this time in .22. It is tuned to shoot 18.1 JSB’s @860. I just swap the cylinder from one to the other for the higher shot count. They were both bought here. At used prices for the Canadians reading this that aren’t aware of the forum store. https://www.airgunforum.ca/store/index.php?cPath=22

Cran said:

Oh! THAT o ring! chekn again. Thanks men, ladies!

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Thanks ocd, ill get some from utahag. Really appreciate t.

there are some interesting videos by G.K. himself, showing what i consider good results with vers.3 mp mold slugs and in a later video also with the huben 'peanuts'. of course casting, even with sizing, is not as precise as (industrial) swaging. but at least in my k1 the cast slugs don't move a bit on their own in the mag, which an issue with many industrially manufactured ones:

Bobr said:

Good shot glad you got him down do you like the nsa better than the fx hybreds

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Thanks for sharing the video! Great shooting too!

huntercdc said:

It is a standard 600mm 22cal with a slug liner now. I have a pellet liner thats the same lenght I would like to put together as a kit for now.

Future I will possibly want to change it to a 25cal slugger 600mm and or a 500mm 22cal pellet setup.

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If you want the changeover to be quick on 22 to 25 I think you need the barrel adapter and it may be easier to do a kit. As for staying 22 it's super ez (as you probably know) to just pop out the liner and swap it. Up until you go 500 mm and have to buy skinny moderators to clear your bottle or buy a smaller bottle potentially.

I toyed with the ideas of all these options and just tuned my 700mm 22 for heavy slugs and bought a dreamline compact in 25 to cover my bases.