Raptor review/ongoing thoughts

Well, I've got seven tins (500count) through the gun now. The side lever and trigger seem to have gotten smoother. Although, the new trigger probably only has about two tins under it's belt.

The gun is just a joy to shoot, very enjoyable overall experience.

So, yeah, I'm still quite happy with the purchase. There aren't any other guns out there, that I'm aware of, that have this collection of features at this price. 

If remember right, I got the gun the Monday after Thanksgiving. So that'd put ownership a little over 5 weeks. 

Travis just posted yesterday that the adjustable regs arrives and they look SWEET. The gauges look big and readable. I was afraid they'd be the little ninja gauges with hash marks at each thousand psi but they look like the nice big one with 100psi increments like on my USFT. 



Back to Field Target.

I built a thigh rest for the Raptor. For Open class they are legal and, in my opinion, really help with side to side stability. They essentially swing down from the stored position to....rest on the thigh. 

Here's a pic of one for those unfamiliar:



The cam/lever unlocks to swing it down to the thigh, and locks it in position, at either the stored or deployed positions. 

Here's the one I built for the Raptor: 



This one is lacking the cam lever (should be here on Monday). It will pivot where I'm am pinching and unlock to swing down and be lockable in the stored or deployed position like the one in the first picture. 

Aluminum seemed the obvious choice. Kind of interesting back story to where the aluminum plate came from.....I grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma. For a growing boy, a couple thousand acres was an awesome place the hunt and fish and just roam wherever I wanted. Well we had these signs posted everywhere, keep out, no trespassing, that sort of thing. Well when the ranch sold when I was about 20, the signs were taken down and placed into a big conex (among a bunch of other random stuff) that was then moved here to AZ. I noticed the signs a couple months ago and made a mental note that they were there. When needing some decently thick aluminum plate for the Raptor thigh rest, I went and grabbed a sign. Turns out aluminum can be cut with a jigsaw and shaped with a belt sander. Took longer than necessary with the lack of proper tools but seems like it'll work for the intended use. Kind of cool, in a nostalgic way, to literally have a piece of the ranch on the gun. 

I also ordered some other cheap baubles that I think I can turn into a convertible bag rider or butt hook (facing front or back). 

We're lucky here in AZ to have two field target matches per month, at least in the winter months. Now that Travis has the adjustable regs in, really hoping he gets caught up soon with the back log on the Raptors so that one finds its way to my house and I can try this baby out at a match. 

I just had a few minutes to shoot today. 

I'm learning that my LW barrel likes to be REALLY clean. I had been taking the barrel off to clean each time with a rod from the breech end, but I had my kids get me this for Christmas (wife asked for ideas). 



Today I finally got around to cutting the brass weight down short enough to make the turn into the barrel from the breech cutout. Brass weight was about twice as long. Also gave it a blunt point while I was at it. I was afraid the reduced weight wouldn't carry it down the barrel but I turned the gun muzzle down and it fell right through, no issues with the Donny moderator even. Quite pleased with how it worked. 

I should probably point out that I removed this little gem from the pull through too. I'm not against a brass brush in an airgun barrel, just think it's a bad idea if it's passing through an oring. The bore snake is just braided around the brush so it's not too tough to carefully separate the braiding enough to remove the brush. 



This was my weather today. Pretty windy. 



https://youtu.be/V5Hr2-GAdyE



So, after the pull through, these were the first five shots at 30 yards to verify that my zero is still good. 



It kinda looks like two shots but a close up shows the lead marks on the paper, three across the top of the hole, one on the right side, and one bottom left. The group is a hair to the right it seems. Possibly subconscious accounting for the right to left wind though. 

Then I took it to 54 yards. This is ten shots, wind grabbed two of them just a bit. I was holding dead on for all 10 shots, as I was curious to see what kind of wind drift I'd get. 



Gun is currently shooting the 13.73gr @ an average of 835fpe, so about 21-22 fpe. I'm really liking how resistant to the wind the gun/barrel seems to be. This whole .20 experiment was with hopes that the .20 would offer some kind of advantage due to its different sectional density/BC ratios than the more common .177 and .22. 

I was really liking what I saw today in pretty much non-airgun shooting wind conditions.

Adjustable regulator

The oring sealing the bottle to the drop block started leaking a few weeks before SHOT show. I replaced that oring but then it was leaking at the valve. JSAR asked that I send it back for a reseal, and they'd swap out the fixed regulator for the adjustable one while it was there. I just got it back a few days ago.

The first shot was the first time I have ever had a supersonic shot from an airgun. CRAAAAAACK! Extremely loud from inside my garage out the back door. Didn't chronograph it but knew it was lots more fpe than I want. JSAR had told me they just did a general tune on it which I took to mean that they got it back together and holding air. 

So, out comes the chronograph. 

Between the hammer spring tension adjust and the striker, I could not get the power down around 20fpe. I eventually ran to ACE and found a spring of equal length, and similar ID/OD but with thinner wire. That spring, with the hammer spring tension adjust with only two threads left (visible through most rearward set screw hole on side of tube) and some striker length fiddling, got me to an average of 810fps with 13.73gr JSBs. 

That was all on Tuesday. I got it out again this evening after work and put some over the chronograph. FPS is holding, right where I set it at on Tuesday. 

Spreads from Tuesday and tonight are in the 20-25fps range. That isn't great, but much better than the random really slow one that I was seeing with the fixed regulator. I'm hoping it'll tighten up as the new adjustable reg breaks in.

The gun has a completely different personality now. It is much louder and has a sorta POP sound. The sound of it firing a pellet is very short and quick. The sound reminds me a lot of a Beeman P17 single stroke pistol. It almost sounds like a firecracker going off. It is so different that I asked JSAR and was told it now has a 2nd gen balanced valve and a different hammer. It is pretty loud for 20fpe. The metallic "tink" sound that is used to have is gone. 

As far as reg pressure goes, JSAR knows that I'm not a power hound, so they told me it was sent with the correct shim arrangement for 1200-2200psi. The gauge for the regulator says 1000psi. I'm surprised that I'm getting 20fpe with such a low reg pressure, and such a weak hammer strike, and that it is so loud. The loudness sounds like it's coming from the valve area, and not a matter of too little moderator. 

So, right now I'm happy that it'll shoot with much more consistent fps than it did with the fixed regulator. I'm ecstatic that the stellar accuracy I was having before is still there. But, I would really like it to be quieter, which may be a matter of the way that I have the hammer spring tension and striker length configured. More testing and tinkering required there. And cocking it is just a dream, there is such little hammer spring tension and such a weak spring, that there is nearly zero effort to cock it-kinda cool.

For you big power guys, this gun feels like it's just begging to be unleashed. I really think 20fpe is the extremely lowest energy that the standard Raptor can be held to. I'm sure that different hammer weights, an even thinner wire hammer spring, and maybe even valving could be optimized for lower power tunes, but trying to get the standard configuration to do sub 20fpe gives me the mental image of a 2 year old toddler trying to hold back a leashed Rottweiler that just saw a small furry animal dash by. 

Shot it some this morning. 

100 shots from 3000-1900psi. 20fpe as mentioned above. With a reg pressure of 1000psi, and a possible fill up to 4350.......LOTS of shots. 

I was also curious about the loud POP-like report. Decibel reading app on phone was calling it 75.3 decibels. That got me wondering what the 20fpe Veteran does for decibel level, later in the afternoon, same phone app from the exact same setting and situation, 76.4decibels from the Vet. 

Very interesting, considering the Raptor SEEMS louder than the Vet. I would have bet money that the decibel readings were the other way around. 

Update

It's been awhile since I've had much time to play with the Raptor, but I did a little today and it rekindled my excitement for the potential represented by the Raptor platform. 

Just a few days after I got the Raptor back with the adjustable regulator installed, it went to a machinist friend's house. We had gone in together on the last 4 Career 707 barrels in .22 (new/old stock) that a gentleman in New York had. I don't know the whole story, but that guy was somehow involved in importing the Korean Career guns in the 90s. The plan was for my machinist friend to make one of the barrels fit the Raptor.

The Raptor plan all along was for it to be my tinkerer platform. I really enjoyed swapping barrels and playing with hammer tension, and barrel length, and caliber, and transfer port sizes, etc with the Crosman guns when I first got into airgunning. While I had bunches of fun with those Crosmans, I always felt like the metal was too soft for frequent teardowns. Things would get sloppy with all of my tinkering. I also felt like the Crosman trigger was kind of holding back accuracy. So, the Raptor was purchased as a testing platform. I hoped that the good trigger, adjustable regulator, adjustable hammer tension, easily swappable hammer springs, and easily swappable barrels would let me test to my hearts desire. 

So it went to the machinist friends house with those 4 Career barrels. I heard from him a couple weeks later and the Career barrels weren't long enough for the factory shroud to be used. He had also decided to machine me up a regular .22 polygon barrel LW barrel, no choke, as well as a barrel that came out of the Daystate ART testing program. I don't know all the details, but I believe it's close, if not exactly the same as the poly LWs that are going into the current production Red Wolf HP and Safari barrels. AOA was on board with the barrel going into the Raptor. My opinion about this is that placing their barrel into the Raptor gives them yet another data point for the ART testing that they're so passionate about. With the Raptor being capable of such big FPE, but also being a non-electronic gun, this will give them more information about the barrels they and Lothar Walther have worked so carefully to perfect. Let me state here that I am not part of the ART program, but the friend that did the machining is, and he shot the Raptor with the ART barrel in it prior to returning it to me. He also told me that other ART members had shot the Raptor while he had it. I'm guessing there was some ART testing happening there. So, I guess I'm a guinea pig, which goes back to that tuning and testing platform that I had envisioned for the Raptor from the get-go.

All said and done, I have 4 barrels for the Raptor now: the .20, 12 land and groove LW, thimballed barrel that it came from JSAR with, the .22 thimballed Korean barrel (guessing it's about 18-19 inches long), a .22 unchoked LW poly that is the same length as the factory .20-this one is thimballed too, and finally, the .22 polygonal Daystate/LW ART barrel. The ART barrel is a couple inches longer than the OEM Raptor barrel, and also has a transfer port cut directly into the barrel (no thimble). 

My machinist friend went above and beyond, machining a delrin spacer (white in pic) so that the factory length shroud could be used with the 23 inch ART barrel. He also machined new end caps from brass for both ends of the shroud. Exceptional work and, although I paid him for it, I still feel like I took advantage. 



Overall length is now 47.5 inches with that moderator on there. Definitely a bench gun. And it shoots quite nicely from a bench.

It came back to me with the ART barrel installed and I've not yet had the time or desire to remove it for fiddling, in fact, up until this morning I had shot it less than 100 times, and only to 54 yards. The reg pressure is 1800 and it still has the spring with the reduced wire diameter (from the hammer spring it came with from JSAR). I scrounged up that lighter spring when I had it for a couple days before going to the machinist. That spring does 20fpe with the .20 barrel and is quite a bit lighter than the OEM one. 

It's doing 930fps with the JSB 25.39 redesigns, for about 49fpe. Here are some of those couple of shots I've thus far taken with it. This was at about 54 yards from a couple weeks ago. Shots at the bottom of the page were sighters. 10 shot groups. 



Not bad at all.

Fast forward to today. I woke up early to go do some low wind, 100 yard shooting and decided to throw the Raptor in last minute. Prior to this morning, 55 yards was the max it had been shot. 

Most of my shooting time this morning was used for a different gun, but I shot the Raptor with some slugs and a little bit with the .22 JSB RDs. For slugs, it seemed to do best with the NSA 17.5gr. I had no idea how fast it was going, but was able to do 1.5-2 inch, 10 shot groups out to 100 yards pretty easily. 

On the way back in I found some ground squirrels and pest birds and had really good luck connecting with those NSA 17.5s. I made a handful of 150+ yard shots on the ground squirrels, the furthest being a 167 yard shot on a juvenile. Luckily they're young and dumb and let me walk it in with a couple shots. Even that far out, it smacked the crud out of him, could see the effect of the slug smashing into him in the scope, kinda lifted him off his feet and carried him backwards. Hella impressive! 

Was texting the machining buddy and we got curious about how fast the slugs were moving. He said they really need to go at least 1000fps. I used strelok and what I remembered for the holdover and was thinking 950fps seemed about right. Got home and put ten shots over the chrono (NSA 17.5s): 1023, 1020, 1026, 1019, 1021, 1021, 1022, 1018, 1025, 1024. Pretty decent ES, and LOTS faster than I thought. That works out to about 41fpe. The 167 yard squirrel that got hit so hard just made me realize these slugs don't shed the energy the way our skirted pellets do.

Thoughts

Current barrel on the Raptor makes it a less than ideal brush gun (had to carry it through some brush in a creek-bottom area and felt like I was trying to get through there with a fishing pole. Also doesn't handle that well, sharp edges on the under-rail, and heavy. But what it lacks for a walk-about gun, it more than makes up for as a bench gun. Man this thing is pleasant to shoot from a bench, very enjoyable. 

I've not done any extensive chrono work, or tuning, but it seemed to be getting LOTS of shots today. Also, not very loud for what I was shooting. And also pretty docile to shoot, no jumping around. 

The two Daystate barrels that I have had the pleasure to shoot, have both shot pellets and slugs extremely well. Really cool to have one barrel be capable of doing both.

I've been really recalcitrant to the slug revolution, and would still argue that they should only be shot in wide open spaces or with a dang reliable means of stopping them if shooting in a backyard. But now that I've seen what they can do I'm much more open to the option. Just in my little slice of the airgun world, I've seen that a slug can get you out additional 75-100 yards over a pellet, even a high BC, really moving fast pellet like the .22 Redesigns. 

It is nowhere near as refined as the Red Wolf that I've been reviewing for the past few weeks, but for more than $1000 less than a RW, I wouldn't expect it to be a RW.

I like it! 

(I know the state of JSAR seems rather precarious right now, with all of the set backs that they've seen. I also know that the made in America piece of the recipe is a really desirable trait. Seems that lots of guys have sold their Raptors for various reasons, but I do believe I'll be hanging onto mine. I'm still extremely excited about the .20 barrel (that it came with) at 20fpe for field target, and even at 30ish fpe with the heavier .20s. I'd also really like to test the other two barrels (in .22) that I haven't even shot yet! JSAR has had a rocky start, but they've got a good product, lots of features for the price. I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: more airgun manufacturers, especially American ones, is a good thing for us all. More companies putting out new airguns/doing R&D equates to competition in the industry, that helps keep prices down, and also drives innovation). 

Josh got back to me and told me to send in the Raptor and they will put the adjustable regulator and the newer trigger in for free. Going to send it out today....If anybody has a good tune or a slug their 25's like please let me know.....The NSA sample pack is here and when I get the raptor back from JSAR I will be tuning it in.

Tony P.

Click to expand...

That's great news, and pretty typical of all of my dealings with JSAR. They'll do right by ya, just gotta be patient for it to happen. I can't help you with advice for the .25, although I believe jmmartineze573 that commented above has one in .25 and has done a fair bit of documentation of his results over on the GTA forum. Piggybacking off his testing would be a great place to start. 

Thanks for the clarification and additional information. I failed to mention how you designed the new end caps to make it very similar to the way a Red Wolf barrel/shroud works. Very neat piece of engineering and machining there. Again, thanks for taking on the project and even improving the design. 

@ackuric, mine is one of one with a thimble. I requested it and they obliged. It's not something they do. 

I've got some guns that I like to leave just how they are. That was part of the desire to buy this one. Leave the others alone, in their high performance state, and have my fun with this one. If I can find a combo of barrel/pellet/tune that is exceptional and brings me joy, then the Raptor may get a long-term configuration too. The only way to find out is to try. 

Glad to hear your Marauder is performing so well. 

As for the rest of your post-op anesthesia induced comments, well, different strokes for different folks.