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RECOILLING RIFLES

Spring Piston
This is the most popular type of rifle.

Generally Simple Operation
The gun is cocked either by breaking the barrel or underlever depending on the type of gun.
Spring Piston Mechanism
The gun contains a piston and a large coiled spring. This procedure compresses the mainspring and moves the piston back, which connects into the trigger mechanism. When the trigger is pulled the mainspring is released, pushing the piston forward which pushes the air in front of the piston through a port and propels the pellet down the barrel. The movement of the spring and piston leads to recoil, which can affect the accuracy of the gun. The lighter the gun usually the more recoil. Hence heavier spring guns are often easier to shoot and more accurate. You may have to compromise with weight though, especially if you are hunting.
To shoot a recoiling rifle accurately, techniques must be learned to compensate for the recoil of the gun. Learning and improving these skills is all part of the hobby, and a huge amount of satisfaction can be gained from learning how to get the best performance from your rifle.

Spring guns are usually relatively cheap, simple and self-contained. They can be very accurate and powerful. They are also quick to load. An average weight is around 7-8lbs.

Advantages
Cheap to buy
Self contained
Quick to load
Reliable
Excellent value for money

Disadvantages
Generally single shot only (there are a few multishots available)
The most accurate guns tend to be heavy
More noisy than a PCP to shoot from muzzle and piston noise
Recoil can make the gun more difficult to shoot accurately, requiring more practice to become proficient.

Spring Piston Rifles - Our Recommendations

Best Value For Money
Edgar Bros Models 55 & 60 - cheapest rifle we sell that is powerful enough for hunting. Reliable (not chinese). Very popular.

Best Mid-Priced Rifles £100-£200
Gamo Shadow & CFX ranges - surprisingly good, Spanish made rifles. Great open sights for backyard plinking without the expense of a scope.
BSA Supersport - The most popular, full UK power (12ft lbs) spring rifles. Reliable and British made.
Weihrauch HW99 - Great build quality and fairly lightweight

We recommend - Out of the above rifles, our vote goes to the BSA Lightning XL and Weihrauch HW95 Both these rifles are
lightweight, accurate, good looking and well built

Best £200+ Rifles
Weihrauch HW97K
Air Arms Pro-Sport
Air Arms TX200
All three of these rifles are superb with little to choose between them. They are all heavy, with low recoil, built in silencers, smooth underlever cocking and all three are built to last. Of the three rifles, the TX200 is fractionally smoother out of the box. The TX200, although heavy, is very easy to cock. The Pro-Sport shoots like a TX200 but looks gorgeous!

Beware of - Chinese spring guns advertised as 12ft lbs power as many of them do not produce this power.

Gas Ram Rifles

Smooth Operator
Imagine a spring gun but with a sealed gas unit or strut instead of the spring. They still have a piston, hence they do recoil, but they are the next step up from a spring gun. They give less recoil and vibration, require less maintenance and can be left cocked for long periods without the worry of spring wear. They are usually better built, with nicer stocks.
Overall, if you do not want to mess with a pre-charged pneumatic gun, then look at either a top of the range springer or a gas ram gun.

Advantages
Less expensive than a pre-charged gun
Consistent power
No need to charge air cylinders and no charging equipment required
Automatic safety catch
No spring to wear out

Disadvantages
More expensive than spring guns
Small amount of recoil

Best Gas Ram Rifles - Single Shot
Theoben Fenman
Theoben Evolution
The same actions with different stocks and different length barrels.
The Evolution-Olympus with thumbhole stock is a superb gun with a great stock. Highly recommended.

Best Gas Ram Rifles - Multishot
In a category of one! the Theoben SLR98 is one of our favourite rifles. Look out for the new longer barrelled .177 version. A rifle of choice if money is no object but you do not want the bother of charging a pre-charged gun.
Great to shoot. 7-shot magazines. Lovely stock.

RECOILLESS RIFLES

Recoilless rifles are separated into 4 main groups -
Spring Recoilless Rifles
CO2 Powered Rifles
Pump-Up Rifles
Pre-Charged Pneumatic Rifles

Spring Recoilless Rifles
A small group of guns usually comprising a normal recoilling spring action on a sledge in the stock. The action recoils on the sledge but the stock does not move. This allows the action to consistently recoil, producing better accuracy. The main production guns are the RWS Model 54 Airking and the now-discontinued Air Arms TX200SR. Usually these guns are heavy and a little cumbersome, and therefore not popular for hunting.

CO2 Powered Rifles
This is a good way of buying a recoilless gun at a cheap price. They use small CO2 bulbs or sometimes bigger 88gram CO2 bottles. The main advantages are they are cheap to buy, recoilless and often lightweight.
CO2 powered rifles are mainly purchased as fun guns to use for informal target shooting in the backyard. No recoil and bolt action cocking makes them popular with beginners, younger shooters and shooters who struggle with the weight of a spring rifle.
CO2 also has some disadvantages. You have to keep buying CO2 bulbs, they are limited in power and less consistent than other power sources - CO2 can vary in pressure depending on temperature, leading to inconsistent results as the weather changes. For this reason the guns have a shorter consistent range but are ideal for multishots and plinking guns.

Advantages
Relatively cheap
Fun to use
Multishot models available
Easy to use
Usually lightweight

Disadvantages
Average accuracy
Can be expensive to run
Many of the guns are built cheaply - you get what you pay for!

Best CO2 Plinking Gun
Crosman Nightstalker - semi-auto action means these guns are great fun to shoot, they look great and are inexpensive.

Best CO2 Hunting Gun
Umarex 850 Air Magnum - it is difficult to recommend a CO2 gun for hunting, with the limitations described above. However, we tested this rifle at 10.9ft lbs power, so it is capable of short range hunting (25-30 yards max) in the right weather conditions. It has an 8-shot magazine, so ideal for that quick next shot.

Best CO2 Value For Money
An easy answer! The QB78 - At £59.95 for a recoiless rifle is a bargain although they are a little rough and ready. Alot of people are tuning them and many websites are springing up dedicated to these cheap chinese rifles. Ideal back garden plinkers.

Pump-Up Rifles
Self contained recoiless gun with a built-in pumping lever. The lever is disguised as part of the forend of the stock. You usually need 5-10 pumps to get one shot at 12ft lbs power, but they are the cheapest accurate recoiless guns at full power.

Advantages
Cheap
Recoiless
Lightweight
Accurate

Disadvantages
Time consuming and harder work to pump

Best Pump-Up Rifle
Sheridan EB9 rifle, no contest

Beware of - Chinese made pump-up rifles, terrible quality.

Pre-Charged Pneumatic Rifles
This is the group of rifles that has advanced the most in the last 10 years. They use a reservoir built into the gun to hold a store of compressed air, usually about 2500-3000PSI. This reservoir can hold anything from 30-500 shots worth of air depending on the size of the cylinder.
The compressed air cylinder is charged via a stirrup pump or divers bottle. The regular spray compressor, garage pump or foot pump will NOT do the job as they do not run at high enough pressure.
These guns have many advantages. They are recoilless so they are very easy to shoot accurately. They are very quiet when fitted with a silencer. There are many different models on the market to choose from, so you should be able to find just the right specification for your purpose - multishots, single-shots, lightweight, large shot-capacity, fully adjustable, whatever you want!
PCPs do have some disadvantages such as cost, the extra investment in charging equipment and the inconvenience of charging the air cylinder.

Advantages
Huge choice of brands and specifications - many multishots available
Great choice of add-ons such as silencers, bipods and custom parts
Accurate
Full UK power
Very quiet with a silencer fitted

Disadvantages
Cost of initial setup
Can be inconvenient to refill
Whilst no recoil is great for accuracy, it also takes away some of the soul and challenge of the shooting experience.

Best PCP Value For Money
Air Arms S200 - Lightweight, seems to fit everyone from juniors to ladies and men. Very accurate and cheap. Single-shot as standard - an Air Arms multishot conversion can be fitted at extra cost.
BSA Ultra - Ultra-short, accurate and reliable. Needs a decent silencer though.
Air Arms S400 - You cannot get much better value than a HFT competition winner straight out of the box. A good hunting gun as well.

Best Mid-Priced PCP
Air Arms S410 - 10-shot, lightweight, well built, great magazine. Almost faultless with good backup and spares availability. Looks pretty too.
Daystate X2 - 10-shot and single-shot. Slightly heavier than the S410, but built a little stronger. Easy to change from a multishot to single-shot. Fabulous company to deal with - nice people, nice guns!

Best Money-No-Object PCP
Theoben MFR - Single-shot but can be used multishot with the purchase of a magazine. Built-in silencer, great performer.
Daystate Mk3/ Air Ranger / Air Wolf - 10-shot & single-shot. Stunning performance. Daystate really are taking airguns to the next step.

Unusual But Good PCP
Logun S16 S - 16-shot. Military look. Make sure you buy an S version, the earlier one was unreliable. Loads of accessories available. Actually very good to shoot as long as you read the instructions on cocking it! .177 version due now!
Gunpower Stealth - Single-shot. Loads of shots per charge. Simple, no-nonsense design.
Parker Hale Phoenix - 10-shot underlever cocking action. Great fun!

Best Field Target (FT)/ Hunter Field Target (HFT) PCP Rifles
Air Arms S400 - Single-shot. Great performance for the money.
Daystate Mk3 Sport - Supplied as a 10-shot but can be used with a single-shot tray. Very fast lock time. Very accurate. Possibly the best HFT gun
Steyr LG110 - Single shot. The sexiest gun on the market. Just drop dead gorgeous and happens to shoot like a dream too. Excellent after-sales support from the official importer too.
Air Arms EV2 - Air Arms have ironed out all the glitches to produce a truly great FT rifle. New version coming July 2006.

Are we qualified to give our opinions?

Well, we all shoot. We have owned just about every decent gun between us. At the moment we own-
Heath - Air Arms S400 .22cal, Pro-Stalk 3-9x50
Sean - Daystate Mk3 Sport .177cal, LightStream 4.5-14x44
Michael - Theoben Sirocco .22cal
Lloyd - Theoben SLR98 .177cal long barrel, MAP Pro 3-9x50
           Theoben SLR88 Imperator .177, LightStream 4.5-14x44
           Steyr LP5
           coming soon.... Steyr LG110 Hunter
Andrea - Steyr LP2 pistol. It is only a pistol (and we are covering rifles here), but it is a fantastic pistol...

THE TELESCOPIC SIGHT

To the beginner scopes look very complicated, and when you take a look at the Telescopic Sights section on the web site you will see a vast array of numbers for each model.

As an example if we take a 4 x 32 scope the number four equates to how many times closer the object you are viewing becomes when viewed through the scope.

The number 32 equates to the size in mm of the front lens, also known as the objective lens.

The theory behind the objective lens is that the bigger this lens, the brighter the image will be when viewed through the scope.

There are however other factors to consider, such as lens quality, that makes one scope brighter than another.

When looking at a 3-9 x 40 as an example of zoom scopes, the number forty is once again the size of the objective lens. The numbers 3-9 mean that when the image is viewed through the scope and the 3-9 zoom (located at the rear of the scope) is adjusted the image will move from 3x closer all the way through to 9x closer .

Telescopic sights have adjusters fitted to them that enable the scope to be set up in such a way that the pellet will impact on the target at the same point where the cross hair also appears on the target. These adjusters are generally called turrets.

The top turret adjusts the cross hair up or down depending on which way the turret is turned .

The side turret will adjust the cross hair left or right depending on which way it is turned.

This is only a basic guide for telescopic sights and you will find as your shooting develops so too will your knowledge and understanding of them.

We will also be updating this section periodically with more in-depth information on reticles, parallax, turrets and lenses.

MOUNTS

These are a very important piece of your equipment that enable the air rifle and telescopic sight to work together as one.

Mounts are available in many different sizes and generally the bigger the objective lens the higher the mount required.

As long as you use good quality mounts that are fastened together with allen bolts from a quality manufacturer you can not really go wrong.

GUN BAGS

This is required to enable you to carry your air rifle in a public place and will offer a good degree of protection from the elements. The thicker the lining of the gun bag, the more protection it will offer your equipment.

If you attach a silencer to your rifle, decide on the correct length bag to accomodate this to avoid having to detach it during trips.

When considering which gunbag to purchase, think about the accessories you will be carrying with you. If you need storage space for pellets, spare air cylinders, targets, etc make sure you choose a bag that can accomodate these.

Internal straps to secure your rifle are a useful option on many bags, as are rucksack-style carry straps.

Hard cases offer the ultimate protection but can be unweildy to store in car boots, so measure up before you buy!

Never store an air rifle in a gun bag as it will rust.

PELLETS

Stick to a good quality lead round head pellet from the likes of H&N, Air Arms, Crosman or Daystate and you cannot go wrong. Experiment with any of these brands and you will find a least one that will perform incredibly well.

Hollow point pellets are generally used for close to medium range hunting as they impart alot of force on impact.

Flat head pellets are poular for paper target shooting as they punch the target cleanly and make it easier to work out your scores.

Pointed pellets are used as they are supposed to give more penetration on impact. They are not as accurate as roundhead pellets as they are not as ballistically efficient.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

click here for scope FAQs

AIR RIFLE FAQs

What air rifle can I purchase?
Any air rifle that does not does not exceed 12ft/lbs of muzzle energy

What is 12ft/lbs?
This is the maximum power an air rifle is allowed to produce in England,Scotland and Wales without a firearms certificate.(F.A.C).

What is fps?
Feet Per Second,(fps),is the velocity or speed a pellet travels at when leaving the muzzle of a rifle.The muzzle is the end of the barrel.

Can I have more power than 12ft/lbs?
Only if you apply for a firearms certificate from your local constabulary, without this you are breaking the law and could face a heavy fine or end up in prison.

What is calibre?
The size of the bore or hole running through the centre of the barrel.In .22 calibre the rifle will require a .22 pellet,in .177 calibre,a .177 pellet.

What does this all mean to me?
In real terms a .22cal(.22 of an inch in imperial,5.5mm metric.)the muzzle velocity equates to around 600fps.In .177cal(.177 of an inch imperial,4.5mm metric.)the muzzle velocity equates to around 800fps depending on pellet weight.

How does pellet weight make a difference?
Pellets are weighed in grains,the heavier the pellet the slower it travels.That is why .177 flies faster than .22

What are the best pellets?
Round headed pellets made of lead have excellent all round accuracy.Stick to a good quality pellet from the following manufacturers;Air arms,Daystate,Crosman,H+N and RWS.

What calibre is best?
.22cal is generally preferred for hunting as it has good hitting power.177 is generally preferred for target shooting as it flies faster and flatter than a .22 cal.Depending on preference both calibres are suitable for hunting.

How do I work out ft/lbs?

Velocity(fps)xVelocity(fps)xPellet weight(grains) equals ft/lbs

450240

What are joules?

Another form of energy measurement.12ft/lbs equals 16 joules.

Where can I shoot?

At any air rifle club in the country,see our club directory or on land where you have prior written permission from the landowner.

Can I shoot in my garden?

Yes as long as the pellets do not leave your property and you are more than 50 feet away from the centre of a public highway and are not causing a nuisance to your neighbours.

Is an air rifle powerful enough to hunt with?

A rifle producing just under 12ft/lbs at the muzzle in .22cal will still produce around 7-8ft/lbs at 40 yards and it will take just 3-4ft/lbs of energy to kill a rabbit providing you only go for head shots, there is to much margin for error when aiming for the body.

Will the air rifle be accurate enough?

Modern air rifles are more than capable of hitting a 50pence piece at 30 yards or more in the right hands. Set your rifle at 35 yards with a scope fitted and you’re more than covered,providing your marksmanship is good enough.

What can I hunt?

The most popular quarry for airgunners are rabbits,crows,magpies,feral and wood pidgeon,collared doves,rats and the jay

What rifle should I buy for hunting?

This really is down to personal preference, as long as the rifle is producing between 10.5 and 11.5 ft/lbs and is accurate enough it can be used for hunting.

What rifle should I buy for target shooting?

If you want to shoot field target you will generally need a recoilless rifle also known as a pre charged pneaumatic in .177calibre.

SCOPE FAQs

What scope should I buy?

From a hunting perspective anything from a 4x32 upwards will suffice. As a rule though the minimum is a 3-9x40 zoom scope.

What scope should I use for field target shooting?

A high magnification range finding scope with an absolute minimum of 18 mag is generally required although some shooters will shoot with scopes that are 50 magnification. The higher magnification the more precise the range calculation will be.

What is zoom?

The ability to bring an image being viewed through a scope closer ( 4x32 brings an image 4 times closer. 3-9 brings an image from 3x closer all the way through to 9x closer.)

What do turrets on a scope do?

Turrets adjust the crosshair up, down, left or right so when set up at a desired range the pellet impacts at the same point on the target as where the crosshair is being placed on the target.

What is range finding?