American Airguns Blog
The Random Ramblings Of An Airgun Addict

I got my Air Arms Pro Sport out the other day to shoot a bit. This is still one of my favorite air rifles that I own. I originally bought a .22 version for hunting and pest control and liked it so much that I bought a .177 version too. My .177 was tuned by Paul Watts prior to my buying it and it is super smooth and powerful. I put a Maccari kit in my .22 and it too is smooth and very quiet. With the cocking arm in the stock instead of under the barrel, the balance is much better and it doesn't seem as heavy as the rate 9 pounds. The cocking leverage is a bit different than other break barrel or underlever airguns but once I got used to it I found that it wasn't hard to cock. Some have complained about it but not me. I have heard that some guns had the cocking arm break so I emailed Air Arms and got the drawing for the cocking arm so I can have a new one made if either of mine break.

I really like the integral moderator too, it doesn't make it whisper quiet but it takes the crack out of the report. The trigger is wonderful too, it is the standard Air Arms CDX trigger unit which is as good as the famous Rekord trigger that is on my HW97. The recoil on my rifles is really benign for the power level. My .22 Prosport shoots around 680-690 fps which is more than enough power to humanly kill any small game I might want to shoot and to kill the metal animals I might shoot in a Hunter Field Target match. I had to get it out about a week ago to shoots chipmunk and after sitting through the winter without a shot, I pulled it out and downed old chippy with a single shot and with power to spare as the pellet traveled clean through him.

If I could have only one sporter air rifle I would have a hard time choosing between my R9 and my ProSport but I think I would opt for the ProSport and I would feel confident recommending it to others.

I started my FT trainging last night with my HW97. I gave my eight year old HW97 a really good cleaning about a week ago. I used FP10 and Hoppes in the bore to get it really clean. I was surprised that the velocity went up about 15 fps after the cleaning. It was a really deep cleaning so it hopefully removed any lead or rust build up in the bore. I had this rifle tuned by Paul Watts and it was shooting well but one night last year after about a week of me shooting poorly I took it apart and messed with the spring tar. Now it is a bit twangy but still shoots nickle size groups at 50 yards. It turns out I was shooting badly, the gun was fine until I took it apart. I will need to give it back to Paul to have him put it back to its original tune state. I have ordered one of his brass set back triggers for it. His set back trigger has two sear adjustements in it like the TX trigger. I think this will help some of the reach problem I have with the Maccari match stock.

The rifle was shooting great but it took me a bit to get used to sitting and shooting again. I haven't shot much sitting over the winter. It was a cold and windy night last night, I really don't like shooting in the cold weather but I need to get back to sitting again as the FT season is about to start. Shooting in the wind was good again too and I found that I still had a pretty good sense of where to hold to hit at 50. After a few adjustments, I was able to hit my 1" rabbit target pretty regularly.

I got the book "Ways of the Rifle" (buy it here) which talks about three position shooting and details in depth techniques on how to shoot each position. I have been using it to modify my standing shooting over the winter. It has really helped and I would strongly recommend it for anyone wanting to improve their shooting in any position. I have applied some of the standing techniques to my sittting shooting as well. Last nights shooting really showcased to me how much my standing shooting had improved over the winter. I really love shooting my HW97, I have three of them now and all of them are the older models with the muzzle weight that extends past the end of the cocking lever latch. One of them is the MkII which was the older style but with the updated power plant so it shoots well over 900 fps. All of my HW97 are very accurate and the first one I bought over ten years ago has well over 100,000 rounds through it and it still shoots accurately. At any rate, I have to get more practice in so I can get ready for the Cajun Classic in Baton Rouge!

I have been working on a lot of different field target designs recently. I always seem to come back to the sear at the top of the paddle design. It is just such a simple design to build and it works really well. I have found that welding a piece of 3/16" or 1/4" rod to the top of the paddle and then using a similar size piece or rod shaped in a U for the sear really works best. It releases really easily but doesn't fall on face hits. One other advantage to using the rods for a sear is that paint build up on the paddle won't affect the sear operation as much. I am in the process of converting some of my old gravity fall targets over to this sear arrangement and will be using them at our club this year.