BRK Ghost Review

[Franklink]

Just a quick update today, from the last 24hours...

I spent a bit more time on the trigger and have a ten pull average of 6 ounces now. And it’s not just light, but actually crisp at the break. If I was to be real picky, I’d like the first stage to be a bit lighter but can’t see how that can be done and still have the trigger function reliably. Currently it is functioning properly and won’t go off with test bumps (heel of hand on various parts of the gun). Had a conversation with a shooting friend at the last field target match and he made a comment about a good trigger not being something that is noticed, well, I wasn’t noticing the trigger anymore when I got about 40 minutes to shoot it after dark last night. I like it!

Had way too much catch-up stuff to do yesterday to get to shoot much. I had worked the previous 7 days in a row, all 12 and 14hr shifts and stuff around the house tends to pile up during those runs of days. But I did get all my stuff done and had a chance to shoot last night in the dark for about 40 minutes. Set out my lights and went to it. I tried a couple different pellets and lubes vs “dry” but kept arriving back at 895fps with the JSB 10.34s as the most accurate.

Here are the groups from last night’s shooting session, all at 55 yards and the grass was waving around in the bottom of my scope view so it wasn’t dead-calm…

Kinda busy targets there and doesn’t help that I was using the point where the crosshair terminates in the curve of the circle as an aim point in a couple places. And my lights cast shadow on the lowest targets so those are clean as a whistle.

The targets that I measured were all 13 shot groups. The groups I labeled, “3,” “2,” “1,” were the last three groups of the session, after I went back to the 10.34s @ 895.

The average 13 shot group size of the 10.34s @ 895 @ 55 yards seems to be around 0.7-0.9 inches, ctc.

There is one group in there were 12/13 measures 0.63inches with the 13th bumping it up to 0.84inches.

So I’m sitting there in the gun room after measuring and concluding the previous sentence here, thinking, “is this good, average, bad?” I thought, I should compare it to other 20fpe guns I’ve shot, as a sort of metric. I used to keep extensive 3 ring binders of all my paper targets, sectioned out by gun, but last winter, after multiple binders full I realized that was crazy and cleaned them all out and trashed most of it. I hung onto a few, what I considered “good” groups and one of them I kept was from my USFT, also at 55 yards. I remember at the time thinking how impressed I was with it…..it was a 15 shot group.

Here….

Per my notes on that USFT target, the wind was worse during shooting it than it was during my shooting session last night, BUT, as a point of comparison, the group was larger from the USFT than it was from the gun that is the focus of this series. That’s important because that USFT is a proven field target gun that has shot multiple clean (perfect) matches, as well as shot too many 1 miss matches (47/48, 55/56, etc) for me to remember them all. It’s simply way too soon in this process to say that this unnamed gun is as good as that USFT, but that overly simplified comparison gives me hope that good things are to come.



Current Plan

I know I’ve mentioned a few times that I was planning on performing, documenting, and sharing an extensive accuracy test with a selection of .177 pellets….and I still will… but I think I’m going to change gears a bit and focus on a dedicated sub 20fpe tune with the 10.34 grain pellets. And that’s because there’s a chance that me and my son will make it to the AIrgunners of Arizona October match up by Flagstaff. That’s the last camping field target match of the season and Colben is showing some interest in going. Furthermore, the October match has historically been “The Founder’s Cup.” Shooter with the high score is awarded the traveling trophy for the year. So, the Oct match carries a bit more weight than a typical monthly match. And it’s always fun to camp in that crisp October air at 7300 feet above sea level. So, I’d like to see if the gun has what it takes to compete in that match and that requires; first, settling on a tune, but then working up the dope and spending some time shooting it from a field target position to get properly acquainted.

So, with that dedicated sub20fpe tune in mind, I’m going to drop the regulator from the factory oem 120 bar. I’ve suspected it would behave a bit better with a lower reg pressure, but my wife also mentioned last night that she could hear me shooting from inside the house. Granted she was about 10 feet from where I was shooting off the back porch, and isn’t usually parked right there while I’m shooting, but her comment was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back in pushing me into regulator adjustment.

Also, I haven’t yet mentioned that this gun has an adjustable hammer stroke, but it does. And that might need tweaked a bit, in conjunction with dropping the regulator pressure, to get the most out of it. In short, the current plan is to focus on the 10.34s, and see if making some more aggressive adjustments than just the hammer spring tension can bump the gun up to the next level. And if it can’t well, it’s always easy to come back to current settings. A gun that’ll shoot sub 1 inch groups at 55 yards is more than accurate enough for field target. Heck, a 1inch kill zone at 55 yards is actually illegal.

The adjustability is one of the features that most excites me about with this gun: externally adjustable regulator, hammer spring adjustability, adjustable hammer throw, as well as the ease of caliber swaps…..all that makes for a pretty versatile platform. And while I typically find out where a gun shoots the best and stick with it, I’m not at all against a gun that has a documented couple “tunes” that all shoot well, especially when they can be so easily repeated. My favorite personal airgun is partly my favorite because it has two different pellet weights, at different speeds, that shoot exceptionally well and have specific uses, and it’s extremely easy to switch back and forth. So, big hopes that this gun will be capable of the same sort of dual (or more) use and easy repeatability to get there.



Random tidbits….

• At first glance I was concerned about the plastic cheek piece cracking if the adjustment hardware was tightened too much. I’ve since found out that there are threaded steel inserts bonded to the cheek piece. They could be stripped out with excessive force (just like any other threaded part) but the cheekpiece shouldn’t break from the hardware being over-tightened.
• There is no metered fill on this gun. Ie. It’ll fill as fast as you want. The last couple of personal guns that I’ve bought have a restriction that doesn’t allow them to be filled too fast. Which is nice I guess, if you’re the type that doesn’t pay attention to what you’re doing. But I always get irritated by how long it takes them to be refilled. I’ve been enjoying how much quicker it is to fill this gun and liking how I don’t feel like I’m being nannied by the manufacturer every time I fill it.
• Part of my home range.....yes I am proud of that lawn, and mowing it yesterday was one of the tasks that kept me from shooting as much as I'd have liked.

 

[Arzrover]

Looking forward to the next episode...
Bob

 

[Franklink]

Regulator and Hammer Stroke Adjustments

Externally adjustable regulators are so much more convenient than needing to disassemble for access to adjustments!

Since I wanted to try a lower reg pressure I needed to degas the bottle before adjusting the regulator. Easy enough, just under 2 revolutions of the bottle and a slight pshhh. Only a slight pshhh because the bottle has a check valve that prevents losing all the air in the bottle. Some paperwork that came with the gun stressed the importance of shooting down the pressure of the air actually in the gun (what should be considered regulated air, as it's downstream of the reg) or the plenum. I think I remember hearing a plenum volume of around 45ccs but I'm not positive on that. Hopefully product release will give us a more definitive number there.

Took about 30 dry fires to get all the air out of the gun, sans bottle. Adjusted the regulator til it bottomed out and tightened the bottle back up. Manometer for the regulator went up to 60bar so I suspect that's the low end of what this regulator can do. Took a couple shots at 60bar for science and speed was down around 600fps, with 10.34gr pellets.

I figured something like 90 or 100 bar would be about what I wanted to try for a 18-19fpe tune so I adjusted the regulator "up" to 90 bar (no de-gas necessary for increasing reg pressure) and took 10 shots. They were:
853
854.6
850.7
846.9
849.7
848.9
848.6
853.4
847.1
855.1
That was with the hammer spring tension on MIN and regulator at 90bar.
Was curious to know what MAX would do.....and that resulted in an average of 850. So the regulator at 90 bar is low enough that the reg pressure becomes the limiting factor in fps, ie. the hammer spring tension doesn't have much effect with a reg pressure that low.

There's one more adjustment at play though, that I hadn't yet fiddled with: hammer stroke. Opened it up and found this (and also realized I would likely need higher reg pressure than 90 bar since it came to me set at max hammer travel and travel distance reduction means less energy imparted to poppet which means less fps).

Hammer stroke set at MAX and MIN travel...

Imagine an L shape, with it laying flat on the long side of the L, with the short end of the L pointing straight up and that's what you're seeing in those photos. The two grub screws go down through the long end of the L, and the short leg of the L (that's sticking straight up) is the 'knob' that catches on the final trigger sear when the gun is cocked. For further clarification, the short end of the L, that we're staring straight down on, would be round if not for the flat taken out of it. That flat is the contact face with the trigger's final sear. A couple coils of hammer spring can be seen towards the bottom of these photos. The hammer spring is supported at both ends: on this end by a hollow cylinder in the hammer itself (spring rests inside that cylinder), and on the other end (previous photos) there is a spring guide that nests inside of the hammer spring.

The gun was delivered to me with the hammer stroke set at maximum travel, and everything I have commented about up to this point had it at that OEM setting. But I now loosened the grub screws, took photos of MAX and MIN travel distances, and retightened the grub screws with the stroke length roughly in the middle of its total travel. Arbitrary starting point. At half travel there is still hammer free flight present, just less of it.

Back to the chronograph.
Hammer stroke at half travel, reg still at 90 bar, hammer spring tension at MIN produced 5 shot average of 827fps with 10.34gr pellets

Hammer stroke at half travel, reg still at 90 bar, hammer spring tension at MAX produced 5 shot average of 840fps with 10.34gr pellets.

Immediately noticed less of a buurpp effect with the shortened hammer travel. It was pretty stingy on air prior, so I don't think I was getting excessive hammer bounce with it a full travel, but at 1/2 travel, markedly more crisp "tap" of the valve stem. So, an improvement there, or rather, "aggregation of marginal gains."

At this point I confirmed that, yes indeed, I would need a higher regulator pressure to achieve the goal of 890-900fps.

Adjusted regulator up to 100 bar (no need to unscrew bottle or degas gun when going up).
Hammer stroke at half travel, reg at 100 bar, hammer spring tension at MIN produced 5 shot average of 874fps with 10.34gr pellets.

Hammer stroke at half travel, reg at 100 bar, hammer spring tension at MAX produced 5 shot average of 889 with 10.34gr pellets.

Decided I needed just a bit higher reg pressure, adjusted it to be dead center between graduations of 100 bar and 110 bar so I'm calling it 105 bar.

Hammer stroke at half travel, reg at 105 bar, hammer spring tension at MIN produced 5 shot average of 882

Hammer stroke at half travel, reg at 105 bar, hammer spring tension at MAX produced 5 shot average of 897.

That last config was looking good, REAL good, so I shot 5 more over the chrono.
Those ten shots:
HIGH- 899.5
LOW-896.0
AVE-897.9
ES-3.5
SD-1

Packed it up for the night at that point!

Initial impressions of this new "tune" are that it is much quieter. It SEEMS more calm but I'll need more trigger time to determine that.

Note, the ____________________ has less of an effect on fps when the regulator isn't running too high. Granted, 120 bar is NOT a high regulator setting, but for a 18-19fpe .177 it is a relatively high setting. 19fpe does not require 1740fps. Now, at 105 bar, we're talking about more like 1520psi. In other words, the gun is regulated by the regulator pressure now (more hammer spring preload won't produce more power). Whereas it came set up so that the fps limiting factor was the hammer tension, or rather, the OEM reg pressure was likely too high for what I'm wanting the gun to do. By having the regulator pressure more appropriate for my desired fpe output, I should achieve more consistent shot strings. The down-side of that is that the gun's max fpe output (with these settings) is reduced. And when your fpe is restricted by rules anyway, not really a down-side and the greater consistency is welcome.

I'm excited to see what effect these changes make in the accuracy department, as well as just the general impression of shooting the gun when trying to hit something versus just focusing on NOT hitting my chrono (this was all just garage chronograph testing, shooting into a pellet trap). Theoretically, it should be a more chill experience, with the hammer not traveling as far. It also should net a greater shot count since it can be shot down to 105 bar instead of 120 bar. Generally, when less is going on inside a gun, they're easier to shoot accurately.

But boy o boy do I have some thoughts on how easy those adjustments were to make! Testing at those 4 regulator settings (60 bar, 90 bar, 100 bar and 105 bar) would have required 4 complete degas and tear-downs of my beloved Veterans. That chrono testing would have also required a lot more wasted pellets, since there's no reg pressure gauge on the Vets and I've got to shoot enough pellets to see the trend of where it shoots "on" and "off" the regulator in order to determine the reg pressure. I really love my Veterans but they weren't really designed around convenient fine-tuning like this unnamed gun was.

In short, externally adjustable regulators are SWEET!!! More so when the bottle has a check valve and even MORE so when there's a regulator pressure gauge.

 

[Franklink]

Wow I’ve had a busy week! Busy enough that the analysis of the mystery gun got put on hold a bit. Took a trip down to Phoenix and shot in the Xtreme FT night match on Weds at Phoenix Rod and Gun Club, as well as the Extreme Field Target portion of EBR the next morning. I live about 2.5hrs from PHX so it’s a bit of a jaunt. So I had switched gears and spent some time shooting my personal high power gun for this last week.

BUT, I’m back to spending some quality time with the mystery gun. I shot it for a bit with the last settings I shared. And frankly, I didn’t love it. And here’s why. I have a personal issue with hard-cocking 20fpe guns. There’s just no reason for such a low power airgun to need to be hard to cock. A couple of years ago a prototype .177 showed up at one of our New Mexico field target matches. I took a turn with it and was impressed with the; handling, accuracy, aesthetics, solid-ness, etc. But the dang thing was harder to cock than a 20fpe gun should be, and it kinda detracted from all the good things about that gun. And I told those that were there with it as much. But back to this mystery review gun, with the reg at 105, and the hammer throw set at about mid-travel, it needed the hammer spring tension at max in order to push the 10.34s up around 890-900. And all that hammer spring preload just made it tougher to cock than I should be, and that annoyed me.

So, I fixed it, and here’s how. I left the reg at 105 bar, but adjusted the hammer throw back out to maximum travel. Still focusing on the 10.34grain JSB/FX pellets. 5 shots over the chrono with the hammer spring tension at “min” were: 875, 881, 882, 885, 880 and 7 at “max” were: 905, 907, 905, 905, 905, 909, 904. (I didn’t write down the decimal from the chrono read-outs in my notes). Dang thing is surely consistent. In all my fiddling and adjusting, I’ve yet to see a configuration with wide extreme spreads. After that chrono session I figured anywhere on the hammer spring tension with these settings should put me in the window of fps that the gun has shot the best at.

I also decided to JB Bore Paste the bore. I’ve yet to see a new barrel that it didn’t help. And I’m not sure if it’s the new adjustments, or the polishing of the bore, but it’s shooting more accurately now.

This was from the brief shooting session this evening.

Wind was nearly non-existent. Shooting from a bench/bipod with a rear bag.

Left column was me taking little 3 or 5 or 10 shot group at various hold points as I adjusted the__________________and the scope turrets.
Right column (of printed targets) was when I beared down and really focused on shooting tight groups. Bottom group in that right column (of printed targets) was shooting through some blades of grass that were at roughly 35 yards, and another little tuft of grass right in front of the target, you can see the fine little pieces of grass that splattered onto the paper.
Right side was just me throwing lead and enjoying the heck out of it. While I’ve shot demo LCS semi-autos or easy to cycle mid cocking guns, it’s been a while since I had one on hand to spend a bunch of time with. So I was taking full advantage of that front cocking lever and cranking shots off pretty quickly. I was surprised to see how accurate it can be, even when just shooting for speed/fun.

Everything I shot this evening is on that paper shared above. I’m counting around 125-130 shots. Started with a fill of 245 bar, and shot it down to 105 bar. At the end I compared both gauges to see that the reg and bottle pressure agreed at 105, with the respective needles right between the 100 and 110 graduations.

Current impression(s)

• I’m really excited about the level of accuracy that we’re starting to see.
• The needle on the regulator gauge has been dead-center between 100 and 110 since I put it there. I’ve seen other guns where that needle tended to float around, depending on bottle pressure, etc. But not this gun.
• I’m thrilled with the consistency. I often have to somewhat settle for an extreme spread of 20-25fps. This gun has so far been doing extreme spreads of 10-12 fps and sometimes less, and that’s every time I’ve put it over the chrono and with various settings. Granted, the most shots I’ve taken over the chrono at the same time were 30 and not a full string, but still. Eventually I’ll shoot an entire string over the chrono and share how that goes, but I don’t expect to see large spreads, at least from every indication that gun has given me so far.
• The trigger is pretty good now. It took some effort to get it how I like it, but it breaks crisply and predictably and not more than a pound. All three of those are pretty much a requirement at this point in my airgun journey.
• I’m also quite pleased with 130ish shots per fill. That is enough to shoot some monthly ft matches more than 3 times! I’ve always leaned towards efficiency as a desirable aspect of an airgun, and this sure feels like a lot of shots for not much air (remember, cute little 300cc bottle on it right now).
• The shooting above was done at 885 FPS
• Remember how I said a stiff-cocking gun can bring down the overall impression of a gun? Well, with where it is now I really started to notice that the ergonomics of the gun are pretty dang good. It’s a good feeling gun. And yeah, that’s hard to quantify, but the combination of: trigger, grip angle, easy-cocking, relatively short throw on the side lever, pellets going where I want them to, decent sized magazine capacity, error-free magazine function, overall length and weight, firing cycle, etc. are all combining to make a pretty enjoyable net effect.

 

[north40]

Wow I’ve had a busy week! Busy enough that the analysis of the mystery gun got put on hold a bit. Took a trip down to Phoenix and shot in the Xtreme FT night match on Weds at Phoenix Rod and Gun Club, as well as the Extreme Field Target portion of EBR the next morning. I live about 2.5hrs from PHX so it’s a bit of a jaunt. So I had switched gears and spent some time shooting my personal high power gun for this last week.

BUT, I’m back to spending some quality time with the mystery gun. I shot it for a bit with the last settings I shared. And frankly, I didn’t love it. And here’s why. I have a personal issue with hard-cocking 20fpe guns. There’s just no reason for such a low power airgun to need to be hard to cock. A couple of years ago a prototype .177 showed up at one of our New Mexico field target matches. I took a turn with it and was impressed with the; handling, accuracy, aesthetics, solid-ness, etc. But the dang thing was harder to cock than a 20fpe gun should be, and it kinda detracted from all the good things about that gun. And I told those that were there with it as much. But back to this mystery review gun, with the reg at 105, and the hammer throw set at about mid-travel, it needed the hammer spring tension wheel at max in order to push the 10.34s up around 890-900. And all that hammer spring preload just made it tougher to cock than I should be, and that annoyed me.

So, I fixed it, and here’s how. I left the reg at 105 bar, but adjusted the hammer throw back out to maximum travel. Still focusing on the 10.34grain JSB/FX pellets. 5 shots over the chrono with the hammer spring tension at “min” were: 875, 881, 882, 885, 880 and 7 at “max” were: 905, 907, 905, 905, 905, 909, 904. (I didn’t write down the decimal from the chrono read-outs in my notes). Dang thing is surely consistent. In all my fiddling and adjusting, I’ve yet to see a configuration with wide extreme spreads. After that chrono session I figured anywhere on the wheel with these settings should put me in the window of fps that the gun has shot the best at.

I also decided to JB Bore Paste the bore. I’ve yet to see a new barrel that it didn’t help. And I’m not sure if it’s the new adjustments, or the polishing of the bore, but it’s shooting more accurately now.

This was from the brief shooting session this evening.

View attachment 296695
View attachment 296696

Wind was nearly non-existent. Shooting from a bench/bipod with a rear bag.

Left column was me taking little 3 or 5 or 10 shot group at various hold points as I adjusted the hammer tension wheel and the scope turrets.
Right column (of printed targets) was when I beared down and really focused on shooting tight groups. Bottom group in that right column (of printed targets) was shooting through some blades of grass that were at roughly 35 yards, and another little tuft of grass right in front of the target, you can see the fine little pieces of grass that splattered onto the paper.
Right side was just me throwing lead and enjoying the heck out of it. While I’ve shot demo LCS semi-autos or easy to cycle mid cocking guns, it’s been a while since I had one on hand to spend a bunch of time with. So I was taking full advantage of that front cocking lever and cranking shots off pretty quickly. I was surprised to see how accurate it can be, even when just shooting for speed/fun.

Everything I shot this evening is on that paper shared above. I’m counting around 125-130 shots. Started with a fill of 245 bar, and shot it down to 105 bar. At the end I compared both gauges to see that the reg and bottle pressure agreed at 105, with the respective needles right between the 100 and 110 graduations.

Current impression(s)

• I’m really excited about the level of accuracy that we’re starting to see.
• The needle on the regulator gauge has been dead-center between 100 and 110 since I put it there. I’ve seen other guns where that needle tended to float around, depending on bottle pressure, etc. But not this gun.
• I’m thrilled with the consistency. I often have to somewhat settle for an extreme spread of 20-25fps. This gun has so far been doing extreme spreads of 10-12 fps and sometimes less, and that’s every time I’ve put it over the chrono and with various settings. Granted, the most shots I’ve taken over the chrono at the same time were 30 and not a full string, but still. Eventually I’ll shoot an entire string over the chrono and share how that goes, but I don’t expect to see large spreads, at least from every indication that gun has given me so far.
• The trigger is pretty good now. It took some effort to get it how I like it, but it breaks crisply and predictably and not more than a pound. All three of those are pretty much a requirement at this point in my airgun journey.
• I’m also quite pleased with 130ish shots per fill. That is enough to shoot some monthly ft matches more than 3 times! I’ve always leaned towards efficiency as a desirable aspect of an airgun, and this sure feels like a lot of shots for not much air (remember, cute little 300cc bottle on it right now).
• The shooting above was with the hammer tension wheel on "5" for a 5 shot average of 885. It hardly takes hardly any effort to cock with these settings! I mean barely notice the tension of the hammer spring, and that is AWESOME!!!
• Remember how I said a stiff-cocking gun can bring down the overall impression of a gun? Well, with where it is now I really started to notice that the ergonomics of the gun are pretty dang good. It’s a good feeling gun. And yeah, that’s hard to quantify, but the combination of: trigger, grip angle, easy-cocking, relatively short throw on the side lever, pellets going where I want them to, decent sized magazine capacity, error-free magazine function, overall length and weight, firing cycle, etc. are all combining to make a pretty enjoyable net effect.

Definitely anxious to hear more!

 

[L4z4r0s]

Wow!! Seems really interesting... It wouldn't happen to be brocock's new "Ghost" air rifle right?

 

[mcoulter]

Wow, thanks for taking the time to document and share this!

Maybe it's just me, but I am excited that manufacturers are not giving up on the .177 caliber.

 

[Franklink]

Wow, thanks for taking the time to document and share this!

Maybe it's just me, but I am excited that manufacturers are not giving up on the .177 caliber.

Yes, I agree.

I was happy that this one came in this configuration. While I can shoot long range off my back porch and deck, I still shoot a lot of stuff in the 20fpe range, either .177 or .20. My zen/de-stress shooting sessions come from the low fpe stuff.

HOWEVER, I'd sure like to get my hands on a larger bottle and a .22 barrel kit (hint hint) to take this baby for a spin at the winter Xtreme Field Target events.

With how easy it is to make repeatable adjustments, coupled with the ease of swapping calibers.....this gun might finally make a good case for the one-gun, multiple caliber concept that has failed me with so many other platforms.

 

[Franklink]

I’m still hoping to get up to Flagstaff for the last high elevation match of the year, which also happens to be the Founder’s Cup, and happens to be this coming Saturday. And I’m hoping to shoot the mystery gun. And I don’t have any dope. And I work the next couple of days. All of that means I’ll be shooting for dope gathering each night after work. That also means I needed to finally zero out my scope turrets and also start shooting from a bumbag. I was able to accomplish the scope zero and had my first bumbag session with the gun night before last.

Here they are:
30 yards….

50 yards….

On the 30 yard target I was still zeroing my scope on the upper groups. Once I got it zeroed I started on that line of 5 shot groups that goes all the way across the paper. 10, 5 shot groups, 50 consecutive shots. A lot of that exercise was getting used to how it shoots from this position. It’s a bit front heavy, and mostly because of the contraption I slapped on the front under-rail and the heavy knee riser. It also became quite evident that this is a lightweight bullpup, and lightweight bullpups are a bit of a challenge to shoot from field target position. Even with those qualifiers, I’m quite pleased with how it went. Those circles are 5/16 of an inch. Yes a couple shots got away from me, but pellets were tracking as they should and the “flyers” correlated with my inputs (pulled shots). It’s really frustrating when a gun throws flyers that aren’t shooter-induced. It seems I’ve got the gun at a point where that is not an issue, which is perfect for field target.

I had a bit more of a challenge shooting decent groups at 50 yards, downsides of a short and light gun. I was bouncing around quite a bit in the order of groups, but the last 3 five shot groups I took were the bottom/left most groups on this page. Again, pretty pleased with what it can do when I’m doing a good job as the operator.

Here’s the same groups again, but with a penny for size reference.

I’m super excited with where the gun is at right now and really hoping I can find time each evening to gather dope data and practice from a bumbag a little bit, in preparation for Saturday’s match.

 

[Franklink]

 

[Franklink]

PRODUCT LAUNCH DAY!!!

I'll be sharing photos throughout the day. It has been extremely difficult to keep a lid on this and I can't even begin to explain how excited I am to start sharing the good stuff!

 

[Franklink]

Let's start with some side by sides of the Delta Wolf and the Ghost....

 

[Franklink]

I can't get over the ease of cocking with my field target tune.

I've wanted to measure cocking effort on various guns with a trigger pull weight scale but haven't ever tried, for fear of breaking the scale. Until now that is. This is a five shot average of the cocking weight!

That's less effort to cock than the trigger pull weight on some guns!

The hammer spring tension can be felt, but with the mechanical advantage of the side lever, it doesn't feel like much more effort to cock than an electronic Red or Delta Wolf. Quite pleasing to cycle.

This is spitting 10.34gr JSB/FX pellets out at 885fps, which I've found to be the most accurate speed for THIS pellet in THIS barrel. Reg pressure of 105bar. Hammer spring tension on "5" and hammer throw set to maximum distance.

 

[Franklink]

Since I started the review with a photo of an empty case......

How's that for being able to drop it into the factory hard case WITH A SCOPE ON IT!!! It's the little things in life.

 

[Centercut]

I can't get over the ease of cocking with my field target tune.

I've wanted to measure cocking effort on various guns with a trigger pull weight scale but haven't ever tried, for fear of breaking the scale. Until now that is. This is a five shot average of the cocking weight!
View attachment 297271

The hammer spring tension can be felt, but with the mechanical advantage of the side lever, it doesn't feel like much more effort to cock than an electronic Red or Delta Wolf. Quite pleasing to cycle.

This is spitting 10.34gr JSB/FX pellets out at 885fps, which I've found to be the most accurate speed for THIS pellet in THIS barrel. Reg pressure of 105bar.

Cole, two questions:
Is the hammer throw set to max from the factory?
Is the grip AR? Jared said AK on his AoA review but I think it was a slip of the tongue…
Thanks. Great review as always.

 

[Franklink]

Yes, hammer throw came set at maximum on this one. I shortened it and shot with it at roughly half-travel but ended up with it back at maximum length. I would expect that, for high power tunes/configurations, greater efficiency can be had by higher reg pressure and a quick little tap of the valve stem through a shorter hammer stroke. With a short barreled .177, the really low reg pressure is what's keeping it from using much air and I'll take the easy cocking for a low power tune over a little greater efficiency.

Benefits ratio would swing the other direction for me with greater power tune though. Stiffer cocking on a higher power gun doesn't irritate me like it does on a low power one. In other words, I think that hammer stroke adjustment will come into play more when tuning for efficiency on the high end of reg pressure and power output.

Currently there's free flight of the hammer and I say that because I can hear it move if I tip the gun down or up. In fact, that free-flight hammer (at this tune) is the only movement or "rattle" on or inside the gun. Otherwise it feels solid as an aluminum baseball bat. I suspect it'd fair well in a Dana torture test.

As for the AK versus AR grips.....sorry, I honestly don't know. I don't have much experience with the interchangeable grip thing and no joke, if you laid an AK and an AR grip in front of me I wouldn't be able to tell you which is which.

 

[Glem.Chally]

Looks like an AR grip without the beavertail to me.

 

[Franklink]

Looks like an AR grip without the beavertail to me.

Thanks for helping me out Glem.

 

[Centercut]

Looks like an AR grip without the beavertail to me.

Yes, and the Delta Wolf has the AR style grip...

 

[whitefox545]

Franklink, This is with out a doubt the best most thorough "No B.S." review I have ever seen in my years of airgunning!! Great work!! Almost makes me want to order one !! Please cotinue!!