FX Panthera

I thought that was the reason they only fill their bottle to 250 bar is because that is the working max pressure for their regs. Do they have a reg that can handle 300 bar max fill?
Ive seen mixed reports, some retailers claim you can swap an FX to a 300Bar bottle (actually in Utah Air promo video they immediately swapped the Panthera to a 300cc 300Bar bottle lol). If the FX reg can only handle 250Bar, why make a PRS rig with a single reg? They have limited the max performance on the Panthera and now are trying to sell it to compete with Vudoo/Rim-X etc. Im no engineer, but like I mentioned they missed the performance mark. If I was steering the ship, my choice would be more air, more speed, shorter oal. I think FX can compete with rimfire guys but they cut too many corners on this one.

But it doesnt really matter, the air industry has moved on to 300Bar. FX might find themselves in second place soon...

And all this being said, its all purely speculation at this point. I would love to be wrong, and have no problem admitting it. :)
 
Ive seen mixed reports, some retailers claim you can swap an FX to a 300Bar bottle (actually in Utah Air promo video they immediately swapped the Panthera to a 300cc 300Bar bottle lol). If the FX reg can only handle 250Bar, why make a PRS rig with a single reg? They have limited the max performance on the Panthera and now are trying to sell it to compete with Vudoo/Rim-X etc. Im no engineer, but like I mentioned they missed the performance mark. If I was steering the ship, my choice would be more air, more speed, shorter oal. I think FX can compete with rimfire guys but they cut too many corners on this one.

But it doesnt really matter, the air industry has moved on to 300Bar. FX might find themselves in second place soon...

And all this being said, its all purely speculation at this point. I would love to be wrong, and have no problem admitting it. :)
I’m not sure the air industry has moved to 300 bar. Many rifles don’t have 300 bar capabilities, and I think they have disadvantages.

It is really hard to continuously fill to 300 bar unless you are filling directly from your compressor. It doesn’t take long from a bottle before you can’t even fill to 300 bar anymore, so you really don’t get a big advantage from it.

More importantly… Many guns don’t even like being filled to their max of 250 bar, much less 300 bar. The last several rifles I have owned had way worse extreme spreads when filling to max. Even from different manufactures. Red Wolf is one example. If I filled to 220 bar, my extreme spread over the entire shot string could be 10, or if I filled to max it would be 25-30. Exact same for an FX Crown. As long as I stopped at 230, the full spread would be single digits to maybe 10-11, but at a max fill would grow to 25 or more. On both rifles, it was mostly in that first part of the string until it would get down to that 220-230 range. As soon as I documented that and just stopped filling past it, boom… no more fast first shots that were much higher than the rest.
 
We keep saying it, but this rifle has a specific purpose and that short height is a big point. While many people aren’t liking it, great… they knew that. I’m looking forward to them then taking this technology over to the Crown, so we can have the higher shot count in a rifle format, so that it does some more things many of us want. Or to the Impact for that matter. But I’m ok with this rifle not having all that.

Honestly, I love the look of this rifle. It is exactly what I want, but I want a higher shot count more, so I may not own one. I know that can’t be done in this particular design to maximize the things that are most important for this rifle (trade offs). It isn’t what you want, but want a middle ground between it and say a Crown, you get into another rifle, like the Evol. Problem solved. Again, every rifle doesn’t have to fit every situation. That is why we have so many different rifles out there. They didn’t want to make another Crown or another Impact. They knew they were creating a tool with a different purpose.
 
Call me self centered but I don’t care if it works well for other people and their PRS interest. I shoot paper and steel at long range so this guns would work great. I tether so shot count isn’t important, unlikely to do any sort of walk and hunt with it as I have my impact. For long range I always will use bench or shoot prone so length is not an issue. Length and weight really helps with accuracy.


For really long and precise shots I feel it’s much harder with the impact compared to my crown, only wished my crown has a bit more power……:then comes Panthera! Way to go FX, just the gun I wanted.
 
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Call me self centered but I don’t care if it works well for other people and their PRS interest. I shoot paper and steel at long range so this guns would work great. I tether so shot count isn’t important, unlikely to do any sort of walk and hunt with it as I have my impact. For long range I always will use bench or shoot prone so length is not an issue. Length and weight really helps with accuracy.


For really long and precise shots I feel it’s much harder with the impact compared to my crown, only wished my crown has a bit more power……:then comes Panthera! Way to go FX, just the gun wanted.
Good point with the tethering. I forgot about you asking about that earlier in the week. I actually started tethering my Crown a lot, and so bottle size didn’t matter. You aren’t helping me!!
 
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sure did the homework on that gun it looks like. bet lotta of the parts will be in the next gen guns, hope the gun performs for the guys who get them. sure looks that way, big bore guys are in for some trouble
Yes indeed,...far from an FX fan here, as a hunter there's not been an FX gun that I've been interested since back in the Tarantula days, but this one...... ?!

As a pure hunter I love everything about this gun ( But for the biathlon style lever )
Love how sleek it is, love how super robust the barrel/shroud/forearm/ band look to be ( nothing beats a hunting gun you can manhandle in the field without worrying about losing your POI ), love the capability to put the scope right on the bore, love the balance towards the back, love how the grip is so close to the barrel ( no top heavy gun here )
love the power capability, and actually really like the looks,......hunters dream right there ;)
 
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Yes indeed,...far from an FX fan here, as a hunter there's not been an FX gun that I've been interested since back in the Tarantula days, but this one...... ?!

As a pure hunter I love everything about this gun ( But for the biathlon style lever )
Love how sleek it is, love how super robust the barrel/shroud/forearm/ band look to be ( nothing beats a hunting gun you can manhandle in the field without worrying about losing your POI ), love the capability to put the scope right on the bore, love the balance towards the back, love how the grip is so close to the barrel ( no top heavy gun here )
love the power capability, and actually really like the looks,......hunters dream right there ;)
I think the consistent POI is a detail yet to be determined....

I think the plenum/pressurized air around the liner to theoretically support/stiffen is an interesting attempt at a fix for the notorious issues with the liner system. (If the liner system was stiff enough, we wouldn't have all this aftermarket stuff where guys are trying to make them more rigid). But, can't nobody claim FX isn't at least willing to try something. I hope it works but I've seen how much the ambient temps can make the gauges swing on a pressurized vessel, guns and tanks alike. With this concept, FX is hoping for a consistent force applied to that liner from an inherently inconsistent element (air). One of our atmosphere's hallmark features (our atmosphere being "air") is that its pressure changes as temps change, somewhat of an immutable fact.....ever heard of a barometer? And that's at 1bar, the physics behind that is only more pronounced at the much higher pressures our guns operate in. When we're camping at high elevations my SCBA tanks will swing a couple hundred psi in each direction with the shift of temps from day to night and back.

The plenum as a barrel stiffener reminds me of a Mark Zuckerberg quote, “Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do."

Quite an innovative idea, but I'm curious to see if it works as well as advertised.
 
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@Franklink
In Matt’s video he raise the same exact concern and the concern is mitigated by the fact that it’s a regulated plenum which means the air pressure is pretty consistent.
That was the point I was trying to make by bringing up the spare SCBA tanks on a camping trip. Even with my unused spare I can see pressure go up or down a couple hundred psi within just a short time if temps or dropping or rising or if it's in the shade or direct sun. And by "spare" I mean a tank that didn't get used that day, the valve was never cracked to add or remove air. Regulated or not, temperature changes affect the pressure of air in a containment vessel, which changes the force that air is exerting in every direction as it tries to get out.

I see that you pointed out the regulator, but temp changes will still alter the pressure inside that plenum.
 
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That was the point I was trying to make by bringing up the spare SCBA tanks on a camping trip. Even with my unused spare I can see pressure go up or down a couple hundred psi within just a short time if temps or dropping or rising or if it's in the shade or direct sun. And by "spare" I mean a tank that didn't get used that day, the valve was never cracked to add or remove air. Regulated or not, temperature changes affect the pressure of air in a containment vessel, which changes the force that air is exerting in every direction as it tries to get out.

I see that you pointed out the regulator, but temp changes will still alter the pressure inside that plenum.


The regulator regulates the pressure inside of the plenum, if the pressure built up too much then most regulators will vent to atmosphere.
 
The regulator regulates the pressure inside of the plenum, if the pressure built up too much then most regulators will vent to atmosphere.
It'll be very interesting to see if it meets the claims made in the advertising. Ie, stiffens everything up without creating poi shifts with temp changes.

Theres also reg refresh rates to consider as a factor.

Im not saying it won't work, I actually find the concept innovative, as I previously stated. Just seems counterintuitive to me to rely on a constantly changing force to be where they're looking for a force that really needs to be absolutely constant (the force holding the barrel in place).
 
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Not sure if anyone else heard this in the video but there was a quick little statement about there will be other variants of this rifle coming. I can’t see FX not trying to utilize their new valve system, which generates more power using less air, for a hunting platform.
If the .30 can generate 150ft/lbs what would a .35 be able to do; stock setup as well. Just some thoughts I had after I heard the statement about other platforms.
Yup ...very interesting what could be coming new in the net years..🤔
 
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I am looking forward to seeing Ernest tear one of these down, not least in regard to how that barrel go thru the plenum

My own idea back in the day was to just have O-rings in the "shroud" so it would seal that way against the barrel pipe, and i also think thats how it is done ( taking the sizes of the plenum mentioned in consideration )

I am also thinking since the plenum surround the barrel, the pressure are the same all over, so even if it fluctuate a little / some, should this not be the same all oover the barrel and so make its movement 0
Also wondering if these have a more heavy barrel pips VS what we have seen in use so far.
 
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Someone help me understand how surrounding the barrel with plenum pressure stabilizes it? I don't see how pressure would prevent or reduce harmonic vibration. Pressurized or not, wouldn't the air simply "move over" or shift to accommodate the oscillations as they occur?
High pressure air exerts a lot of force. I've not heard what reg pressures they're talking for the Panthera, but even 150bar is an immense amount of force. So I can sorta see their theory, the constant inputs and removal of that air, as well as what happens to a scope zero when degassed and then refilled, is where I begin to question the repeatability.

I'd really like to see some schematics, b/c that much pressure seems to me like it'd crush the thin walled tubing FX uses for barrels. Seems like there's got to be some secondary support structure that the air is pushing on. I'm not an engineer though, so just wild assumptions. I'm sure an actual engineer could figure out how much pressure it'd take to crush the liners, if they knew wall thickness and diameter.