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Desert tan will often have a bit of a green tint were as beige does not also women have beige hats Men have desert tan guns LOL
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WAR Flex and Warp opinions
- Thread starter zebra
- Start date
Zebra I watch all of Bullfrogs videos down in everglades he is very honest and I see him using the flex .30. He is on this forum and would give you a good review for good and bad.
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Thanks. I'll look him up.
I'm starting to get excited about the Warp. I just wish it came with the CF bottle and reg as standard.
I have heard that the reg is an extra $150 and I have also heard it is free on the 22 or 25 cals so I guess I need to go to the horse to find out for sure (unless any 25 cal regulated Warp owners can jump in).
The longer barrel is $50. Not sure on the CF bottle upgrade yet.
I'm thinking that a regulated 25 cal Warp with 17" barrel and CF bottle would make one awesome bullpup conversion.
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I haven't put in my two cents because I wasn't sure if zebra would consider me too close to WAR. I do not know really know the guys at WAR apart from interactions on the forums and a few phone conversations before and after I bought my Flex, but I do have a subforum on the AGG forum to show off my videos, and AGG is associated with WAR. I've never been asked to or offered anything to promote the Flex. I'd be using the Flex whether I had a subforum on AGG or not. It just happens to be the best airgun I own and I enjoy it. I'm happy enough with it that my next purchase is going to be a WARP either in .22 or .25. If I get the .25, I may retire my .25 Marauder for good.
Here's the review I initially did:
http://www.airgunnation.com/topic/30-flex-my-review/
Here's my thoughts on it after having it for several months and putting over 1000 pellets thru it and having hunted and camped a lot with it.
The Flex is an amazingly accurate gun. My .25 Marauder seemed super accurate, but now compared to the Flex, I've changed my definition of great accuracy. With the Flex dime-sized groups at 50 yards are easy and regularly pinking at 100 yards is a snap. Its most accurate with 45 grn JSBs as far as I've tried shooting it just beyond 100 yards and very accurate with 50 grn JSBs out to 50 yards.
Its also very quiet for its power level. I used to run my .25 Mrod at 80fpe and the 80fpe the .30 Flex produces is a bit quieter. I would say the Flex is just a hair louder than a stock .25 Mrod with no sound mods. The shot noise is metallic sounding, almost like a light "ping" from an air tube, except that the ping is coming from the shot blast itself not the air tank.
Its tough. I'm rough on my guns and so far its taken all the abuse I can give it. It benefits from very strong scope rings. If you have good scope rings, it seems to never shift POI from zero even after storage, breaking the gun down in a carry case, or a heavy fall or even a drop.
Its easily serviceable. You can replace the gun's orings and other parts from the hardware store. The gun itself hasn't given me a reason to fix it, but I have nicked orings and messed up the barrel's retention rings when I've taken the gun apart to see how it works or otherwise disassembled it. I've been able to replace them all from the local Ace, True Value, or Lowes.
Do I have anything bad to say? Nothing serious, but here are some of my observations concerning the gun's traits:
The gun is on the heavy side. I haven't weighed it without attachments. But with a heavy 50mm scope, a light w/battery afixed to the scope, bipod, and sling, the gun weighs over 12lbs. This is an area where the WARP would offer an advantage. I suspect the Flex could be fitted out with a lighter scope and made a few pounds lighter.
The fact that the Flex is serviceable from parts from the hardware store means that you may end up picking the wrong parts thru eyeballing it and guessing wrong. The good news is that the gun will still function even if you're using something that isn't quite the right size. I've ran it with slightly off orings and retention rings. However, on some of the gun's components you need to match the parts as closely as possible or you might lose some efficiency. For example, the transfer ports between valve and barrel are machined to line up exactly. The barrel is held in place by a retention ring on the breech end and a barrel tensioner on the muzzle end. The barrel is tensioned against the breech and that's one of the things that makes the gun so accurate. If you replace the retention ring on the breech end, you must use a retention ring of the exact size or else you'll push or pull the barrel ever so slightly out of alignment with the valve's TP when you tighten the tensioner down against the breech. It doesn't make a big difference, but you'll lose some more air per shot and maybe 10-15fps off your velocities if the barrel gets out of alignment. So that's more of a quirk of the gun that you may not think about until you've had it apart a few times and seen how it all fits together.
Because of how the barrel tensioner works, you need to be careful when unscrewing the LDC that you don't accidentally unscrew the tensioner, or else you may change your POI in theory (although in practice it usually does not). If you leave your gun assembled, that won't likely happen anyhow, but if you break it down for a small case as I often do, you'll be removed the LDC every time you put the gun away.
Those are my general thoughts. I'll add more as I think of them.
Here's the review I initially did:
http://www.airgunnation.com/topic/30-flex-my-review/
Here's my thoughts on it after having it for several months and putting over 1000 pellets thru it and having hunted and camped a lot with it.
The Flex is an amazingly accurate gun. My .25 Marauder seemed super accurate, but now compared to the Flex, I've changed my definition of great accuracy. With the Flex dime-sized groups at 50 yards are easy and regularly pinking at 100 yards is a snap. Its most accurate with 45 grn JSBs as far as I've tried shooting it just beyond 100 yards and very accurate with 50 grn JSBs out to 50 yards.
Its also very quiet for its power level. I used to run my .25 Mrod at 80fpe and the 80fpe the .30 Flex produces is a bit quieter. I would say the Flex is just a hair louder than a stock .25 Mrod with no sound mods. The shot noise is metallic sounding, almost like a light "ping" from an air tube, except that the ping is coming from the shot blast itself not the air tank.
Its tough. I'm rough on my guns and so far its taken all the abuse I can give it. It benefits from very strong scope rings. If you have good scope rings, it seems to never shift POI from zero even after storage, breaking the gun down in a carry case, or a heavy fall or even a drop.
Its easily serviceable. You can replace the gun's orings and other parts from the hardware store. The gun itself hasn't given me a reason to fix it, but I have nicked orings and messed up the barrel's retention rings when I've taken the gun apart to see how it works or otherwise disassembled it. I've been able to replace them all from the local Ace, True Value, or Lowes.
Do I have anything bad to say? Nothing serious, but here are some of my observations concerning the gun's traits:
The gun is on the heavy side. I haven't weighed it without attachments. But with a heavy 50mm scope, a light w/battery afixed to the scope, bipod, and sling, the gun weighs over 12lbs. This is an area where the WARP would offer an advantage. I suspect the Flex could be fitted out with a lighter scope and made a few pounds lighter.
The fact that the Flex is serviceable from parts from the hardware store means that you may end up picking the wrong parts thru eyeballing it and guessing wrong. The good news is that the gun will still function even if you're using something that isn't quite the right size. I've ran it with slightly off orings and retention rings. However, on some of the gun's components you need to match the parts as closely as possible or you might lose some efficiency. For example, the transfer ports between valve and barrel are machined to line up exactly. The barrel is held in place by a retention ring on the breech end and a barrel tensioner on the muzzle end. The barrel is tensioned against the breech and that's one of the things that makes the gun so accurate. If you replace the retention ring on the breech end, you must use a retention ring of the exact size or else you'll push or pull the barrel ever so slightly out of alignment with the valve's TP when you tighten the tensioner down against the breech. It doesn't make a big difference, but you'll lose some more air per shot and maybe 10-15fps off your velocities if the barrel gets out of alignment. So that's more of a quirk of the gun that you may not think about until you've had it apart a few times and seen how it all fits together.
Because of how the barrel tensioner works, you need to be careful when unscrewing the LDC that you don't accidentally unscrew the tensioner, or else you may change your POI in theory (although in practice it usually does not). If you leave your gun assembled, that won't likely happen anyhow, but if you break it down for a small case as I often do, you'll be removed the LDC every time you put the gun away.
Those are my general thoughts. I'll add more as I think of them.
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Good write up. Very helpful.
I assumed that the Flex would be heavy just by looking at it with it's metal chassis. I've been doing some DIY killing work with aluminum billet and even a small bar weighs a ton.
This is why I was thinking that a Warp with a Flex barrel and the same CF bottle might give the best of both worlds. There is the option to order one with both a short and long barrel so it could be switched out depending on what I was doing that day. It looks like the Warp has less metal bulk in the frame so it could save a good chunk of the weight (even with 5-7" of extra barrel).
How heavy is your scope that you could save 2lb by switching it out? My lightest scope is 12oz and my heaviest is 24oz. That would put your scope at 48-56oz. Is that right? If so, any air rifle would be heavy with that thing....
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I was trying to avoid taking my scope off, but as I'm going to take it out tomorrow and shoot it some anyhow, I figured what the heck.
I just weighed my scope on digital parcel scales. The scope with rings weighs 1 pound, 15.8 ounces. So its 2 pounds for all practical purposes. It is a 50 mm Weaver Kaspa Tactical with a 30mm tube and Burris QD XTR medium rings. The scope mounted flashlight with its battery inside is 9.6 ounces. The flashlight's mount is 3.2 ounces. The bipod is 12.9 ounces. The sling is 6.1 ounces.
The gun and mounted scope only is 10lbs. So the gun itself is around 8lbs.
A few things I forgot to add for pros and cons:
The gun is adjustable from 20fpe to 200fpe. Although you're practically limited in your fpe by your projectile selection. Its pretty neat to have such a variable selection of power options within the same powerplant.
The TJ barrel doesn't like .30 Polymags over 850fps. If you slow them to under 850, they shoot fine. But when you send them screaming out at near 950, they start tumbling after 25 yards. This isn't a problem unique to the Flex, as other guns have been shown to not shoot the Polymags well. Regardless I'd love to be able to spit those Polymags out blazing fast. My Polymags are a batch of the earliest production run. I'm not sure if the design has changed any since then.
My .30 shoots like a regulated gun in terms of tight ES on a 2900psi fill. The platform can be regulated on request for the .30. I could see a big advantage in regulating the gun and filling it to the 3600psi max the bottle allows so long as you don't want to exceed 80fpe. The gun peaks around 2400-2500psi at or just exceeding 80 fpe, so if you fill to 3600psi, you could do the math to estimate how many 80fpe shots you could get by setting the regulator to 2450 and shooting it down from 3600psi. Probably a lot. As for me, because I eventually want to start shooting .300 slugs out of it, I am better off leaving it unregged.
I just weighed my scope on digital parcel scales. The scope with rings weighs 1 pound, 15.8 ounces. So its 2 pounds for all practical purposes. It is a 50 mm Weaver Kaspa Tactical with a 30mm tube and Burris QD XTR medium rings. The scope mounted flashlight with its battery inside is 9.6 ounces. The flashlight's mount is 3.2 ounces. The bipod is 12.9 ounces. The sling is 6.1 ounces.
The gun and mounted scope only is 10lbs. So the gun itself is around 8lbs.
A few things I forgot to add for pros and cons:
The gun is adjustable from 20fpe to 200fpe. Although you're practically limited in your fpe by your projectile selection. Its pretty neat to have such a variable selection of power options within the same powerplant.
The TJ barrel doesn't like .30 Polymags over 850fps. If you slow them to under 850, they shoot fine. But when you send them screaming out at near 950, they start tumbling after 25 yards. This isn't a problem unique to the Flex, as other guns have been shown to not shoot the Polymags well. Regardless I'd love to be able to spit those Polymags out blazing fast. My Polymags are a batch of the earliest production run. I'm not sure if the design has changed any since then.
My .30 shoots like a regulated gun in terms of tight ES on a 2900psi fill. The platform can be regulated on request for the .30. I could see a big advantage in regulating the gun and filling it to the 3600psi max the bottle allows so long as you don't want to exceed 80fpe. The gun peaks around 2400-2500psi at or just exceeding 80 fpe, so if you fill to 3600psi, you could do the math to estimate how many 80fpe shots you could get by setting the regulator to 2450 and shooting it down from 3600psi. Probably a lot. As for me, because I eventually want to start shooting .300 slugs out of it, I am better off leaving it unregged.
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Actually I should amend what I said about it peaking. It starts to peak at 2600, and continues to stay at peak until about 2400. I'm not sure if you'd need to set the reg to 2600 or 2400.
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I'd be going with the 25 cal. 25 cal / 50fpe is plenty for what I do. The largest animal I have taken is foxes and large raccoons but they all die with a head shot from my Cricket 25
I saw a spread from a regulated 25 Warp on another forum. It looked good. Tight es and high shot count.
Can the Flex be used out of the aluminum chassis (I.e. In a custom stock) or does the bottle attach to it?
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The gun will come out of the chassis. The main part of the chassis bolts to the bottom of the tube much as a Marauder's stock bolts to its tube. There are also two side panels that can be unbolted and removed. They seem to protect the gun where the breech sits on the tube. The bottle screws into the tube, not the chassis.
I just weighed the chassis for you off the gun. One set of scales says 2.0lbs even. The other says 1lb, 15.7 ounces. So 2 lbs.
I just weighed the chassis for you off the gun. One set of scales says 2.0lbs even. The other says 1lb, 15.7 ounces. So 2 lbs.
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The bipod mount is removable. It is a set of bars with a sliding picatinny rail. It lets you adjust where the bipod mounts forward or back over a range of about 3.5 inches.The mount weighs 6.2 ounces. For someone not interested in a bipod, removing it is taking off near half a pound.
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If it can be used out of the chassis then you could potentially save 1.5lb or more by putting it in a new stock made from composites.
If a traditional stock design was used then you would also save the weight of the buffer tube, grip and AR stock. On a real AR, those things just attach directly to the receiver so no additional chassis is needed. I think the Airow Stealth works like that too (so there is no additional stock or chassis to unscrew).
I wish I knew if the Airrow stealth was good or not. On paper they are the most versatile AR style / AR compatible bottle fed repeating PCP rifle on the market. Aside from their website though, the only info is a single YouTube clip where the guy is testing one that is leaking badly, which doesn't exactly give you the confidence to spend $2000 on one (or even $200).
If you just read their website, it sounds awesome.
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I wouldn't change the design of my Flex, even to save a couple of pounds. Its built like a tank. A delicately built airgun wouldn't suit me. I can drop the Flex, bash it, hit it, whatever, and it takes it like a champ.
The reason I think about weight is because I do a lot of tent camping for days at a time. If I carry the Flex traditionally with a shoulder strap, walking around with it feels no different than walking around with a deer-appropriate firearm. Yet I like to strap my guns to my pack and that is where I can feel the difference between 7 and 10 pounds. I doubt the Flex was designed with backpack camping in mind. The WARP likely was. The .22lrs I carry with me often only weigh 2-3 lbs. Any airgun besides a Prod is going to add noticable weight to my pack. Its just a question of how much. By weighing everything out, I see I could save 4 pounds on my Flex by changing what I'm attatching to it.
I can report that yesterday I detuned my gun (by simply turning the power adjuster one full turn backwards) and that turned my power level from 88fpe to 74fpe. At 74fpe (860s), the Polymags fly great. Tight enough that I can shoot palmettos off their fronts at 50 yards. I'm looking forward to a coon hunt this evening with them.
The reason I think about weight is because I do a lot of tent camping for days at a time. If I carry the Flex traditionally with a shoulder strap, walking around with it feels no different than walking around with a deer-appropriate firearm. Yet I like to strap my guns to my pack and that is where I can feel the difference between 7 and 10 pounds. I doubt the Flex was designed with backpack camping in mind. The WARP likely was. The .22lrs I carry with me often only weigh 2-3 lbs. Any airgun besides a Prod is going to add noticable weight to my pack. Its just a question of how much. By weighing everything out, I see I could save 4 pounds on my Flex by changing what I'm attatching to it.
I can report that yesterday I detuned my gun (by simply turning the power adjuster one full turn backwards) and that turned my power level from 88fpe to 74fpe. At 74fpe (860s), the Polymags fly great. Tight enough that I can shoot palmettos off their fronts at 50 yards. I'm looking forward to a coon hunt this evening with them.
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Resale on the Flex/Warp is something to concider. The Flex is $2100 with the regulator option. There have been at least 5 used Flex sales the past 3 weeks, a couple with $200 aftermarket stocks. All were sold for under $1500 shipped. $500 - $600 depreciation on a slightly used gun is a lot. Why buy new when you can save over 25% on a well maintained used Flex?
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My understanding is that inititally for the Flex they were not free, but with the advent of the WARP and the performance results of regulated guns that have been getting such high shot counts, regulators are now offered free.
I considered a reg for my Flex and ultimately decided not to get one. I like being able to dial the power up or down with just the hammer spring.
I am planning on getting a WARP soon and I will be getting the regulator and the large bottle. I just haven't decided on caliber. I keep waffling between .22 and .25.
I considered a reg for my Flex and ultimately decided not to get one. I like being able to dial the power up or down with just the hammer spring.
I am planning on getting a WARP soon and I will be getting the regulator and the large bottle. I just haven't decided on caliber. I keep waffling between .22 and .25.
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I really need to call the guys over at warp and shoot the breeze with them.... The 25 seems super super good for me. BUT.
The Priest and the Mutant 25 have me on hold, Yes I am dead in my tracks,
I have a 22 Mutant just its size and shot count its my go to gun to shoot that stray bird on the feeder.
So short , So light, And so accurate . Its just so easy to pick up and shoot.
Yes I am on hold on any gun sales until I hear about the Mutant and the Priest,
Mike
The Priest and the Mutant 25 have me on hold, Yes I am dead in my tracks,
I have a 22 Mutant just its size and shot count its my go to gun to shoot that stray bird on the feeder.
So short , So light, And so accurate . Its just so easy to pick up and shoot.
Yes I am on hold on any gun sales until I hear about the Mutant and the Priest,
Mike
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I never make my air guns more delicate by making them lighter. A key point of using carbon fiber is it's superior strength to weight ratio.
If made correctly, a carbon fiber stock of the same weight as that aluminum chassis would be significantly stronger (and stiffer). The goal would be to reduce the weight without sacrificing any strength.
My every day Cricket stock is made from carbon fiber. I made it to look almost identical to the original so it's no more or less comfortable. It's every bit as strong but less than half the weight. If anything, it's stronger and stiffer as there is less of a poi shift caused by tightening the stock screws or gripping it too tight.
In in addition to being lighter and stronger than aluminum, carbon fiber is also harder to dent if you drop it. The surface coat on either can be scratched though so I hard coat mine with something that can be easily touched up if needed.
I still keep and use the original stock in scenarios where I want the extra weight (like when I shoot from a bench). It's nice to have the option to make it heavy or light depending on what I'm doing.
There are a number of clips online where companies demonstrate the strength of their carbon fiber stocks by driving 2 ton trucks over them to show that they don't break. A company called AG Composites makes an awesome all carbon fiber M1a stock. They have the videos on their site if you are interested.
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I am beginning to think the 25 Mutant is a myth. The only time I have seen it mentioned is on forums by people like us. We usually start to see pics of new air guns from trade shows months or even a year before they hit the stores. I haven't see one pic yet. Have you?
if there is no pics, I have no confidence we'll see the gun any time soon.
I'm not sure what they are waiting for as it would clearly be a hone run. Hopefully, if they are working on one, the delay is caused by them designing a new stock and forward cocking lever.
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