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Monday, March 23, 2009

My Armscor PCP

     It has been said that no two airguns are made the same no matter how similar or precise they are made together. I am making this review of "my" Armscor PCP airgun which is of course different from any Armscor PCP airgun no matter how they are made...
Short History
     I bought my Armscor PCP during its first launch in July 2008 at a Gunshow at SM Mega Mall. It was supposed to be bundled with a Hill pump but I already have a JBC pump which can fill it so I did not buy the Hill pump anymore. The buying process was somewhat rush, I called Joel Gatchalian on the Saturday night of the Gunshow and I told him I'll get the airgun the next day and asked him to reserve serial no. 7 for me.
     I rushed there the next day, Sunday night, filled up the forms, paid the cashier and took home my Armscor PCP airgun without air in it.  That night, I had to pump it to around 1000 psi to test if there's no leak, unfortunately, there is a leak at the offset, so I remove the tank, checked the o-ring, removed it and "wet" it with a little silicon grease I use with my JBC airguns. It usually work and it did also with my new Armscor PCP airgun. I continued to pump it to 3000 psi and the pressure stayed there.
My 2 cents to share....

     My stock Armscor PCP airgun is very finely crafted, the fit is so well aligned, you cannot see tool marks on it. The steel finish has  a "real gun like look" and has a bluish dark finish. The woodwork is exquisite including its checking which is finely made. I cannot complain a thing on its finish. The aluminum receiver is hard anodized and is also made with good quality. The gauge installed in it is a Miniature Pressure gauge brand made in UK(I learned later that it was supplied by a friend of mine(FK from Batangas) to Armscor to initially be installed in their first batch of 10 PCP airguns as their order has not arrived yet.)
    The barrel is made of steel, not brass with steel sleeve unlike most other local PCP airguns. It is around 20" long and it has approx. 16mm outside diameter. It has a treaded muzzle to fit a silencer or a muzzle break but it did not come with a silencer as its illegal to install one. According to Joel Gatchalian, its designer, it has an 11 degree muzzle crown. The pellet breech can fit an unresized Hystan Superzero pellet.(Mang Gilbert noticed later that the pellet breech has a "sabit" when you push a pellet through it, so I had it re-breeched at the JBC shop. My barrel was reduced by around 1/4" due to the re-breeching process but its now accepting pellets without any sabit in it. I told Joel about this and he said it was breeched like the way the JBC shop do it but anyway, its working fine with me.)

     I tested it the next day on my Alpha Shooting Chrony and it registered only around 780 fps to 870 fps with so many shots. I tried to increase its velocity by increasing the hammer spring pre-load and it gave me around 830-850 fps average but the hammer is hitting the  valve stem very hard already... I reduced the pre-load and told Joel about it and a hammer mod was made to make my hammer a little bit heavier to make it easier to tune. With the heavier hammer, I can easily attain 850 fps and even more than 900 fps if I wanted to. I balanced its springs(valve and hammer springs) to make my extreme spread closer and it worked. Out of the box, its extreme spread is around 90 fps, now its only around 45 fps if I remember it right.
    I had to replace the hammer spring with a lighter spring and I reduced the length of the valve stem to make the hammer hit it a 90 degrees, not at an angle at originally made.
   I am enjoying it right now, my only complaint is that its too heavy for a hunting rifle, the tank is too thick and maybe the safety factor used is very high as its intended for foreign market also. I wanted to modify it to fit T6 alum tank but I cannot do it as Armscor will not do it for me. I am planning to install a medium tank in it later and have the offset constructed like my JBC offset to make my tanks interchangeable(JBC and Armscor). I still need to convince Mang Jun of JBC to do it for me..he-he...
On the right is a 91-yard 5-shot group using my Armscor PCP and resized, sorted and weighed  Hystan Superzero pellets. There's a slight wind coming from the right when I shot these at around 870-890 fps..