With the ammunition availability issues and price hikes, some may find that airguns can be used as excellent training tools. This is a review of a reasonably priced air rifle I recently purchased online.
Tech Force Contender 89
.22 Cal
Compasseco ran a special on these awhile back and for $135 delivered plus a free Tech Force Cap I couldn’t say no. The favorable online reviews by Rick Eutsler and Tom Gaylord definitely played a part in my decision. I opted for the .22Cal version based on Mr. Eutsler’s comments.
When the gun arrived I was pleased to see that it was packed well in a sturdy container and survived the horrors of shipping without a scratch. It was packed with a couple of printed sheets of information that look like they came from Compasseco as well as a warranty card and a manual for an “AR1000 MAGNUM AIR RIFLE”apparently published by the “Industry” company.
The manual was obviously written in China but the translation is reasonably good—there are no problems understanding the meaning although there is a bit of “Engrish” in it. It’s got a good exploded parts diagram on the last page that I found to be quite useful and it shows two views of the trigger assembly that were helpful. The photographs and pictures in the manual are apparently of an older model or perhaps of a less deluxe version of the airgun. It’s clear from the picture that the rifle is equipped with different sights and that the stock is devoid of checkering.
The information that Compasseco provides consists of a double-sided sheet of paper containing general information on shooting and using spring-piston airguns. All the standard information and cautions are included. The other two sheets are warranty and return policies.
Metal and wood finish on the rifle are nice. The metal is matte blued with what appear to be lasercut markings on the receiver and barrel block. The stock looks like it has been cherry stained with a semi-gloss finish. There’s wood grain visible through the finish so this isn’t the old reddish colored paint we used to see on the less expensive Chinese air rifles. The checkering is obviously pressed checkering, not cut, but the pattern is practical and the effect is attractive. The TF 89 is definitely a cut above my last Chinese air rifle in terms of appearance. To be fair that was some years back and the rifle was much less expensive than this one.
Cosmetically the rifle is very pleasant looking overall and shows attention to detail. The edges that should be sharp (like the barrel block) are sharp and clean, the areas that you need to touch to operate the rifle are free of unpleasantly sharp edges.
The stock to receiver fit, looking from the top is a bit ragged toward the back of the receiver but the biggest “wart”, if you will” is the shiny silver trigger with the waffle-pattern “quasi-checkering” on the trigger face. For my money it would have been better with a simple groove pattern and a less flashy finish but that’s about the harshest criticism I can mount against the overall look of the rifle. I find the general appearance more than acceptable—it’s a nice-looking rifle, especially for the money.
I LIKE the sights. If you’ve seen Mr. Eutsler’s review, you probably noticed that he has some negative comments for the sights—I can’t agree with him on this one. The sights are fiber optic—the front dot is red and the back sight dots are green. The open sights are dimensioned well and I found them very practical to use. The front sight is a bit fragile-looking in spite of the fact that, with the exception of the fiber optic material itself which is plastic, it is made of some sort of non-ferrous metal. Had I designed the rifle I would have added a skeletonized front sight hood that would protect the sight but still admit light to power the fiber optic.
The rear sight is sturdy (also non-ferrous metal) and is adjustable for windage via a flat-bit screw and for elevation via a finger adjustable knurled wheel. The wheel is plastic but appears to be quite functional and adequately strong for the application. There are numbers marked on the underside of the wheel corresponding to the detents (not really clicks) in the adjustment wheel but the numbers are placed so they’re hard to see. I suspect they are not really meant to be seen and are there because the part was incorporated from another sight design.
Adjustment directions are clearly marked on the rear sight in English so there’s no confusion about which way to turn the screws. Many folks will obviously opt for a scope (and there’s an included scope stop already installed on the 11mm scope rail) but those who prefer iron sights or want to save a bit of money by forgoing a scope can rest assured that the TF89 open sights are well-designed and will provide good service.
There’s a muzzle attachment on which the front sight ramp is mounted. It’s covered with a tough, attractive shiny black finish and seems to be made of the same non-ferrous metal that the sights are composed of. It looks good.
While the rubber buttpad on the gun is probably a bit too hard to provide much in the way of recoil absorption it is a nice touch and fits well. If it does nothing else, you can lean your rifle against a wall without worrying that a slick buttplate is going to let the butt of the rifle slide and allow the rifle to fall.
The recesses for the two forward stock screws are covered with plastic caps designed to look like spanner screws. Some may find them cheesy (others may be fooled into thinking that they’re real spanner screws) but I think that the effect is positive—they definitely look better than exposed screws. The plastic trigger guard is sturdy and looks reasonably good although I wish they had tried to figure out a way to put the mold marks somewhere other than all over the right hand side of the bow. The trigger guard is retained at the front by a small wood screw and at the back by a large phillips head bolt that engages a nut in the receiver held in place by the end cap. The bolt goes through a heavy steel “pillar” affixed to the stock. It’s well thought out and very strong.
I set up my indoor target and did a bit of shooting to get a feel for the rifle. Cocking effort is fairly high as expected (not "extremely light" as reported in the online advertisement of this rifle) and cocking the gun results in a rather unimpressive grinding noise from the internals. Initially it took a couple of tries to get the trigger to set and catch the piston but that tendency disappeared with some shooting. The rifle grouped well (at least at first) in spite of the trigger. The trigger was long, heavy and had a very noticeable gritty feeling. I shot for awhile until the groups started opening up and I started having to adjust the elevation. I finally ran out of elevation adjustment and was getting pretty lousy groups so I figured that the cocking effort was taking its toll on me—messing with my group sizes and hold consistency.
The rifle has an automatic safety but unlike some automatic safeties this one can be reapplied without recocking the rifle. A nice touch. It’s also easy to operate and conveniently placed so you can operate it with your trigger finger. I’m not a huge fan of safeties located inside trigger guards but if you’re careful it works ok.
I put it away (this is a big rifle, it wouldn’t fit in the soft case I use for my Beeman R1) but made plans to take it apart later and work on the trigger a bit.
When I came back to it some days later (after recovering from a nasty bout of bronchitis) I removed the action from the stock—discovering in the process that the forward stock screws were very loose. The screws have washers but they’re flat washers, not lockwashers. The loose screws explained the wandering zero and the growing groups toward the end of the initial shooting session. I shouldn’t have doubted myself.
I drove out the trigger assembly pins from right to left. If your gun is assembled like mine this is the only way that will work; the trigger assembly pins and the end cap pin are knurled on their left-hand ends to keep them snug in the receiver tube. They will only drive out one way.
This is where things got a bit unpleasant. I thought the trigger assembly would come out of the receiver tube easily but I hadn’t looked at the diagram in the manual nor examined the gun carefully before driving out the pins. Turns out that the trigger assembly is behind the spring and I had to pull it out against the considerable friction induced by the spring force. Once the trigger assembly was removed the plastic endcap came out fairly easily.
I carefully disassembled the trigger mechanism. It is a good design but the parts fit together loosely, there is absolutely NO thought for making the engagement surfaces smooth during manufacture and the entire mechanism is coated with a nasty black gunk. It came off on my hands and on anything else it touched. I spent a lot of time during the trigger work wiping my hands on paper towels in a vain attempt to keep moderately clean.
The trigger assembly internal parts are held in place by pins which are retained by “E” Clips on both ends of each pin. If you haven’t ever dealt with these clips then be aware that they are easily lost or damaged during removal or reassembly. I typically hear them called by other, far less polite, names--usually as they depart at high velocity for the far reaches of the room accompanied by a musical “ziiing”. I accomplished that ordeal without any problems as a result of having had a good deal of personal experience in all the things that you should NOT to do “E” clips.
A bit of light polishing on the engagement surfaces, nothing more aggressive than 0000 emery paper on a flat surface, helped the trigger greatly as did removing most of the black gunk and replacing it with appropriate lube. I also found an assembly issue that was the primary cause of the gritty feel of the trigger. The trigger tension/return spring is actually two nested springs. One spring slides inside the other. When you have nested springs there is a right way and a wrong way to put them together. If you have the coils on both springs going the same way they can bind together or cause the springs to catch and slip during operation. These two springs were put together the wrong way and the coils slipping past each other during the trigger pull was what was causing the gritty feel. Properly assembling them eliminated the trigger grit.
There are 3 adjustments on this trigger and I think with a bit of work it could be tweaked to be very nice. However; the fit of the parts is pretty loose and I wasn’t comfortable trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the design as a result. I settled for smooth and didn’t try to adjust it for shortened travel nor did I do much adjustment to lighten the pull.
I finished by cleaning the main spring and relubricating it with Beeman M2M paste. There was no need to remove the piston or seal so I left them alone.
Putting the gun back together was another ordeal. I ended up drilling an assembly hole just forward of the front trigger pin hole and low enough that it was covered by the stock with the gun assembled. I then compressed the spring to that point and pushed a steel punch through the assembly hole to hold the spring in place. That allowed me to install the trigger assembly and the end cap. Even then I needed an extra pair of hands to accomplish the task, so my wife is now an apprentice to an amateur airgunsmith. The spring is really stout—I’m guessing it takes well over 100lbs of force to compress it. Do NOT disassemble this gun unless you know what you’re doing. At best you won’t be able to get it back together—at worst it could severely injure you.
With the gun back together I shot it a few times to verify proper operation. Everything worked fine and the trigger while still long and a bit heavier than is ideal is now smooth. With a Lyman Digital trigger gauge I measured the pull weight after the work was finished at right around 4lbs—sorry, no information from before the cleanup work. It could be a bit shorter in terms of travel but it is definitely no longer an impediment to accurate shooting. The gun is grouping well again and I was able to adjust the rear sight elevation back down to a much more reasonable setting.
With proper operation verified I removed the forward two stock screws, degreased them and their holes, applied LocTite 648 and reinstalled them tightly. I don’t expect to ever have trouble with them loosening again. LocTite 648 is a retaining compound, not a threadlocker—it will be very difficult to disassemble the gun again. The datasheet says that applying heat well over 400 degrees Fahrenheit (250C) will soften the material temporarily but I really don’t plan to tear this gun down in the future. After having shot the gun some more the screws are still rock-solid.
I finally dragged out my chronograph and set it up after letting the gun sit a bit longer. I am no longer highly impressed with airgun velocity—I see it as a disadvantage more than a feature. Really fast airguns are noisy, recoil more, tend to be less accurate and consistent, are hard to cock and require me to do maintenance on my pellet trap more often. AND, unless you’re talking about really significant velocity increases, it doesn’t buy you that much in terms of an increase in practical killing power if you use the rifle to hunt. It still comes down to careful placement of the pellet. But I felt like an airgun review wasn’t complete without some velocity data, so here it is...
Compasseco lists this gun as having a muzzle velocity of up to 900fps in .22Cal. The AR1000 manual by Industry that came with the gun claims a 750fps muzzle velocity for the .22Cal version. “Apparently”, John observed to himself wryly, “Compasseco has access to much lighter .22Cal pellets than Tech Force/Industry does”.
Rick Eutsler of AirGunWeb.com chronographed his .22Cal Tech Force 89 Contender at 784fps with RWS 14.5 grn. pellets and 797fps with Crosman Premier Hollow Point 12.9 grn. pellets.” which agrees fairly well with the figure from the manual but is, not surprisingly, a bit lower than the figure Compasseco advertises.
Before I got bored I managed to chronograph the rifle with the pellets listed below. Velocity averages (5 shots) are reported along with Extreme Spread (the difference between the fastest shot and the slowest shot). The chrono was about a yard in front of the muzzle. Pellet weights are measured averages (RCBS electronic scale) with the exception of the figure for the RWS Superdomes. In that case it's the nominal weight listed on the tin.
Note the amazing velocity consistency with the Crow Magnums. It’s also interesting that although they were 1.4grains heavier than the Gamo Master Points and 1.8grains heavier than the Beeman Silver Ace pellets they chronographed faster out of the TF 89. Very impressive performance, both for the Crow Magnum pellets and also for the rifle.
The velocity figures from my testing agree very well with the manual’s specifications—about 750fps for mid-weight .22cal pellets—but are a bit slower than the numbers Mr. Eutsler obtained. Mr. Eutsler also noted very low extreme spread numbers with the pellets he tested in his Tech Force 89.
I don’t shoot airguns over rests and I haven’t scoped the rifle so I haven’t included any accuracy results but I can tell you that in my hands this rifle shoots at least as accurately as my .22 Cal Webley Eclipse. I definitely can’t complain. Mr. Eutsler and Mr. Gaylord both did some accuracy testing and posted the results in their excellent reviews. Mr. Eutsler recorded groups smaller than a quarter at 30 yards and smaller than a dime at 20 yards.
Summary
Glitches:
I’d do it all again if I had the chance. I’m happy with the rifle, particularly after the work on the trigger.
Tech Force Contender 89
.22 Cal
Compasseco ran a special on these awhile back and for $135 delivered plus a free Tech Force Cap I couldn’t say no. The favorable online reviews by Rick Eutsler and Tom Gaylord definitely played a part in my decision. I opted for the .22Cal version based on Mr. Eutsler’s comments.
When the gun arrived I was pleased to see that it was packed well in a sturdy container and survived the horrors of shipping without a scratch. It was packed with a couple of printed sheets of information that look like they came from Compasseco as well as a warranty card and a manual for an “AR1000 MAGNUM AIR RIFLE”apparently published by the “Industry” company.
The manual was obviously written in China but the translation is reasonably good—there are no problems understanding the meaning although there is a bit of “Engrish” in it. It’s got a good exploded parts diagram on the last page that I found to be quite useful and it shows two views of the trigger assembly that were helpful. The photographs and pictures in the manual are apparently of an older model or perhaps of a less deluxe version of the airgun. It’s clear from the picture that the rifle is equipped with different sights and that the stock is devoid of checkering.
The information that Compasseco provides consists of a double-sided sheet of paper containing general information on shooting and using spring-piston airguns. All the standard information and cautions are included. The other two sheets are warranty and return policies.
Metal and wood finish on the rifle are nice. The metal is matte blued with what appear to be lasercut markings on the receiver and barrel block. The stock looks like it has been cherry stained with a semi-gloss finish. There’s wood grain visible through the finish so this isn’t the old reddish colored paint we used to see on the less expensive Chinese air rifles. The checkering is obviously pressed checkering, not cut, but the pattern is practical and the effect is attractive. The TF 89 is definitely a cut above my last Chinese air rifle in terms of appearance. To be fair that was some years back and the rifle was much less expensive than this one.
Cosmetically the rifle is very pleasant looking overall and shows attention to detail. The edges that should be sharp (like the barrel block) are sharp and clean, the areas that you need to touch to operate the rifle are free of unpleasantly sharp edges.
The stock to receiver fit, looking from the top is a bit ragged toward the back of the receiver but the biggest “wart”, if you will” is the shiny silver trigger with the waffle-pattern “quasi-checkering” on the trigger face. For my money it would have been better with a simple groove pattern and a less flashy finish but that’s about the harshest criticism I can mount against the overall look of the rifle. I find the general appearance more than acceptable—it’s a nice-looking rifle, especially for the money.
I LIKE the sights. If you’ve seen Mr. Eutsler’s review, you probably noticed that he has some negative comments for the sights—I can’t agree with him on this one. The sights are fiber optic—the front dot is red and the back sight dots are green. The open sights are dimensioned well and I found them very practical to use. The front sight is a bit fragile-looking in spite of the fact that, with the exception of the fiber optic material itself which is plastic, it is made of some sort of non-ferrous metal. Had I designed the rifle I would have added a skeletonized front sight hood that would protect the sight but still admit light to power the fiber optic.
The rear sight is sturdy (also non-ferrous metal) and is adjustable for windage via a flat-bit screw and for elevation via a finger adjustable knurled wheel. The wheel is plastic but appears to be quite functional and adequately strong for the application. There are numbers marked on the underside of the wheel corresponding to the detents (not really clicks) in the adjustment wheel but the numbers are placed so they’re hard to see. I suspect they are not really meant to be seen and are there because the part was incorporated from another sight design.
Adjustment directions are clearly marked on the rear sight in English so there’s no confusion about which way to turn the screws. Many folks will obviously opt for a scope (and there’s an included scope stop already installed on the 11mm scope rail) but those who prefer iron sights or want to save a bit of money by forgoing a scope can rest assured that the TF89 open sights are well-designed and will provide good service.
There’s a muzzle attachment on which the front sight ramp is mounted. It’s covered with a tough, attractive shiny black finish and seems to be made of the same non-ferrous metal that the sights are composed of. It looks good.
While the rubber buttpad on the gun is probably a bit too hard to provide much in the way of recoil absorption it is a nice touch and fits well. If it does nothing else, you can lean your rifle against a wall without worrying that a slick buttplate is going to let the butt of the rifle slide and allow the rifle to fall.
The recesses for the two forward stock screws are covered with plastic caps designed to look like spanner screws. Some may find them cheesy (others may be fooled into thinking that they’re real spanner screws) but I think that the effect is positive—they definitely look better than exposed screws. The plastic trigger guard is sturdy and looks reasonably good although I wish they had tried to figure out a way to put the mold marks somewhere other than all over the right hand side of the bow. The trigger guard is retained at the front by a small wood screw and at the back by a large phillips head bolt that engages a nut in the receiver held in place by the end cap. The bolt goes through a heavy steel “pillar” affixed to the stock. It’s well thought out and very strong.
I set up my indoor target and did a bit of shooting to get a feel for the rifle. Cocking effort is fairly high as expected (not "extremely light" as reported in the online advertisement of this rifle) and cocking the gun results in a rather unimpressive grinding noise from the internals. Initially it took a couple of tries to get the trigger to set and catch the piston but that tendency disappeared with some shooting. The rifle grouped well (at least at first) in spite of the trigger. The trigger was long, heavy and had a very noticeable gritty feeling. I shot for awhile until the groups started opening up and I started having to adjust the elevation. I finally ran out of elevation adjustment and was getting pretty lousy groups so I figured that the cocking effort was taking its toll on me—messing with my group sizes and hold consistency.
The rifle has an automatic safety but unlike some automatic safeties this one can be reapplied without recocking the rifle. A nice touch. It’s also easy to operate and conveniently placed so you can operate it with your trigger finger. I’m not a huge fan of safeties located inside trigger guards but if you’re careful it works ok.
I put it away (this is a big rifle, it wouldn’t fit in the soft case I use for my Beeman R1) but made plans to take it apart later and work on the trigger a bit.
When I came back to it some days later (after recovering from a nasty bout of bronchitis) I removed the action from the stock—discovering in the process that the forward stock screws were very loose. The screws have washers but they’re flat washers, not lockwashers. The loose screws explained the wandering zero and the growing groups toward the end of the initial shooting session. I shouldn’t have doubted myself.
I drove out the trigger assembly pins from right to left. If your gun is assembled like mine this is the only way that will work; the trigger assembly pins and the end cap pin are knurled on their left-hand ends to keep them snug in the receiver tube. They will only drive out one way.
This is where things got a bit unpleasant. I thought the trigger assembly would come out of the receiver tube easily but I hadn’t looked at the diagram in the manual nor examined the gun carefully before driving out the pins. Turns out that the trigger assembly is behind the spring and I had to pull it out against the considerable friction induced by the spring force. Once the trigger assembly was removed the plastic endcap came out fairly easily.
I carefully disassembled the trigger mechanism. It is a good design but the parts fit together loosely, there is absolutely NO thought for making the engagement surfaces smooth during manufacture and the entire mechanism is coated with a nasty black gunk. It came off on my hands and on anything else it touched. I spent a lot of time during the trigger work wiping my hands on paper towels in a vain attempt to keep moderately clean.
The trigger assembly internal parts are held in place by pins which are retained by “E” Clips on both ends of each pin. If you haven’t ever dealt with these clips then be aware that they are easily lost or damaged during removal or reassembly. I typically hear them called by other, far less polite, names--usually as they depart at high velocity for the far reaches of the room accompanied by a musical “ziiing”. I accomplished that ordeal without any problems as a result of having had a good deal of personal experience in all the things that you should NOT to do “E” clips.
A bit of light polishing on the engagement surfaces, nothing more aggressive than 0000 emery paper on a flat surface, helped the trigger greatly as did removing most of the black gunk and replacing it with appropriate lube. I also found an assembly issue that was the primary cause of the gritty feel of the trigger. The trigger tension/return spring is actually two nested springs. One spring slides inside the other. When you have nested springs there is a right way and a wrong way to put them together. If you have the coils on both springs going the same way they can bind together or cause the springs to catch and slip during operation. These two springs were put together the wrong way and the coils slipping past each other during the trigger pull was what was causing the gritty feel. Properly assembling them eliminated the trigger grit.
There are 3 adjustments on this trigger and I think with a bit of work it could be tweaked to be very nice. However; the fit of the parts is pretty loose and I wasn’t comfortable trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the design as a result. I settled for smooth and didn’t try to adjust it for shortened travel nor did I do much adjustment to lighten the pull.
I finished by cleaning the main spring and relubricating it with Beeman M2M paste. There was no need to remove the piston or seal so I left them alone.
Putting the gun back together was another ordeal. I ended up drilling an assembly hole just forward of the front trigger pin hole and low enough that it was covered by the stock with the gun assembled. I then compressed the spring to that point and pushed a steel punch through the assembly hole to hold the spring in place. That allowed me to install the trigger assembly and the end cap. Even then I needed an extra pair of hands to accomplish the task, so my wife is now an apprentice to an amateur airgunsmith. The spring is really stout—I’m guessing it takes well over 100lbs of force to compress it. Do NOT disassemble this gun unless you know what you’re doing. At best you won’t be able to get it back together—at worst it could severely injure you.
With the gun back together I shot it a few times to verify proper operation. Everything worked fine and the trigger while still long and a bit heavier than is ideal is now smooth. With a Lyman Digital trigger gauge I measured the pull weight after the work was finished at right around 4lbs—sorry, no information from before the cleanup work. It could be a bit shorter in terms of travel but it is definitely no longer an impediment to accurate shooting. The gun is grouping well again and I was able to adjust the rear sight elevation back down to a much more reasonable setting.
With proper operation verified I removed the forward two stock screws, degreased them and their holes, applied LocTite 648 and reinstalled them tightly. I don’t expect to ever have trouble with them loosening again. LocTite 648 is a retaining compound, not a threadlocker—it will be very difficult to disassemble the gun again. The datasheet says that applying heat well over 400 degrees Fahrenheit (250C) will soften the material temporarily but I really don’t plan to tear this gun down in the future. After having shot the gun some more the screws are still rock-solid.
I finally dragged out my chronograph and set it up after letting the gun sit a bit longer. I am no longer highly impressed with airgun velocity—I see it as a disadvantage more than a feature. Really fast airguns are noisy, recoil more, tend to be less accurate and consistent, are hard to cock and require me to do maintenance on my pellet trap more often. AND, unless you’re talking about really significant velocity increases, it doesn’t buy you that much in terms of an increase in practical killing power if you use the rifle to hunt. It still comes down to careful placement of the pellet. But I felt like an airgun review wasn’t complete without some velocity data, so here it is...
Compasseco lists this gun as having a muzzle velocity of up to 900fps in .22Cal. The AR1000 manual by Industry that came with the gun claims a 750fps muzzle velocity for the .22Cal version. “Apparently”, John observed to himself wryly, “Compasseco has access to much lighter .22Cal pellets than Tech Force/Industry does”.
Rick Eutsler of AirGunWeb.com chronographed his .22Cal Tech Force 89 Contender at 784fps with RWS 14.5 grn. pellets and 797fps with Crosman Premier Hollow Point 12.9 grn. pellets.” which agrees fairly well with the figure from the manual but is, not surprisingly, a bit lower than the figure Compasseco advertises.
Before I got bored I managed to chronograph the rifle with the pellets listed below. Velocity averages (5 shots) are reported along with Extreme Spread (the difference between the fastest shot and the slowest shot). The chrono was about a yard in front of the muzzle. Pellet weights are measured averages (RCBS electronic scale) with the exception of the figure for the RWS Superdomes. In that case it's the nominal weight listed on the tin.
- 14.3gr Crosman Premiers—753fps—11.7fps E.S.
- 14.5gr RWS Super Domes—746fps—10.0fps E.S.
- 14.7gr Beeman BearCubs—744fps—21.6 fps E.S.
- 16.0gr Beeman Silver Ace—666fps—10.7fps E.S.
- 16.4gr Gamo Master Points—701fps—19.6fps E.S.
- 17.8gr Beeman Crow Magnum—712fps—5.3fps E.S.
Note the amazing velocity consistency with the Crow Magnums. It’s also interesting that although they were 1.4grains heavier than the Gamo Master Points and 1.8grains heavier than the Beeman Silver Ace pellets they chronographed faster out of the TF 89. Very impressive performance, both for the Crow Magnum pellets and also for the rifle.
The velocity figures from my testing agree very well with the manual’s specifications—about 750fps for mid-weight .22cal pellets—but are a bit slower than the numbers Mr. Eutsler obtained. Mr. Eutsler also noted very low extreme spread numbers with the pellets he tested in his Tech Force 89.
I don’t shoot airguns over rests and I haven’t scoped the rifle so I haven’t included any accuracy results but I can tell you that in my hands this rifle shoots at least as accurately as my .22 Cal Webley Eclipse. I definitely can’t complain. Mr. Eutsler and Mr. Gaylord both did some accuracy testing and posted the results in their excellent reviews. Mr. Eutsler recorded groups smaller than a quarter at 30 yards and smaller than a dime at 20 yards.
Summary
Glitches:
- No lockwashers on the forward stock screws
- Trigger tension springs incorrectly assembled
- Trigger Cosmetics (Unattractive waffle-checkering and shiny finish)
- Stock/Receiver fit (Some gaps, particularly at the rear of the receiver)
- Hard to ignore mold marks on trigger bow
- Number markings on elevation wheel not usable.
- No front sight hood (Needs some protection)
- Nasty black gunk coating trigger assembly & mechanism
- Excellent Open Sights
- Good Trigger Mechanism
- Sturdy stock/receiver attachment design
- Good stock design and nice overall appearance
- Resettable Safety
- Finish
- Design allows decocking
- Ergonomics
- Useful Manual (Especially the diagrams on the final page)
- Good Power/Accuracy
- Good Packing/Shipping
I’d do it all again if I had the chance. I’m happy with the rifle, particularly after the work on the trigger.
