Evanix Sniper definitely no beginner rifle – my experience
Hi all,
thought I would share my experience with my .22 Evanix Sniper (long version, with air cylinder).
Remember posts I made back, answering questions of other users, see http://www.talonairgun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=31566#p319650, followed by a post where I describe the improvements I made to the valve: http://www.talonairgun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=31624&p=326420#p319734
Well, to be perfectly honest, What I’ve said in the first post still holds true, at least for a beginner who would like to have an out-of-the box shooter, I still would not recommend the Sniper, even though the good looks and good (outside) finish.
Concerning the second post, well the epilogue would be that I tried again and yes, there was improvement, but to be perfectly honest, I put the gun aside. Didn’t even want to sell it because I was more or less convinced to sell a bad gun, which for me is not an option (read: lemon, as that is what I thought I had, not saying all of them are this way).
Now, have a look at the date of my post back then, yes, I didn’t touch it all that time. Pulled the Sniper out recently while searching for something else in the garage, about a month ago, and what the h… it still held the pressure it had when i was putting it away more than a year ago. Gauge showed 170 bar. At least, my valve improvement works.
The following posts will show some evolution, as I decided to dig into this gun again. And why I finally conclude that I most probably don’t have a lemon, and that this gun is just not suited for a beginner. I at least just had to learn to shoot (airguns, coming from PBs), tinker and adjust better.
Stay tuned.
All Replies
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
Well, just a quick one: same setup, back to 15 m, switched to smaller targets (10m targets), same ammo: 5.51 mm and 5.52 mm 16gr JSB Exact Jumbos. Rifle on bipod, shooter seated (frozen to seat…). Encouraging result:
More to come, took some backlog writing…
Ok, back to business, sorry for having you wait so long, shooting was done, but time was too short for writing.
Let’s see, after the recent 15m result, I wanted to find out whether shooting at longer distances would yield better results compared to the last time I tried with this rifle or still give me a I-don’t-know-how-many cm CTC shotgun pattern. To be perfectly honest, I still haven’t changed scopes, so the testing continues with the Walther 6×42.
Set up the target at my standard range in my backyard, which is roundabout 35m and got ready for shooting off a table, sitting, as last time. I could go up to 48m, but that would mean shooting prone in the overly wet grass during this period of the year or going to the range. That will have to wait. The past experience with this gun makes me prefer to take it slowly anyway.
To make the story short: here’s what I came up with:
As you can see, I continued to try out both head sizes, the 5.51 and 5.52 mm, 15,89gr JSB Jumbos.
It really seems that this gun wants to shoot accurately and that I more and more understand how to get it do do just that.
Now, the shooting this time was done over the chronometer, and the string struck me a bit. The speed (and power) was rising steadily with each shot. I have to say that this gun is limited to 20 Joules (around 14,75 fpe). That’s the condition to shoot it legally in my backyard over here where I live.
To achieve this, I used another hammer spring, or rather two: one larger diameter wound in one direction (forgive me, I don’t remember which) and a second one, smaller diameter, inside the larger one, wound in the opposite sense. The whole arrangement is shorter than the original main spring, which makes for a anti-slap/anti-bounce mechanism, as used by FX.
Back to the shot string, where speed and therefore energy increase from shot to shot. Or stated differently: they increase with decreasing fill pressure. I conclude that the valve spring is not really balanced against the hammer blow in the rifle’s setup as it is. Going a step further I could imagine that it’s even not optimal for the FAC setup with the hammer spring being preloaded. I can imagine that the strong (valve) closing force at higher pressures might cause hammer bounce, but that’s only my thinking which might be wrong and which today I have no scientific proof for.
I hope my thinking is correct, that in my setup I might need a stronger valve spring to take out the effect of pressure in the tube and to balance hammer weight, hammer spring and valve spring against each other.
As said, if I want to continue shooting this gun legally in my backyard, I need to tune it in a way that it does not exceed 20 Joules. Easiest solution is to back out the hammer spring adjuster a bit, which in turn would mean that filled to 200 bars, I’d start with even less power (from 200 bar down to 100 bar, the difference is significant – over 30%).
Not really what I’d like to, so two solutions: balance the springs and hammer weight or regulate the gun, so that the valve is backed by the same (within regulator tolerance) pressure shot by shot and therefore speed and power remain stable.
Next up:
Get a regulator, install it, tune the gun to legal backyard limits and see what happens.
Stay tuned
Ok, so I pulled out the rifle from the garage where it slept over 1 year (and as said – without losing any pressure).
No rust, but dust. Lots of dust, including lead dust in the shroud.
Decided to dismantle the main groups and gave her a thorough cleaning including barrel cleaning with a patchworm, checked (and replaced) o-rings. Yes, I forgot, o-rings get easily damaged when pulling this gun apart, but also during assembly if you don’t go veeeeery slow and careful, as there are some sharp edges. That’s why I said “outer” build quality in the previous post. The innards of this gun can be done better in my opinion, a lot of tooling marks and unfinished surfaces. By the way, I still have one of the two clip which cycles all the way to the last pellet when pulling out the probe after shooting the first one. This makes it a 2 shot clip, with 9 unused in between, fortunately they can’t throw up after the quick turn…
Checked all the screws, including barrel screws for a tight fit, put a bipod on and – oh well, all scopes are in use. All? No, there’s an old Walther 6×42 basic wire duplex scope still lying around. This scope came with a 7.5J airmagnum CO2 gun I once owned. Hmmm, ok, better than nothing, mounted the scope in some medium rings, adjusted and fixed everything on the rifle.
Decided to test JSB exact jumbos in 5.51 and 5.52 head size with this rifle after sighting in.
Sighting in was quick, let’s see what’s possible.
Started off carefully at 15m, I still remember the 7cm ctc shotgun patterns I produced with this gun at 27m last time I tried.
I took good care to really well adjust the parallax on the scope, length of pull on the gun, scope-to eye position, cheek weld, constant pressure on grip and no load on the bipod. Let her move if she wants to. Shooting off a table, gun on bipod, rear supported by shoulder and stabilized by left hand, classic.
What the heck? This gun shoots…
Ok, you’ll all say, and I agree, 15m is nothing for a rifle, but for an ex-shotgun, I chose safety first. Nevertheless, this target showed me that there might be more to this gun than what I thought. And what I was able to get out of it as a beginner. Definitely needed to stretch things out further, but not possible this day, as the mist was getting more and more dense, and a target at greater distances was just barely visible. Besides, it’s cold and I started to shiver, not good for accuracy.
The conclusions I (have to) draw from this are:
1) this gun might end up not being a lemon after all
2) my shooting as a (air gun) beginner was not refined enough to get good results
3) the multiple possibilities of setting length of pull, cheek distance and height, might be too overwhelming for a beginner, preventing him to find the good position without help from a second person and thus preventing him from getting accurate results even though the rifle’s name suggests different.
Next:
Stretch out further, to see what’s possible and get that damned second clip to work.
Stay tuned.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Ok, it’s done.
Ordered a regulator from the guys over at Altaros and installed it according to their video instructions. No difficulties here. Checked the “Papa-Schultz” special valve, as a fellow forum member seemed not convinced as per my choice of valve material. Well, for the moment, no issues, still holding strong.
Assembled everything, filled up to 200 bar and got out shooting.
One thing though, when filling, watch the gauge on your bottle/hand pump/compressor, NOT the one on the rifle, as it will show rhe regulated pressure after regulator installation.
Well, it’s 2 degrees centigrade (negative) outside, which well limits the duration of the session…
And the precision of the shooter, combined to the enthusiasm of trying the new setup…
Well, result’s promising, 36 m target distance, back to the the bigger 10m pistol target (just in case, at least I know where they land), still the 6×42 scope, 16gr JSBs, no wind, rifle on bipod, shooter seated (shaking from cold). I pulled the last 2 shots and for the two groups I’d put that on a lack of consistency in my hold/eye placement.