🚀 go-pugleaf

Anyway, I would like to second the recommendation of the Beeman catalog
as a source for information about all varieties of airguns. I've been
buying from Beeman and getting their catalog for some years now. The
catalog is not only a guide to their line, but also a good general 
introduction to the field of pneumatic/air-powered arms. I own several
books on the subject, but the free (*) Beeman catalog is as good or
better an introductory text than anything you can buy. I used to keep
a spare back issue in my desk, but I think I gave it away; I'll bring in
the address and post it tomorrow. (Though you can find Beeman ads in
many gun magazines, so you might actually have the address at home
already. Also it is in standard references like Gun Digest.)
[(*) I say "free" because I haven't paid for any; they have cover
prices, and sometimes the ads ask for a dollar or two, but usually you
can get one just by asking for it with a postcard.]

I'm not going to say that Beeman is the best source to buy from; if you
know what you want, you can find the same airguns without the Beeman
name on them at lower prices in Shotgun News ads. There are some Beeman
dealers that will sell the Beeman-brand airguns at a discount, too.
However, you do get good warranty and backup service from Beeman. I've
bought most of my airguns from Beeman, and, on the whole, I've been
satisfied. Note also that Beeman has a "used gun" list (which you DO
have to pay for to get) and also sends out periodic "sale bulletins",
which contain cosmetic blemished, new models, and closed-out airguns for 
reduced prices, plus special sales on pellets and accessories. I bought
most of my stuff from such discount offers.

What Beeman does is to go to the major European airgun manufacturers and
have them make guns with the Beeman logo on them, meeting certain specs
and having certain features. In many cases these are just the same as
the makers' regular models, but they do go through an extra level of
inspection and quality assurance to be sold by Beeman, plus they have
warranty and repair-policy support here from Beeman. Companies doing
this are firms like RWS and FWB (Feinwerkbau). Of course, there have been
other mail-order airgun houses, most notably a place called "Air Rifle
Headquarters", which went out of business some years back. (I think
Beeman bought them out, but am not positive.) There are a couple other,
newer mailorder airgun houses now, but I have no experience with them.
Beeman is the biggest and has been operating the longest.

So, what airguns are best? Well, it depends what you want to do. The
original inquiry was for "backyard plinking". For this, a relatively
low-powered spring-piston break-barrel-cocking .177 can be bought for well
under $100 and give better accuracy than any firearm costing less than
$500 (within the limited range of 33 feet or so). It can be an excellent
training aid and something to keep your shooting skills honed when it is
inconvenient or too expensive to go somewhere to shoot a firearm. If you
want to practice formal target shooting, you may want to get a more
expensive match-style gun, with better sights and adjustable buttplate
and hand support features, probably sidelever action and recoilless (here
you are talking $400 and up). If you are a hunter, you may prefer a
higher-powered and scoped barrel-cocking model, some of which can shove
a .177 pellet at 900+ fps and can be used for limited types of small-game
hunting or pest control ($200 and up, plus scope). 

Note that all the above are spring-piston models. The common American
airgun has been either the Daisy-type spring-action BB gun, or the
Crosman/Benjamin/Sheridan style pump-up pneumatic. The pump-up guns have
the capability of high power (there was a Japanese model called the
Sharp Innova that could push a .177 pellet 1000+ fps some years ago, a
level spring-piston guns only reached recently, and the 19th-century
military and hunting airguns were pneumatic types), but they have
certain inherent disadvantages. First off, they have to be pumped. This
gets tiring after only a few shots. It takes about as much effort to
make a single pumping stroke as it does to cock a spring-piston gun;
for each shot of a pump-up model, you have to pump 6 or more times. (And the
pumps get more difficult as you increase their number to get higher power.)
This rapidly gets tiresome; for the same effort you could have fired
the spring-piston model 6 times as many shots. Also, the amount of air
compressed with each pump varies slightly, so you are always firing with
a slightly different propellant pressure. This causes shot-to-shot
variations which result in lower levels of accuracy. The spring-piston
compresses identical amounts of air for each shot.

I could go on but better stop here. I'll get Beeman's address and send
it in ASAP.

Regards,
Will Martin
wmartin@ALMSA-1.ARPA   (on USENET try ...!seismo!wmartin@ALMSA-1.ARPA )