Short Report From The SHOT Show
In my books the coolest new thing that I saw at the range was the prototype of the Evanix Conquest 9mm, which like the .25 caliber Speed that I’ve been shooting the last couple of weeks is a semi / full auto gun. The prototype was based on the twin bottle Conquest rather than the single reservoir Speed, which is a good idea as air consumption will be higher with the larger caliber. The twin bottle Conquest version has a combined 800 cc air storage capacity. It was also using a standard valve rather than the beefed up version that will be used on the released gun, so was only producing about 110 fpe, but is anticipated to generate 180-190 fpe in the production guns. The 9mm uses a larger seven round version of the same rotary magazine used in the smaller caliber versions. I only got to empty a few magazines (I begrudgingly had to give others a chance) but noted that for all of us the gun and magazine functioned reliably …… I also noted that everyone that shot it had a big smile at the end of the magazine!
It’s hard to achieve an ergonomic design in a gun when there is a need to incorporate two air bottles, but Evanix has seemed to have done a good job from the limted shooting experience I had. It was possible to get a consistant sight alignment and the trigger was light and crisp. The selection of semi or full auto is accomplished with a flick of a lever situated just in front of the safety.
The management from Air Venturi (the distributor for the Evanix guns inb the US) told me that this gun would be released soon, but not until they thoroughly tested it and run enough rounds through it that they are satisfied that it will be a solid and reliable gun for customers. But if they get this gun tuned up to 180 fpe and it retains the accuracy and reliability I say today …… man this will be some kind of predator gun! I’ll post more as information becomes available on the gun. |
