Month: January 2006

I bought my first B20 a few years ago and thought it was a good rifle, a little rough out of the box, but all in all a very satisfying hunting rifle for little cash out. I took it with me on several hunts for squirrels in the Midwestern woods and rabbits in the Southwestern deserts, and found that it performed very well for the intended purpose. Jump ahead a few years, and I was looking through some factory literature that had been sent to me for an article I was working on, when I came across a notice on a rifle being readied for release to the market. It was called the BAM XS B26, and like the B20 it was based on the renowned Beeman R9, although the literature claimed it was a significant improvement over the B20 due to better manufacturing and quality engineering processes, along with a couple of design changes such as a larger chamber (25-26mm) and a much more ergonomic stock (even though the B20 is not too bad either). The gun was shipped to me double boxed, with adequate bubble wrap padding. Included in the box was a 3-9×32 variable scope, a couple of Allen wrenches for mounting it, and a users manual. The gun did not have too much oil or grease externally, and though there was a bit of dieseling on the first few shots the gun settled in pretty quickly. The B26-2 is a break barrel spring piston airgun whichRead More →

In selecting the guns I’d be taking along to South Africa this year, I gave a lot of thought to my small game arsenal. On last years safari I was very happy with the performance with my big game guns, less so with my choices for small game. So this year I started well in advanced and got my hands on about a dozen new rifles to test ; looking at not only the accuracy and velocity performance, but evaluating reliability, consistency, shootability from a variety of positions, rapidity of follow up shots to determine what guns to bring along. What make the process all the more important is that we are only allowed to bring three guns each into the country, and the same calibers are not permitted. We did have a little leeway however in that not everyone in the party had three guns selected so we could spread our selection out, still it was tight. The Evanix AR 6In the end, one of the small game guns selected was the Evanix AR6. This is a new gun manufactured in Korea and is based on the old AR 6 design. It is one of the most powerful production airguns on the market today; a six-shot repeater using a rotary magazine that can be fired in single or double action mode. All of this sounded great when I first came across the description of the gun, but of course it all comes down to performance, so let’s take aRead More →