The FATS by itself.
This report covers:
- What it is
- What is a Condor?
- Attach the FATS
- Works in older Condors as well
- However
- Recommendation
- Silencer?
- Which silencer?
- Tight fit
- FATS installed
- Summary
AirForce calls this product the Condor Fast Attach Thread System (FATS), because they made it specifically to attach to that rifle. I can see several other possible uses for this and, if they will work, I think we’ll also look at them as we go. But today we’ll look at the FATS mounted on a .22-caliber Condor.
What it is
The FATS is a way to attach a silencer to a Condor rifle. We’re talking about the unsilenced Condor, only—not a CondorSS.
What is a Condor?
The Condor is a powerful (the description says up to 105 foot-pounds in .25) single-shot precharged pneumatic (PCP) rifle that’s used for hunting and long-range shooting. And it’s loud! When the rifle first came out in 2004 I immediately applied for a firearm silencer to tone mine down. The silencer took 18 months to get and I’ve never used it on the Condor.
Since that time a great many powerful PCPs have come to market. None are as powerful as the Condor, but at 80-90 foot-pounds they are in the ballpark. All of them have at least had shrouded barrels if not silencers attached. The Condor stands pretty much by itself among smallbore air rifles in loudness.
Attach the FATS
To attach the FATS to the rifle you remove the end cap that the rifle barrel passes through and then screw in two longer screws that touch the outside of the barrel. The FATS then slides over the barrel and those two screws fit into a female bayonet attachment on the end of the FATS that lock it in place. Here is a great video to see how this works.
Works in older Condors as well
My older Condor has only one screw holding the end cap, so I wondered if the FATS would work. Well, it does. No matter how new or old your Condor is, the FATS will work with it.
My older Condor has a single screw holding the end cap and the FATS still attaches.
As seen in the video, the female bayonet attachment ring on the FATS connects with the two long screws you installed where the end cap went. It also works on my older Condor that has a single screw. Just slide the FATS over the barrel and twist to connect it to the two screws in the bayonet grooves.
Airforce gives you a small amount of grease with the FATS because the fit over the Condor barrel is tight!
However
While the FATS does fit all Condors, the barrels in older rifles like mine have solid bushings that don’t work that well with a silencer. Condor barrel bushings today have holes through them that allow the air to pass through and that works attenuate the discharge sound even more.
Older Condors have solid Delrin bushings like this. Without holes they don’t allow compressed air to pass through.
The current Condor bushings have holes to pass air through.
Recommendation
For this reason AirForce is recommending that an older Condor with solid bushings get a new barrel if the FATS will be used. Can the new bushings be installed on an old barrel in place of the older ones? Maybe. The older barrels may not have the same external diameter as the new barrels because of manufacturing changes. That makes fitting new bushings to older barrels iffy.
Silencer?
Okay, my apologies, but I have called them silencers for years and I’m too set in my ways to change. But the world now calls them moderators, which I think is a more descriptive term because they don’t silence anything. They moderate the sound to make it quieter. People who hear a silenced .22 pistol the first time are always surprised by how much noise it makes.
Which silencer?
It turns out that in addition to the male 1/2-inch by 20 thread pattern for popular airgun silencers, the FATS also has a female 3/4-inch by 16 thread adaptor. To get to it the 1/2-inch by 20 thread adaptor has an 8mm Allen socket inside it. A twist of an aftermarket 8mm wrench unscrews it to come out, revealing 3/4-inch by 16 female threads for the TalonP moderator, if you happen to have one.
Tight fit
The FATS fits tight on the Condor barrel so AirForce supplies grease to get it to slide on easier. An o-ring on the FATS mounting ring keeps the energetic gas inside the moderator or the Condor barrel shroud. This may be an additional reason for owners of older Condors to purchase a new barrel.
FATS installed
Once installed you can attach your choice of airgun moderators. I have a Ronin from DonnyFL that I will try. I also have a TalonP moderator to test. Accuracy plus point of impact shift when the moderator/silencer is attached all have to be tested, so this will be a robust series.
The FATS installed.
DonnyFL Ronin silencer on the Condor.
Summary
In this series we will look at how the new Fast Attach Thread System (FATS) impacts the operation of the AirForce Condor. It should be a good series.
Tom,
Looks like a very secure method of attachment of the moderator to the barrel which originally has no threads. I can’t help but imagine of a redneck method of simply taking a Dremel and cutting a few slits in that solid Delrin bushing to allow the air for passage. Hopefully this will not affect the accuracy greatly by changing the harmonics.
Siraniko
Siraniko,
Even with that there is still the possibility of the barrel fit being wrong.
BB
Siraniko,
This method will work as long as care is taken to not cut the slots where the barrel set screws will be. This method can be difficult to properly align.
BB that bushing on the older barrel sure looks like a non-removable metal part of the barrel. In either case is seems like taking a small round, rat tail, file to it could create enough air passages.
Bob,
Those are Delrin bushings. Yes they could be drilled through for air passage but the fit of the older barrels that were ground on a centerless grinder for bluing is still a problem.
BB
BB,
Do you mean Condor to be the loudest PCP you have ever tested? It is interesting by the way – which airgun was the loudest? Can you somehow compare or describe the difference between “a normal” airgun and “it’s loud”?
You are talking about the moderator – which is not making the report silence but modify it. It is sometimes enough to make the most critical frequency band a bit quieter (like 500Hz – 3000Hz) and the noise impression will be much different, even if the “dB machine” will show a similar single MAX value…
Nevertheless, we should not forget that only subsonic projectile may be silenced very effectively.
tomek,
No, the Condor is not the loudest PCP I ever heard. I believe that distinction belongs to a .50 caliber Quackenbush air pistol.
BB
B.B.,
I concur on the DAQ being among the loudest report on a PCP.
My DAQ .58 caliber ShortRifle is a close second to my .58 pistol.
The 24 inch barrel on the Condors is to their benefit (The shorter the PCP barrel length the louder the report when all other things remaining equal.) and depending on which Ring-Loc cap is used will increase or reduce the effectiveness of a given moderator.
shootski
My experience with the .20 Condor had me looking for a way to suppress this monster. Rachel at AirForce recommended this to me.
Mine has a threaded flash suppressor on the end of the barrel. After removing it I can either use this FATS system or I can purchase a thread adapter which will allow me to use any aftermarket moderator.
For the unwashed who have seen way too many Hollywood silencers, the way a silencer/suppressor/LDC/moderator works is by causing the excess gases to use up the energy it still has. Often this is done by redirecting these gases and allowing them to expand before exiting into the big, wide world. Subsonic rounds do not have the supersonic crack, but you still have to deal with the gases pushing the projectile.
Most revolvers cannot be “silenced” because of the head space between the cylinder and the barrel. Most semis cannot be truly “silenced” because they are operated by recoil or gas and open to the outside world when fired.
Moderators do make great flash suppressors and do reduce the noise a bit. They work much better on airguns than firearms though.
RidgeRunner,
“They work much better on airguns than firearms though.”
I have an DonnyFL EMPEROR V3 (2×10.5″) on my .308 DAQ rifle and until i added the 6.25 inch optional expansion chamber giving me 16 plus inches of moderation it was still not all that quiet. With the full 16 plus inches of expansion space it is now exceptionally quiet…most would say it has rodent fart level attenuation. That is amazing considering the 230+ FPE at the muzzle.
My firearm suppressors work harder by also reducing the temperature of the hot gases shunting it to the suppressor’s metal body, giving the gases an enclosed volume to expand into, as well as increasing the length of time over which the pressure pulse is released to the surrounding air.
Firearm suppressors do a much much better job of reducing muzzle flash when compared to a muzzle mounted flash hider at the expense of increasing your long term Infrared signature.
shootski
shootski,
I have a .457 Texan LSS. It is pretty long, but I am giving serious consideration to lengthening it another foot or so to quiet it a good bit more. What many just do not realize is just how big a firearm silencer/suppressor/moderator has to be to be effective.
RidgeRunner,
I know they can get very big. Here’s one for a howitzer.
Siraniko
This looks like an interesting series. I typically like to try to understand how things work. I watched the video twice, but am still not seeing exactly where the bushing is located. I would assume inside the shroud somewhere. And I do not comprehend why holes in the bushing would be desired due to the addition of a moderator. Hopefully these items will become apparent in future posts.
The Barra 250z is another powerful PCP rifle without any moderation for the sound. Thankfully the barrel has threads on the end of it for attaching a moderator. Here’s a photo of mine with a relatively inexpensive moderator from Buckrail.
Elmer,
Look at the Condor barrel I linked to and you will see.
BB
Thanks, I do see two bushings on the barrel you linked to. Are there some hidden air passages inside the FATS device that allow the excess air to travel back from the moderator and into the barrel shroud? I do see similar holes in the thread protector of the FATS device. So this is the only scenario that makes sense to me at this point in time.
Elmer,
The FATS was designed with the backward flow of energized air in mind.
BB
Thanks, got it (I think). 😉
BB
How long is that adapter? How long is your Condor, now that it has both the FATS and the moderate attached.
Ed
Sorry BB,, I didn’t watch the clip you posted until after my time ran out to delete the above. Now I see that the FATS slides over the barrel without significant lengthening.
I’ll try to be less impulsive with my future responses.
Ed
Ed,
Still, outside the Condor the FATS is 8-inches long and the overall length of the rifle with the FATS is 40 inches.
BB
BB,
How come you never used that silencer on the Condor after jumping through all the hoops to get it?
It’s funny to think that in the US you can walk in off the street and buy a battle rifle and boxes of .308 with no questions asked, but if you want to protect your hearing and reduce noise pollution a little, you will be treated as deeply suspect and could be made to wait for a year and a half to receive a small metal cylinder with a few baffles inside and a threaded connector on the end.
Bob,
You know, I almost did. But I would have had to have the Condor barrel threaded to accept the silencer. Dennis Quackenbush had a slip on muzzle adaptor for airgun silencers but mine is for firearms and the thread pattern is different. He can not make one for firearm silencers unless he has a license, and he didn’t want to do that.
BB
Bob Ryan,
1. Hollywood.
2. Liberal Politicians. Silencers were included in the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934. This federal law, which regulates certain types of firearms, including silencers, was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 26, 1934.
At that time SILENCERS were mostly banned in the USA (or at a minimum heavily restricted and taxed) the populace and politicians were mostly informed by the news reels and films shown at their local theaters.
Currently Social Media and the Mainstream Media are the source of most Americans “knowledge” which are fed all their firearm “facts” by the gun ban crowd. The latest disinformation campaign is based on the faulty conception that the Fired Shot Detectors will NOT be able to keep us all SAFE if SILENCERS are generally made available.
I presume that lie is based on the idea that those first shots (subsonic) will not hit their POA and that the police will get to the correct location in record time to save the day….
The STUPIDITY in the USA marches on unrestrained by the actual physical facts that can be proven by Acoustics.
shootski
PS: .308 is okay but i prefer a REAL bullet as in .50 BMG (12.7 mm) or in a pinch i could accept a .950 JDG…for sporting purposes only.
“I presume that lie is based on the idea that those first shots (subsonic) will not hit their POA and that the police will get to the correct location in record time to save the day….”
No it is to know where to send the ambulances. Golden hour works for strokes, Golden Half hour works for many gunshot victims.
-Yogi
Yogi,
I carry a TFAK (Trauma First Aid Kit) to shorten the Golden Half Hour time to Now.
It helps to have had years of experience and substantial doses repeatedly of Pool/Open Water Lifeguard, Combat Rescue, Wilderness, and Tactical training.
Check-Call-Care CCC.
Works best for civilians.
shootski
Believe there used to be a series of newsreels, shown in theaters in the ’30s-’40s titled “The March of Time.” Time for a refresh, which today would be shown in streaming mode, titled “The March of Stupidity.”
Shootski,
Yeah, I never understood all the fuss over silencers/moderators.
I’d love to have a .50 BMG rifle, but don’t think I could afford to feed one 😉
Bob Ryan,
Reloading is the key to bringing down the cost of running the larger caliber firearms. Since most folks do not spray bullets with them it doesn’t require the expensive mass production reloading systems. I prefer to use the manually operated KISS methods to produce very small batches of ammunition.
Doing it that way focuses your attention on getting what you find/gives the best precision possible and continues to allow for changes to your loads as materials and needs change.
Funny…that sounds like one of the reasons i like PCPs so much!
shootski
B.B.
Why is the FATS so long?
A silenced/moderated .22 pistol may be loud, but an unmoderated .22 pistol is PAINFULLY LOUD.
-Yogi
Yogi,
That FATS fits over the extended barrel of the Condor. It only adds less than one inch to the length of the rifle. It’s not that long.
BB
BB,
There are all kinds of thread adapters available. Assuming your firearm silencer is big bore, you would probably need a 5/8×24 male to 1/2×20 female adapter to make it work with the Quackenbush slip on adapter.
Howdy BB. I’ve been a longtime reader, first time commenting though. Thanks for another awesome blog, and for featuring that video with that brilliant super handsome bald guy. I’m looking forward to seeing more in this series, I hope your weekend is a good one
McClain,
Welcome to the comments section. I have another video in the works.
BB