by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier
This report covers:
- The “Dark Side”
- Early problems
- Modern precharged airguns
- Benjamin Discovery
- Slow conversion
- The $100 PCP
- Other changes in the PCP world
- Fill coupling standardization
- Price point PCP
- It’s no longer the “Dark Side”
I know I said there are lots of backlogged tests, but sometimes I just have to write a report like this. Today is such a day.
The “Dark Side”
Back in the late 1990s, when precharged pneumatics were still relatively unknown to airgunners, someone took license from the movie series “Star Wars” and coined the phrase the“Dark Side” to represent involvement with PCPs. At the time most airgunners identified with spring-piston guns and regarded precharged pneumatics as odd, different and too difficult to understand. And at the time it looked as if that would be the case indefinitely.
Early problems
Precharged pneumatics are not a new technology. In fact, they are the oldest type of airguns, dating back to sometime in the 16th century! Those guns, however, were made by hand and were frighteningly expensive. They existed at a time when repeating firearms were also the stuff of dreams, so in 1780 it was the airgun and not the firearm that became the first successful repeater. There had been repeating firearms before then, but they tended to explode because of the dangers of loose gunpowder, which at that time meant black powder. Indeed Bartolemeo Girardoni’s son was killed when a repeating firearm he was experimenting with blew his arm off! Incidentally, the last name is spelled GiraRdoni — not GiraNdoni! Dr. Beeman has met with the Girardoni family and confirmed this. Unfortunately, the long article on the Beeman webpage still shows the old spelling.
