Tag Archives: The Airgun Letter

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 3

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by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1
Part 2


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

As I said in Part 2, Mac and I simply couldn’t resist shooting the El Gamo 68 that I got from reader David Enoch at the Arkansas airgun show this year. And from the numerous reader responses, I see that we’re not alone in our admiration of this futuristic-looking breakbarrel from the past. Many owners have .22-caliber guns, which really surprises me, because I thought most European manufacturers, and especially El Gamo, produced mainly .177 airguns in the 1960s and ’70s, when this was new.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to locate a trigger shoe for the rifle. I probably got rid of one when I sold or traded a Webley Tempest years ago, though now I wish I still had it. If anyone sees an old Beeman trigger shoe for sale anywhere, please let me know, because this rifle really needs one. read more

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 2

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by B.B. Pelletier

Part 1


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

Mac and I couldn’t stay away from the El Gamo 68 once we started looking at it. The first thing we did was adjust the trigger so it would catch positively every time the rifle (carbine?) is cocked. When I got the gun, it failed to catch the sear several times every time the barrel was broken, but all that turned out to be was a trigger adjusted with too little sear contact area.

Trigger adjustments come in two different types. One adjusts the spring tension of the trigger return spring, and adjusting it will give a somewhat lighter trigger-pull. The other adjusts the actual sear contact area and makes the trigger release crisper without affecting the pull weight. That’s the type of adjustment the 68 has. It also has an adjustment for the length of the first-stage pull; and on this gun, I found stage one had been adjusted completely out. So, you started the pull on stage two — effectively giving the rifle a single-stage trigger. read more

El Gamo 68/68-XP – A futuristic airgun from the past: Part 1

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by B.B. Pelletier


El Gamo 68 is a futuristic breakbarrel from the past.

I told you that the Arkansas airgun show was unique in yesterday’s report. Today, I want to start a report on an airgun I bought at the show. It was on the table next to me throughout the show, and I thought for sure someone would snap it up before I got the money to buy it; but as fate would have it, the gun waited for me until the end of the show. Literally, an hour before it was due to be packed up, I made an offer to reader David Enoch, the gun’s owner, and he accepted. I now own an air rifle that I’ve been wondering about for the past 32 years.

I first noticed the 68-XP (it’s a little hard not to notice!) in the pages of a 1979/1980 Air Rifle Headquarters catalog. I was still in the Army, living at Fort Knox with my young family at the time, so the discretionary funds were too tight to buy many of the things that caught my fancy, but this gun was so odd that I both hated it and wanted to get to know it at the same time. read more

Air Arms TX200 Mk III air rifle: Part 1

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by B.B. Pelletier


Air Arms TX200 Mark III air rifle is impressive in its optional walnut stock.

I’ve reviewed this rifle before, but it’s been a long time and many of you are asking about it again, plus I’m going to look at the Benjamin MAV 77 later this year, and I promised a comparison with this rifle. So, for those reasons, I decided that it’s time to look at the Air Arms TX200 Mark III, again.

Some of you may know that Bill Sanders, the managing director of Air Arms, passed away recently. Bill was very uncharacteristically enthusiastic about all the guns he made. I say that because most principals in this industry are not shooters, nor do they own the guns they make. But Bill did, and he also knew how to use them. Maybe that’s why, in the more than 20 years the TX has been around, the quality has only gone up. read more

The origins of this blog

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by B.B. Pelletier

Announcement: Miguel S. Manalac is this week’s winner of Pyramyd Air’s Big Shot of the Week on their facebook page. He’ll receive a $50 Pyramyd Air gift card.

Miguel’s winning photo. Looks like he’s got quite a target range set up.

This blog started in 2005 on the suggestion of Edith. She knew I missed writing The Airgun Letter and she thought a weblog would be a nice way to replace it. She also felt it was a better way to address airgun issues than with articles, because a blog has a way for the readers to make comments. I’d already been writing articles for the Pyramyd Air website for many years when the idea of the blog first surfaced. Josh Ungier, the owner of Pyramyd Air agreed and the blog kicked off on the first of March 2005. The first report was called Hunt with the Sheridan Blue Streak air rifle. read more

Why do you need a scope level?

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by B.B. Pelletier

I’m writing this report because I saw from the comments on the accuracy versus velocity test that several readers do not know what a scope level does. And where three people speak out, there are three hundred who are reading and remaining silent.

They say that there’s nothing more zealous than a convert, and I expect that is true of me when it comes to scope levels. I have understood their need for a long time and even conducted a fairly extensive cant test back in my Airgun Letter days, but it was my .38-55 Ballard single-shot rifle that really drove the message home. That rifle came with a bubble level, and it’s far more precise than the levels we find on air rifles today. The bubble moves very slowly, making it important to check the level just before you begin the squeeze; because what looks like a level gun one moment can change slowly to a canted gun if you don’t watch the level. By contrast, the scope levels I’m using with airguns have bubbles that move very fast, are much easier to see and are far simpler to work with. read more