PCP compressor choice

[North Country Gal]

For sure. For us, the whole point of shooting air guns is being able to do it all, right at home.

[Sir Henry]

For sure. For us, the whole point of shooting air guns is being able to do it all, right at home.

BINGO!

[North Country Gal]

Too windy for good shooting, today, but the new Daystate needed a fill, so I hooked it up to the new compressor. Took one minute to go from 170 BAR (just above the minimum) to the 250 BAR max. Just do a lubricant check, set the pressure and push a button. Wait a whole minute. Good to goo for another 60 or 70 shots. This thing is spoiling me.

[BigAl52]

I bet you are wondering why you waited so long to get one.

[North Country Gal]

Other than the money, definitely. Really glad we did, though. Getting more serious about PCP really adds a lot to our air gun shooting.

[Sir Henry]

I may venture into the PCP lineup next year. Right now I’m learning CO2. Thanks Joanie for all your help. When it comes to PCP next year I’ll be asking a lot of questions -again.

[BigAl52]

NCG
Maybe you could provide some insight from your experience why someone would do both CO2 and PCP or skip one for the other.

[BigAl52]

Do most of the compressors come with the right fittings for PCP guns?

[North Country Gal]

Al, for filling PCPs, you do need to know what type of connection you have on both the fill source and the gun and use adapters if need be to get the gun filled. The most commonly used are the standard male/female quick connect setup. Our Disco is very typical of this type. The pump has a standard female quick connect fitting and the gun has the corresponding male disconnect fitting. getting hooked up for a fill takes only a couple of seconds.

Some rifles, though, like the new Daystate use a fill probe you insert into the gun reservoir, rather than a standard quick connect fitting. Since our new compressor uses the standard female quick connect, I just had to buy and adapter that converted the fill probe to male quick connect. No big deal.

Pyramid does a nice job of helping you get set up with any needed adapters when you supply the info about the gun model and the fill source.

[North Country Gal]

The advantage of CO2 is primarily the affordability. Just buy the cartridge (which is almost always the 12 g version, these days) and you've solved the power source issue on the cheap. No pumping, no compressor needed. The other advantage of the 12 g cartridge is the small size, so you can hide it in the CO2 repro guns and not know its there. Can't do this with PCP reservoirs in these smaller pistols and rifles, because going that small with a PCP reservoir is just not practical.

The downside of CO2 is twofold. One, you can only squeeze so much power out of a CO2 cartridge. This limits CO2 guns to be short range guns with only limited use for hunting. (With PCPs, of course, there is no limit as to power.) Don't look for high power, long range CO2 air guns. There aren't any.

Two, CO2 is temperature dependent. CO2 pressure changes with temperature. This causes changes in the POI when temp changes. Even shooting a CO2 gun too fast can cause a change in POI since the gun cools down as you shoot. (If you want the best results, work your CO2 gun at a slow and steady pace.) Remember, CO2 is a refrigerant. As such, regulators that very finely regulate pressure in PCPs can't be used because they can't handle the changing pressures due to temperature variations. This is one reason why you won't see CO2 used in high class competitive target shooting. Not that CO2 guns can't be accurate, but that temp sensitivity means they can't compete with other types of air guns. (PCPs and all other types of air guns can be shot and used at any temperature, of course.)

Bottom line between CO2 and PCP is that power, range, reliability under all shooting conditions and max accuracy all favor PCP. If any of those are your primary concern, go with PCP or another type of airgun as needed. For fun shooting at short range with reasonable to good accuracy at a very affordable price with nothing else needed, other than a good supply of pellets, CO2 is great.