With unlimited power comes great responsibility. We say unlimited, because here in the US, there are no limits to how much power your airgun can produce. Some states or local municipalities may have localized regulations, but at the federal level, it’s anything goes. Our freedom is in stark contrast to countries like the UK, which has a 12-foot-pound limit on airguns that don’t require a firearms license. When you only have 12-foot-pounds to work with, precision takes priority over power. But here in the US, the trend has been power over precision. What if the trend could change and become power with precision?
The role physics plays
Increasing the power of an airgun can be done in several ways. But in short, you either need to change the underlying engineering or you need a bigger hammer. If you happen to reload, let’s say .38 special. You can load less powder for a light charge or more powder for a heavy charge. Simply changing the amount of powder increases or decreases the round’s muzzle velocity and energy.
You can do the same with an airgun. By increasing the pressure and holding the valve open for a longer duration, you can effectively increase power. To keep the valve open longer, you need to either reengineer it to be more efficient, which requires R&D and cash, or just hit it harder with a heavier hammer and a hammer spring. Guess which path most companies take?
You can tell the difference when a company takes a product engineered to operate at one level and just turns it up to 11 to try to squeeze more performance out of it. It often cocks harder. The trigger pull stiffens. The reciprocal movement from the heavier hammer and hammer spring introduces additional vibrations to the shooting cycle. Lastly, you generally see larger extreme spreads through the shot string. When you add all these up, accuracy suffers. You will get more power, but the cost is accuracy, a worse shooting experience, and a lower shot count.
The role a regulator plays
One quick point of note, small-bore PCP airguns don’t have to be regulated to deliver excellent results. As long as it’s properly set up, well-engineered, and you operate within optimal pressure limits, you can achieve repeatable accuracy. Now let’s talk about how a regulator can really help.
Regulators are becoming more and more common, even on affordable airguns. When combined with a sufficient plenum, they improve consistency and accuracy and increase average power output. If we go back to the reloading analogy, a regulator and plenum would be like the mechanics used to measure your powder charge. On a progressive reloader, you’ll have a main power reservoir that measures and deposits a fixed amount of powder into each shell as it moves through the cycle.
A regulated PCP airgun has the main air reservoir the regulator and the plenum. The regulator allows the higher-pressure air from the main cylinder to fill the plenum to a lower pressure, creating a uniform air charge for each shot. This system will reduce the maximum power the airgun can produce, but the benefits are consistency, less energy required to open the valve, and, hopefully, better accuracy. Also, when looking at the average power throughout the entire shot string, you may find that it’s higher than the average power of the maxed-out unregulated PCP.
The best part is that you get to choose what works for you!
If you are looking to just have the most powerful airgun at the range to swing steel targets, then by all means go for it! Some airguns push over 1000 foot-pounds. So the option of having something really powerful running on high-pressure air is certainly available. While the trend may be to buy the airgun with the biggest bark, if you aren’t able to hit the target consistently, what good is it?
At the end of the day, whether you are punching paper or out in the field hunting game, you are going to want repeatable accuracy and energy that’s as easy as possible to achieve. Regulated airguns like the BSA R12 or BSA Buccaneer Pro deliver an amazing shooting experience. Get out there and have some fun shooting.
