I has semi-auto! FX Monsoon

[brother361]

holy crap that thing is insane how much did it cost
a pretty penny huh

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

Including scope, mounts and bipod, about 2,200 of your greenest US dollars - not cheap, but worth the smile on my face every time I empty a magazine

[brother361]

lol i bet it is

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

I took the beast apart today, putting bad quality ammunition through it (I thought I'd use cheap stuff as I was going through so much ammo - bad idea) resulted in a few misfires that double loaded pellets into the barrel, which damaged one of the baffle spacers within the shroud.

While waiting to hear from my dealer if he has a replacement part available, I took the opportunity to examine the relaoding mechanism:



From what I can tell, it does work like most assault rifles as I had imagined. The white section of piping around the barrel is part of a coaxial piston, when air exits the muzzle it pushes on the black part at the front of the white tube, pushing the whole assembly back and recocking the trigger/cycling the mag via the rod attached to the brass end of the piston.

Unfortunately, ingenious as it is, I doubt this mechanism can be applied to conventional spudguns, simply because of the pressures involved in this rifle (over 2000 psi at least) that are essential to provide enough force to cock the bolt.

[JDP12]

thats a sweet gun there mate..

[Ragnarok]

I took the beast apart today

Heh, I've had my Air Arms apart half a dozen times in the three months I've had it, and that's only going to increase - I have plans... I'm not the type to buy a tuning kit, but that doesn't mean I don't intend to do some modifications to it.

Anyway, sorry to hear that misfortune has struck it. What dastardly ammo brand did this to such a nice rifle?

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

Anyway, sorry to hear that misfortune has struck it. What dastardly ammo brand did this to such a nice rifle?

Utter rubbish.

Here's the broken baffle next to the replacement, the rifle was still cycling in spite of the damage but the clatter of pellet and baffle fragments in the shroud was beinging to annoy me, plus I finally had an excuse to take it apart

I had been hesitant to do so for no reason, the reloading mechanism is extremely finely balanced and it doesn't take much to upset it, either not cycling at all or going full auto

[Ragnarok]

or going full auto

Well, a lot of semi autos do run the risk of going into runaway full auto - I have heard a number of stories about various pistols with poor decocker designs sometimes doing it.

Of course, my TX is hardly a rifle with finely balanced mechanisms - it would be hard for me to mess it up.

All I was really planning on doing was seeing if I could cook up a replacement for the piston weight with a bearing in it to deal with the main spring torque on firing. Other than that, a custom stock and perhaps a lightweight replacement cocking arm (to help reduce the weight at the muzzle end).

I'm not that fussed about things like lock time like some people are. That can be dealt with fine by a good shooting technique.
I was planning on making the stock to suit me so that I can maintain that good consistent technique - I was thinking of doing it with finger grooves at the front of the stock for the left hand to sit in to ensure the important consistent hold - also, making it lighter, because although I enjoy using the rifle, without the convenience of a bipod, it can start to feel very heavy at the end of a long session.

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

I prefer heavyweight springers to be honest, they don't help with standing shots if you don't acquire your target quick enough, but for other types of supported shooting the weight helps keep you steady and absorb the recoil.

[Ragnarok]

I prefer heavyweight springers to be honest.

I wasn't planning on doing anything too drastic. I might drop the weight from it's current 10.5 lbs with a scope to about 9 lbs, which shouldn't affect the recoil noticeably, which is modest enough already - the planned bearing in the piston weight, and the hand guides on the stock should easily compensate for any small problems that might cause.
A slightly lighter rifle should also be a little less wearing at the end of long shooting sessions, which can only be a good thing.

Of course, worst comes to the worst, because I'm making replacement parts, not modifying the originals, should I find the lightweight stock harms the accuracy, I can always go back to the old one.

[coolshare]

The monsoon is the second "semi-auto" I have been trying:

I was looking for a quiet semi-auto air gun with enough power. I had been struggling between a). Evanix AR6 Shrouded ($699), very powerful gun with double action (semi-automatic) and a silencer. b). FX Monsoon ($1450), a fine-built truly semi-automatic quiet gun but quite expensive.

I eventually picked AR6 since it was consider "quiet", with double action and more affordable.

After trying out AR6, I was not satisfied because its high noise and heavy trigger for double action. That is, AR6 shrouded is still very loud (really not backyard compatible).
Its double action requires 12-bl trigger force so it is not practical for real hunting.

So I ended up with buying FX Monsoon too.

Here I like to do a comparison between Evanix AR6 shrounded and FX Monsoon.

1). Accuracy: even though both gun has similar grouping result on targets FX Monsoon is much much easier to achieve goals because of its softer trigger, specially when double action/semi-auto. With AR6 (both single and double action), I have to trigger with great caution so that I won't move off targets. With FX Monsoon, what I felt was like triggering a gun in a software game - as long as you aim to the target it was never moved away because of triggering.
This is really important when you want to send more than one pallets to a moving target.

2). Semi-auto/double action:
After using Monsoon, I learned what was the fun of semi-automatic to air gun shooting/hunting. It is not hard to send a magazine of pallets to a really small area (1'') within 50 yard and many of them run into the same hole. But it is really hard to do so with AR6 because of the trigger power requirement (12 bl). Another fun on FX Monsoon is its magazine size - double of AR6 plug stopping firing when magazine is empty (you can still dry fire when the magazine is empty with AR6).

3). Noise level:
My AR6 shrouded (note: this is a "shrouded" version of AR6) is really loud specially after the trigger was replaced, sounds like the Crosman G1 Xtreme I had, with major air breaking noise.
Monsoon is much softer and mostly the noise of the mechanical movement.

4). Weight
Monsoon is much much lighter than AR6. With scopes, Monsoon is light enough for me to aim and shoot without support such as a shooting stick while AR6 is too heavy to aim on anything without support. The wood stock of AR6 looks good but not useful.

[Selador]

See my Monsoon hunting here

Hi coolshare. Welcome to spudfiles.

I would like to suggest that you don your fireproof undies, because you just might get flamed here, pretty soon. LOL

You have not only brought back a thread that is over two years old... (Personally, I don't think that is a bad thing. But some here get really upset about it.)

But you have also posted about hunting birds. That's is a rather big no-no here.

If you do get flamed, but have any homemade examples of airguns, to share with us... I hope the flames don't scare you away.

[Gippeto]

Believe the "no-no", is the doing of such things with a "spuddy"... Hunting with commercial arms has been allowed in the past. Some people DO get their pantys in a bunch over it though.

It's considered "Okay" to bump a topic if you've something relevent to say. The thread is about a Monsoon.

Welcome!

My .02

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

Been doing some patent searching, found the patent for the FX Revolution which operates on a similar principle.

[twizi]

so jack what gun you getting this year