greywolf1958 Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Last weekend I took my son down to a local Surrey gun emporium to investigate the Hatsan 85x. He particularly liked the ABS stock and as a full power gun it would be very suitable for hunting. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we walked away from the shop with not one but two guns, one with a scope for myself and a basic gun for Alex. It was too late to shoot them that afternoon but Sunday morning we chronographed all the pellets I have, with some interesting observations. But more later. I was made aware of the Hatsan brand when Alex bought himself an Escort 12g auto shotgun. Again, ABS stock - black plastic is obviously the 'in' thing! Then I discovered in November that my father-in-law had got himself a mid-power Hatsan 60s air rifle for controlling the squirrels and woodies in his garden. We chrono'd that on Christmas morning whilst lunch was cooking and I was impressed at its consistency (average 558.5fps and Standard Deviation 4.3 fps with the RWS Super Hollowpoints supplied with the gun, giving a right-on-the-button 10.05 ft lbs muzzle energy. I have to say it felt smooth but very heavy. These guns are made from girders! It also has the SAS mounting system for the mechanism-to-stock (necessitating a cranked cocking lever) and the Quattro adjustable trigger which I haven't attempted to adjust yet. Back to the 85x, though - it's a thumbhole stock in fine-stippled black ABS, as mentioned earlier, and it is very long. In fact it encloses the metalwork beyond the breech block. It also has three packing plates with which you can lengthen the butt if you have arms like a gorilla Alex's gun has a couple of sharp corners beside the cocking lever, which need radiusing with a fine file but other than that, quality seems quite good. In dfact the gun looks bl**dy nice! The 85x appears to share exactly the same mechanics as the 60s with exception of the breech block and barrel which is fitted with a moderator to give an overall length of barrel assembly 17-3/4 inches from breech to muzzle. In the 60S what looks like a moderator is just a shroud to aid with cocking, not that it's really necessary - but on the 85x this is a strippable unit containing a couple of plastic cages and felt wads, all screwed onto a nicely threaded barrel with rubber seal. The shock came when I removed the moderator and saw how long the barrel actually was.......10-13/16" or 27.5cm in new money! Surely that can't be very accurate...? So, the gun is black and sexy, heavy but comfortable and cocking takes some getting used to (especially if the stock is damp as it gets slippery). The anti-bear-trap feature means that once you've cocked the action you can't then un-cock like in many other guns, so you have to fire it off. Best pop a pellet in and shoot your backstop. So to the shooting. The immediate thing to hit me was the lack of any sort of leed in the barrel. This meant that most pellets including the RWS, didn't seat flush in the breech. This caused shaving of some of the skirts and the lead so removed, ripped the breech seal to ribbons within 120 shots. Well it did on the father-in-law's gun. Having spotted that flaw and reported it to the guy in the gun shop (I'll get in touch with Edgar Brothers in the week...) I got a Dremel and small grindstone and radiused my breech ever so slightly so that all my pellets would seat properly. Then we did the same to Alex's. Thus modified, we don't expect the same problem as the 'old man'. (Our gun dealer is going to post a couple of spare seals for the 60s under warranty and I'll take the Dremel to that gun too to obviate further issues.) I have to say that going from a CO2 rifle then back to a springer, was a difficult step as you have to re-learn the gun's recoil characteristics and hold the stock accordingly to get the accuracy. That said, the recoil is quite smooth due in no doubt to the SAS mount system and the sheer mass of the thing! (Newton's 3rd Law of Motion - Equal and Opposite Reactions). Anyway, the Chrony, once I'd transferred all the figures to an Excel speadsheet, suggested the best pellets to use in terms of the trade-off between power and consistency were the RWS Super Hollowpoint at 603.9 fps, SD 3.1 fps and 11.5 ftlbs muzzle energy, and the H&N Hollowpoints at 649.2 fps, SD 5.0 fps and 11.8 ftlbs energy. That's as close to the limit as I want to get, really. However, checking the other gun gave comparative figures for the same pellets, of 603.9 fps, SD 3.8 fps with 10.85 ftlbs energy and 625.9 fps, SD 5.1 fps with 11.01 ftlbs energy respectively. Both a bit down on my gun, which is a bit odd given a difference of only about 140 in the serial numbers. What that suggests is that quality control obviously isn't what it could be over in the factory... But how does it shoot? Well, at the 16 or so yards we were using whilst chronographing at home, we were punching ragged single holes in the target, which was encouraging. So off to our little permit for a plink at longer ranges.... Well, when we got over to the fields the wind was gusting a bit so anything over 20 yards was probably going to get blown about, what with pellets of about 14 grains. That wasn't a problem really though because most of our squirrels and pigeons are normally taken at that sort of distance, or not far off. (How high can a tree be?) So we zeroed in at 20 and set off to see what we could find... It wasn't long before we chanced upon a couple of female grey squirrels which we took out, one each. I have to say that having previously used Verminpells through the QB78, I wasn't happy that the RWS pellets had the killing power I expected, both animals unfortunately requiring 2 shots to dispatch (Chest shots). Similar issues ensued with the feral pigeons, 12 of which we took down. Although powerful on paper (and expanding beautifully in wax, my son tells me), I just wasn't confident these pellets were as efficient as the flat-headed Crossmans so I'll be reverting back to the tried-and-trusted ones next time. (I'd be interested in anyone else's experiences). So that was the first day out with the new guns. I'd have to say if I was carrying this gun any sort of distance, I'd probably want a sling on it, but I'm quite impressed at the presence of the thing. Next time when the air is still, we'll see just how far out it shoots and I'll update this report. until then, though, I'll try to work out how to upload the phone-pics of the two unfortunate tree rats.....] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf1958 Posted January 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Just attached a couple of pics from the phone-cam. Maybe one day I'll take a video along with us... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaedra1106 Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Thanks for the review My club is selling these for £144 and I was very tempted but one came up on here S/H for £80 and I couldn't resist Not chrono'd it but took it to the club to zero with a Hawke HD 3-9x50 and managed to get sub 1" grouping at 30m using RWS Superdomes, did have two shots that went about 6" low but I think that's likely to be the pellets as they don't look particularly uniform. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf1958 Posted January 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Thanks for the review My club is selling these for £144 and I was very tempted but one came up on here S/H for £80 and I couldn't resist Not chrono'd it but took it to the club to zero with a Hawke HD 3-9x50 and managed to get sub 1" grouping at 30m using RWS Superdomes, did have two shots that went about 6" low but I think that's likely to be the pellets as they don't look particularly uniform. That's a good price! (You got Darren's, then? I fancied that.) We pay through the nose for everything down here I forgot to mention mine came with a PAO 3-9 x40 Mil-Dot sight. I need to re type the bits of info from the data sheet that is applicable to me - I can't read the darned thing otherwise!! Alex put his Nikko Sterling 3-9 x40 onto his gun so we're pretty evenly matched. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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