PCP, Hand Pump or SCUBA tank

There is so little real information about the hand pumps, and scuba setups for refilling the tank on your air pistol. Pilkguns has some good information if you are going to go scuba. What I found most annoying was the lack of information from anyone, including manufacturers, on how long, how hard and what effort is required to hand pump an air pistol.


Most of the reviews I read on the internet put me off wanting to buy a hand pump in favour of getting a scuba tank with an adaptor. None of the reviews I found really gave specifics about hand pumps, but tended to describe it as an Exhaustive, time consuming effort.

I checked out the scuba option in New Zealand. NZ$500 for a tank, NZ$160 for a K-Valve adaptor, and roughly NZ$6 per refill of air. No one really quantified how many refills you would get on one scuba tank. From what I gather you also get less refill each time because of equalizing pressures. You might expect 150 shots on the first fill, then 147, 144, and on until the pressure in the scuba is too low to be worth it, ie less than 100 shots per fill. I did not go the scuba way because of the excessive initial cost. (Lets face it, we cough up enough for the Pistol already.)

Buying the hand pump was the best move ever. I got my Gehmann pump for NZ$200 and discovered the following about it.

1. You need to keep slow, steady strokes, so as not to overhead the air tank (which is overheated from the energy of compressing the air. Also, do not allow the air to expel rapidly either, as this freezes the canister which is not the best either.)
2. To pump the canister from empty to the 200bar maximum pressure for shooting required 80 medium to long strokes. The time to do this was around 8 minutes.
3. They Steyrs operating range is 100bar - 200 bar, so you refill it when it is a little above 100 bar if you do not want to have your shots starting to droop on the target. Pumping from 100Bar to 200bar takes only 30 strokes and around 3-5 minutes.

In summary I think its just plain crazy to say that this is hard or too much effort. In any sport it is important to keep fit. I would hardly say that a 5 minute warm-up every 1-2 days of shooting is a bad thing. The real technique is to not use your arms at the bottom of each stroke, but to apply some body weight to force the air in. This makes the task a lot easier. I also build the effort into my stretching routine, because I am very tall so the pump height puts a bit of strain on my weak lower back ( a pain that leaves quickly with stretching and exercise ;)



The other real advantage to the handpump is portability.

I hope this information helps shoppers and people new to the sport.