Thread: Charging and hunting with a PCP

I'm looking at rabbiting with my new toy, a BSA Sportsman HV in .22
Question for those with experience here, do you prefer a dive tank or floor pump?

Dive tank for sure. Much drier air that will help keep the inside of your PCP cleaner and free from corrosion. It also much less hassle to just top it up from the tank than the hand pump! Im wanting to get an electric pump soon so I can direct fill the guns and a small 500cc buddy bottle I have directly from that - This should also give me the opportunity for fills up to a higher pressure as most dive shops will only fill the tank to 220Bar.

Originally Posted by Mintie

Dive tank for sure. Much drier air that will help keep the inside of your PCP cleaner and free from corrosion. It also much less hassle to just top it up from the tank than the hand pump! Im wanting to get an electric pump soon so I can direct fill the guns and a small 500cc buddy bottle I have directly from that - This should also give me the opportunity for fills up to a higher pressure as most dive shops will only fill the tank to 220Bar.

What he said +1

Pcp's can be expensive to set up, but once you are set up its all worth it because the trigger time is so cheap! And you can shoot them almost everywhere which will help you get permissions on orchards and vineyards etc that are close to town. Once you have the filling gear it makes it cheap to buy the second one too!

Good stuff appreciate all the comments. Dive tank looks like the go, I SCUBA anyway... Will have to take the BSA out hunting for snapper 😁

If you have a dive bottle already, the choice is obvious. Maybe a hand pump can be handy if you're far away from a dive shop or don't want to lug around a tank. On the Chinese wholesale sites the pumps can be had for between 50-100 NZ dollars.
By the way, i'm a BSA fan myself. I use this 0.177 for HFT competition.