Well, my $79.00 Mendoza RM-600 .177 from Sportsmansguide.com arrived late this afternoon. I had just enough time to unpack it, clean the rifle of excess oil, clean the barrel, put it back together again and get to take bout 30 or 40 shots with the open sights before it got dark. After it got dark I retreated back into my basement workshop and proceeded to mount the Leapers 3x9x32 AO that I picked up from Dave at Cobra Airguns earlier this afternoon. Right now the rifle is sitting on my workbench which is where I'll leave it for 24 hours while the blue loc-tite cures.
This is just a preliminary review,,,,, I'll post a complete review after I get to really put the gun through it's paces in my backyard range,,, but so far I'm very happy with the rifle. It is solidly built, the bluing is very very nice,,,, nice deep color and uniform from one end to the other. The cocking effort is very comfortable and the cocking stroke is very smooth with not even a hint of any grinding or binding. The barrel lockup is very crisp and tight. The balance and overall feel of the rifle when shouldered is excellent and the stock is very comfortable and conducive to good eye to scope alignment. (I'm using an Accushot 1 piece medium height mount). The stock itself is stained an odd greyish color but I have to say I really like it. It has a really nice grain pattern to it and I find it to be very attractive,,, an odd color but attractive.... The rifle has a very nice soft rubber butt plate on it which is very comfortable and it has very nicely cut dovetail grooves in the receiver,, straight, even and dead center, however there is no scope stop pin hole,, which is why I went with the 1 piece mount.
The trigger is metal, with a metal trigger guard, and I have to say the trigger is outstanding. Very light and very crisp. The trigger is similar to the type of triggers on the "Glock" line of powder burner handguns in that it actually has 2 trigger blades. The first blade is positioned just slightly ahead of the second. As you pull through the trigger you pull the first blade until your finger makes contact with the second blade and then a short pull and the gun fires. It looks weird but it's actually very comfortable and like I said,,, the trigger is excellent....
As for power,,,,, I want to clean the barrel again and put some more pellets through it before I set up the chrony and shoot FPS numbers, but I have to say the can that I was killing at 25 yards was certainly taking some damage and the pellets were punching that can as hard as when I shoot any of my other .177 guns,,,,, and the couple of times I purposely fired into my plywood target backing the pellets sounded as though they were hitting hard. All very unscientific I know, so I'll wait until I do chrony tests before making any power statements.
The rifle has an ambidextrous safety which functions very nicely and is well placed.
The rifle did have some "twang" to it,,, not bad but it is there,,,, however I did not experience any twisting or torquing at all when shooting the rifle. The fiber optic open sights on the rifle really aren't bad and they were very accurate. That's saying alot coming from me because my eyes and open sights just don't do well togeather however with this rifle after making just a couple of adjustments I was hitting a tin can from 25 yards with every shot. This is actually the first of my rifles I seriously considered leaving with open sights,,,,, however since I had already bought the scope from Dave I figured I'd just go ahead and install it.
Well,,, those are my initial observations on the rifle. I still have alot more testing to do before I do a final review but so far I think I got a heck of a shooter for $79 bucks
I'll take some pics tomorrow and add them to this post to show you the "odd" colored but pretty stock.
Jeff
I tried to take come pics in the basement but they didn't come out to good. I'll post em anyway and replace them tomorrow with some taken in natural sunlight. I guess I really shouldn't have described the stock as "grey",,,,, I guess a better way would be to say that the stock is stained a dark wood color but kinda in the background (behind the grain pattern) is a light greyish tint. It's very hard to explain, maybe my pics tomorrow will come out better.......
