I recieved the Hammerli Nova today from Pyramid Air via Fedex.
After opening the box I had nothing but a grin on my face. The first though in my head is "This is a NICE looking Rifle!"
It's DEFINITLY an adult sized rifle measuring 45 and 3/4 inches from butt pad to muzzle. It weighs in at just over 6 pounds. Pretty light for a gun this size.
On to the individual part reviews starting with the Stock:
The stock looks to be a Beech with a nice walnut stain and satin finish. The grain is nice & straight with no knots or checks to be found. A very good quality piece of furniture. The checkering on the forearm & pistol grip look absolutely beautiful...From about 5 feet away. Once you get in for a closer look, it seems that the checkering is muttled and clogged up with what looks to be a mixture of finishing oil and wood dust. Almost as if they didn't mask it off when they were finishing the stock. The comb is medium height. Good for Iron Sights OR a low to medium mounted scope. The pistol grip is nicely shaped and fits my average sized hand well. The position is quite natural and reach to the trigger is perfect . The stock also has a Right Handed roll over cheek piece of medium thickness. It would porbably be confortable, but I'm a lefty!
The Sights:
The sights are one point below EXCELLENT. The front is a hooded Blade Type with a Red Tru-Glo style insert. The hood is vented for light to pass through. The Tru-Glo insert is a bit small in diameter and doesn't gather very much light.
The Rear sight on the other hand is near PERFECT! The Green Tru-Glo inserts on either side of the the Square U-Notch gather plenty of light and are nice and bright. But not bright enough to be a distraction. There are Graduated White Hatch Marks on the sight for Windage & Elevation reference. The Adjustments for windage & elevation are adjusted with a flat blade screw driver. Detents are nice & solid with very clear sounding "Clicks" . I like the fact that the sights are only adjustable with a screw driver. It makes them harder to bump and move them out of zero.
Loading Port & Barrel:
The loading port is a very interesting design indeed. There's a spring loaded lever on the right hand side. Once the lever is pulled back, the door swings open & exposes the Transfer and Loading Ports. The rifle does not have to be cocked to load! Another very nice feature that I like. There's also No Piston to slam home & cut a finger off if the rifle accidentally discharges while loading. I then proceeded to clean the barrel. I used a weed whacker line patch worm and a patch soaked in Goo Gone. It only took one wet patch and 3 dry ones before the bore was clean. I was expecting to be cleaning for at least a half hour before I was able to shoot.
Cocking & Auto Safety:
The cocking cycle is a little rough/gritty and takes a bit of effort. Estimated pull weight was around 40 pounds. At the end of the cocking stroke there is one barely audible "Click" . The first time I cocked the rifle I though I had half cocked it because of the single arming click. When the cocking cycle is completed the safety automatically pops on. The safety is very nice. It just ahead of the trigger inside the trigger guard and is easily pushed into the Off position. The cocking lever lock-up is a detent ball in the end of the lever and a lug at the end of the barrel. Lock-up could be tighter as the arm fell out of lock a few times during firings.
Firing Cycle:
The firing cycle is pretty harsh. LOTS of recoil and spring torque. Quite a bit of Twang as well. The first stage of the trigger pull is long...REALLY long and the second stage is UNGODLY stiff!!! BUT, it breaks cleanly with NO percieved creep. My Lyman trigger pull gauge measured out at 12.3 pounds!!! "Somethin's GOTTA be wrong here!" I thought. So I decided to pull the action out of the stock. This rifle is a victim of the dreaded "Direct Sear" . I added a tiiiiiiiiiiny dab of Moly to the sear and reassembled her. After that, the trigger was actually kinda nice! The trigger pull gauge went down to around 5 pounds, but theres also some creep now. You can tap the trigger lightly until it's at the bitter edge of engaugment then give the stock a good bump and she'll go off. I'm not really liking that. But I also found out that the trigger was causing what I thought was spring torque. 90% of the torquing went away and the recoil was straight back.
Muzzle Velocity:
I only fired 3 shots. All 3 were Crosman Premier Lights with a muzzle velocity of 890 +/- 15 FPS. Pretty close to the 1000 FPS advretised. I suspect that it'll go up some once the seal beds in.
Overall...I DON'T think this gun is worth the money I paid for it. At least Not with the trigger it has or the cocking lever lock-up. If this gun had a better trigger I'd like ALLOT more, but alas...This one's goin back to Umarex. I'm seriously disappointed by this one. Even MORE than I was with my Tech Force 99.
Pictures to come tomorrow when I take em!
