I have grown very fond of mid sized, mid powered air rifles. For me a mid powered (650-800 fps) rifle does everything I need an air rifle to do and I have found that, for the most part, my mid powered rifles (HW30, HW50, RWS92, CZ 634) are my favorites to shoot. I'm a tall gal, 5'11" and lanky and strong enough that I am not imtimdated by high power, tougher to cock spring powered rifles, but when I want to knock a grackle out of a tree or just do some fun shooting my mid powered, mid sized rifles are the ones I go to.
I'm always on the lookout for another fun, accurate, mid sized rifle, and am particulary fond of European rifles. No snobbery here, they just tend to have quite a bit better build quality, are generally inherently accurate and I get a lot of pride of ownership from them. I had been fishing about on the various forums and vendor web sites and I came accross a RWS Diana Mod 26 in the used guns section on the Airguns of Arizona site. I have always had big, Mod. 34 series Dianas and the idea of a smaller, mid-powered Diana really appealed to me. I called AoA and spoke with them about the Mod 26. They rated it in "Very Good" condition and I feel they were accurate in their assessment. I recieved this little Diana last Friday. Kudos to AoA for a very secure packaging job with quality materials, and for their direct link UPS tracking section on thier web site.
I got the gun out of the box, looked her over and pulled the action out of the stock. Typical Diana build quality and materials, which is to say quite good. I cleaned up the action screws and applied a gernerous coay of blue locktite and got her back together. Overall the rifle is in very nice shape, a 90-93% condition piece.
This gun was manufactured in 08/1989 and is representative of RWS Diana rifles of the era. Very good poilsh to the metal and very nice, deep bluing. The rifle has the RWS T01, twin screw trigger. My 34 has the T01 too. Both my Mod. 36 and my 34 Panther had the T05. A lot of folks claim the T01 is the better trigger. I might give a slight edge to the T01, but in reality, I think the T05 is just as good. The model 26 (Mod 28, same gun, luxe wood, kinda like the difference between a 34/36) is the mid sized Diana rifle. RWS rates them at 810 fps. The mod 26/28 is bigger than a Mod 24, smaller than a Mod 34. It is a different action and stock than a Mod 34, about 75-80% the size of a 34.
I was originally going to keep this one as an open sight rifle, but my '40 something' eyes just don't allow the flexibilty for open sight shooting anymore. I mounted a little RWS 4x, fixed objective scope I had lying around in a set of Gamo 2 pc. mounts. I tried out about 4-5 different pellets and ended up with RWS SuperDomes as the favorite for this rifle.
The action is typical Diana, a bit harsh (but much less so than a big 34 action), little no twang and no torque to speak of. The trigger is two stage, light first stage, crisp, positive second stage. I'd guess it breaks in the 3lb. range. The cocking action is smooth and very low effort, compared to a Mod 34. The cocking effort feels very comparable to my RWS 92 and my HW30, likely in the 18-20 lb, range. the rifle is a bit hold sensitive, not nearly as much as a Mod 34. I am getting nice dime sized groups with it at 10 yds., definitely minute of grackle.
All in all, I am quite pleased with this light weight, mid powered Diana. I can't wait till the nasty grackles are back up here and up to thier usual nonsense so this little Diana can correct their villanous ways.
