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PLEASE NOTE: We have just received this important update from Air Venturi. Air Venturi has discovered an issue with the OmniPiston that is inside of your rifle (and the initial shipment of rifles) that is causing the super high cocking effort and the high trigger pull weight. Not a safety issue, but a tolerance issue internally that is resulting in those increases. We have a solution and are working on getting the corrected parts sent to us now. We are going to be reaching out to customers to get their guns back if they want them. That's great news! HAM will be re-testing new sample in the near future... The Air Venturi OmniStorm variable power breakbarrel air rifle was first announced at the 2025 SHOT Show. For reasons not of...

FX Airguns refurbs are in stock and available now at Pyramyd! They have multiple FX Impact M4 and DRS models available. Plus there’s Wildcats, Leopards and more… Multiple calibers, too, at the time of writing. Pyramyd says that its’ expert technicians inspect, repair, test, and re-inspect every open-box and refurbished product in their Tech Department to ensure it leaves the warehouse fully functional. The company explains that it can’t offer these items as new, and that they may not come with all the parts and accessories that are included with a new purchase. But they’re a great way for beginners to get outdoor products for their adventures or to add to a collection. Obviously there’s a limited number of these FX Airguns refurbs...

RWS SuperField Ultra Heavy pellets are coming soon in .177 caliber. They have appeared now on the Pyramyd website and are the latest introduction from the famous German manufacturer RUAG Ammotec, GmbH. However – as with the .22 caliber version – the naming takes things a little far. You see, the pellet weight is 9.7 Grains. At a time when the weight of some .177 caliber pellets exceeds 16 Grains – that’s about 30% more than that of these Super Field Ultra Heavies – the “Ultra Heavy” name is rather wishful thinking. .22 caliber SuperFields have been available since late 2024. In fact, Hard Air Magazine ran one of our comprehensive test reviews on them in February 2025. We rated them as a solid HAM Silver Award winner. In our test...

The Macavity MA3 PCP air rifle is coming soon. Pyramyd AIR is showing an estimated availability date of November 3, 2025 for its first deliveries. It’s a development of the MA2 which I enjoyed shooting recently at the 2025 Pyramyd Cup. Pyramyd will have the MA3 available in both Standard and Long versions and in .22, .25 and .30 calibers. The Long model has a longer barrel and is 4 Inches greater in length than the Standard model. It also has a larger HPA tube with a capacity of 265 cc, compared to 188 cc. The result is that the MA3 Long will be more powerful than the Standard version. It will also have a higher shot count per fill of 3,600 PSI High Pressure Air. It’s also about 6 Ounces heavier. The manufacturer gives a maximum...

There’s a great deal at Pyramyd on the Diana Oktoberfestgewehr! This gallery gun air rifle is now reduced by $50.00. It’s down to down to just $99.99. That’s a stunning 33% price reduction. The Oktoberfestgewehr is a somewhat quirky airgun that’s ideal for Bavarian-style close-range target and fun shooting in a basement or garage range during the colder months. With appropriate precautions, of course… You can read a lot more about it in the extensive, two-part Hard Air Magazine review here: Diana Oktoberfestgewehr Review – Part One Diana Oktoberfestgewehr Review – Part Two BUY FROM PYRAMYD Diana Oktoberfest BB Rifle 0.177 This great deal at Pyramyd on the Diana Oktoberfestgewehr may apply just to stock in hand. So – if you want...

The Extreme Benchrest Pellet Challenge is a part of EBR tradition. It has been run ever since the earliest days, it’s tightly contested and – you know – it causes a surprisingly large degree of competition and emotion among many competitors. The 2025 Extreme Benchrest Pellet Challenge winner was Jessica Kilgore. Above we see her receiving her prize from Ross Marshall. (As many of you will know, Jessica has her own, wildly-successful YouTube Channel, Iguana Solutions). But what is the Extreme Benchrest Pellet Challenge? Well, it’s an integral part of the Extreme Benchrest competition. It’s that target right there in the middle of the bottom row of sighting bulls. The rules are simple. Take one shot at the printed pellet. The winner...

Yes, the results and scores are in. But there’s still time to look at some more Extreme Benchrest 2025 moments… You can see the excitement on the faces of Lauren Parsons and Wes Crisp in our heading photograph! They had just placed first (Lauren) and second (Wes) in the Speed Silhouette Open Class, with amazingly fast scores. Lauren posted a fantastic time of just 17.74 seconds to clear the 25-target course, using a Daystate Delta Wolf. Yes, that’s an incredible 0.7 seconds per target! Wes was just a fraction behind – just 0.8 seconds per target – also using a Daystate Delta Wolf. If you want any further proof of the cycle time and accuracy achievable by these electronically-controlled, side lever action air rifles, that’s it! Of...

Here’s the official list of Extreme Benchrest 2025 winners. EBR 2025 was an outstanding event, made doubly challenging by the wind and rain. But everyone I spoke to had a great time! And this was a truly international event. I met competitors from (obviously) the USA, but also Spain, Chile, Lebanon, the UK and Australia. Plus it’s quite possible that I have missed some… Extreme Benchrest 2025 Winners – Action Armour Steel Scramble First: Timothy Gillingham, score 420.58 Second: Francisco Eizayaga, score 410.09 Third: Cody Hatsock, score 400.21 Extreme Benchrest 2025 Winners – Extreme Big Bore Production Class First: Matthew Larue, score 150 Second: Jay McCandless, score 140 Third: Robert Steel, score 130 Open Class First...

Following yesterday’s brutal winds, 2025 Extreme Benchrest day three saw the rain finally arrive in force… 2025 Extreme Benchrest 75 Yard Card Two Much of this event was shot in some serious rain. The wind was not so severe as yesterday, but precipitation brings its own problems! 2025 Extreme Benchrest Speed Silhouette Competition Fortunately the weather had improved for the afternoon Speed Silhouette competition. This is always a real crowd-pleaser at EBR. And 2025 Extreme Benchrest was no different! This is a knockout, timed event. The objective is to knock down 20 targets in the shortest amount of time. Each shooter has 20 targets that must be knocked down or off the brick. Once all targets are down the shooter...

EBR 2025 day two saw the start of benchrest competition. In the morning there was the 50-Yard event. The headline Extreme Benchrest competition began after lunch with Card One of the event at 75 Yards. Plus! The Extreme Big Bore Competition was running all day also. First the good news. It didn’t rain. Now the bad news. The wind was brutal! Particularly in mid-afternoon, it was gusting to over 20 MPH, causing chaos for the shooters and even knocking down wind flags. Groups one, two and three in the 75 Yard benchrest competition took it particularly hard… EBR 2025 Extreme Big Bore Competition The match format was based on 5 shooting stations. Each station had a required shooting position. For example: forced use of shooting...

Day One of Extreme Benchrest 2025 started – as usual – with the Extreme Field Target and Steel Scramble competitions. Both events ran for pretty-much the full day and generated a TON of interest for the competitors! Below. Greg Suave was shooting Extreme Field Target with a chassis-mounted Daystate Red Wolf. But in everyone’s minds, there was the weather background. You see, as of today, Phoenix is in the “cone of uncertainty” for the path of Hurricane Priscilla. That brings the potential for rain and floods to the later days of Extreme Benchrest at the Rio Salado range. Will that happen? Dunno, we’ll have to wait and see… Extreme Benchrest 2025 Day One – Extreme Field Target Below. 2022 Pro Class Extreme Benchrest winner...

Now you can buy Buck Rail at Pyramyd. Buck Rail’s owner, Terry Harman, has started to make his products available through the world’s largest airgun dealer. This will undoubtedly make Buck Rail products more widely available and accessible to the millions of airgun enthusiasts who visit the Pyramyd website. One example is shown in our heading photograph above. It allows you to take the HAM Gold Award-winning Diana Chaser and completely transform its looks. The kit is manufactured from advanced laser fused Nylon 12 material. It adds a Magpul AR grip, Magpul adjustable buttstock, and MLok handguard and is compatible with both the Diana Chaser and Airbug. Another example is the 1377/1322 “Plumper Pumper”. This pump handle is wider...

VALUE FOR MONEY This is really easy! At a Street Price of $49.99 for a magazine-fed, CO2-powered pistol with adjustable open sights, upper and lower Picatinny rails and semi-target grips, the Avera has to be a bargain. Oh, plus it includes no less than three magazines. That makes it even better. All you need is to buy some 12 Gram CO2 cartridges, pellets and you’re ready for serious plinking! As you can see from the photo above, I added a Leapers UTG OP3 Micro Green Dot Sight. Doug Wall has better eyes than me so he shot the gun with open sights for testing. BUY FROM PYRAMYD Umarex Avera CO2 Air Pistol 0.177 SPEED AND ACCURACY The Umarex Avera CO2 pistol tested by Hard Air Magazine produced a maximum average Muzzle Velocity...

Extreme Benchrest Special Savings are now available both for those attending the event and those who will be reading about it from the comfort of their homes! Airguns Of Arizona has announced that orders of greater than $150 will accrue a 7% saving, if placed before October 13th 2025. Just enter the code EBR2025 at checkout to save… Many competitors call-in at the Airguns Of Arizona store either before or after Extreme Benchrest, so they will be very happy with this announcement! So what to buy? Well, AoA has so many HAM Gold Award-winning models, that’s it’s tough to choose. One possibility is the HAM Gold Award-winning KalibrGun Cricket 2 Tactical. At $1,695.99 for the wood-stocked version (shown below), it’s an accurate...

Pyramyd has just added some last chance Refurb Airgun Deals to the company’s “Fall Into Christmas” Sale. You can save 11% OFF using the promo code: FALL. That applies even to the refurbs. Refurbished products can offer outstanding value. Generally they’re returns of one sort or another, often with no problems, just a customer changing his mind! Pyramyd explains that their technicians inspect, repair, test, and re-inspect every open-box and refurbished product here to ensure it leaves their warehouse fully functional. When I worked at a large corporation, all the employees purchased refurbished products for themselves, the feeling was that they offered great value and benefitted from being “double checked” in this way. The company...

Before starting this review of Hawke Frontier LRF Laser Rangefinding Binoculars, I probably should give a little personal background… I’ve always been interested in optics, mainly associated with photographic cameras. I value high optical quality. But optical quality is something like accuracy in shooting, it means different things to different people, so I try to quantify it wherever possible. However my experience has mainly been with “single lens systems” – cameras and riflescopes, rather than binocular “twin lens systems”. So that’s my background to this review. What did I find? Hawke Frontier LRF Laser Rangefinding Binoculars – Product Overview Hawke Frontier LRF Laser Rangefinding Binoculars are available in two...

Hard Air Magazine readers first heard about the new JTS AirStryke PCP air rifle in our report last week from the 2025 Pyramyd Cup. Well, JTS certainly didn’t waste any time, as one has arrived here in the HAM offices already. Plus, they are already in stock at Pyramyd! So let’s take a first close look at the AirStryke… The AirStryke is available in a choice of .22 and .25 calibers. It’s a sidelever, regulated, silenced PCP firing from a rotary magazine. That’s a comprehensive list of features for an air rifle with a Street Price of just $249.99. In order to become acquainted with the AirStryke, I mounted a Leapers UTG 3-9×32 AO Bugbuster scope onto the receiver’s Picatinny rails. This produced a compact, comfortable rig that...

The Barra 400e is the most accurate BB gun ever tested by HAM. And now the company has introduced 400e barrel kits as a new upgrade option for this selective fire plinker. In fact, there’s two kits: Standard and Precision Barrel Kits. These kits let you swap your rifle’s performance, whether that means optimizing for speed and accuracy with the Precision Barrel Kit or maximizing compatibility with bulk ammo using the Standard Barrel Kit. Why Barrel Kits Matter The Barra 400e has gone through a few different internal setups since its original launch. Over time, the company has shipped rifles with two different barrel types, each designed with a specific purpose in mind: 1. Standard Barrel. This is designed to be more forgiving...

HAM readers have read about the Gem Air Pistol in a previous post. But now one has arrived in our offices and we can really take a close look at this tiny airgun. The Gem is billed as “the world’s smallest commercially-available air pistol”. And – when you actually have it in your hands – it’s easy to believe this! Let’s compare the size to a small item that’s familiar to most airgunners: a 12 Gram CO2 cartridge. WOW! In base form the Gem is powered by an 8 Gram CO2 cartridge. This is the “non-threaded” type of cartridge that is typically used with soda water machines and other non-airgun equipment. So they are not unique, however they are unusual in the airgun world where 12 Gram CO2 power is the standard. Of course, that is for...

The year is 2025 and Weihrauch is 126 year old. Moreover, it’s still a real “family company”, run on a day-to-day basis by the direct descendants of the original founders. It’s never been sold-out, taken-over or absorbed by some big, soulless corporation or venture capital group. That’s an incredible achievement for any company and – in particular – for the Weihrauch family. Felix Weihrauch, the CEO since 2023, is the fifth-generation representative of his family to run the business and he’s made a great start! Above, Felix Weihrauch with his father Hans-Hermann (right) and Thilo Schallenkammer (left). Anyone who has any interest whatsoever in airguns knows the name of ”Weihrauch”. They also intuitively understand that this brand...