Panthera I Jumped In!

[jps2486]

Like I say often, I like to read. I have been reading all of these forums since they started. It's true that most people who do write seem to do so to complain. Still, most of the complaints that I have read by people that like their FX's have been about their Amp regulators. There seemed to be a big enough trend there that Huma has made quite a business selling replacements that many are willing to buy. And they don't complain about them as much either. I think that while Amp regulators may not show up actually broken, I don't believe that they are as good as Huma's either. I have not read about anybody switching back because of poor performance either. I'm old too, and I can't justify wasting what time I have left on the hope that my Amp reguator is a good one when so many seasoned users have had enough and just get Humas. I just cut to the chase and avoided a potential problem. I was going to completely take down my gun anyway and with what all of this stuff costs anyway,I'm not sweating a different regulator purchase. If yours work well, of course you shouldn't change them.

I appreciate what you are saying here. FX regulators all seem to malfunction because the O rings get brittle over an extended period of time causing either leakage of poor resetting time. Examining the FX vs Huma regulators, they both are basically the same design using the same O rings. Wouldn't be true that the O rings in the Huma regulators could do the same over a long period of time? Does Huma use a better quality O ring? Are the internal dimensional tolerances better with the Huma? Also, Huma uses an aluminum body vs the FX brass. I would like to hear someone's technical analysis of one vs the other.

 

[Pumacarl]

I appreciate what you are saying here. FX regulators all seem to malfunction because the O rings get brittle over an extended period of time causing either leakage of poor resetting time. Examining the FX vs Huma regulators, they both are basically the same design using the same O rings. Wouldn't be true that the O rings in the Huma regulators could do the same over a long period of time? Does Huma use a better quality O ring? Are the internal dimensional tolerances better with the Huma? Also, Huma uses an aluminum body vs the FX brass. I would like to hear someone's technical analysis of one vs the other.

Me too! I want to hear all of it. It would not surprise me at all if the tolerances were tighter with the Huma. Why do I say that, you might ask. Well I'll tell you what, this is going a little off-topic but it's as good a time as any to mention it. I was more than a little bit upset when FX released the Dynamic MkII and said that they tightened up the tolerances on the barrel connection to be a better fit, WTF!, they still didn't make things to the tightest possible tolerances until now? The Impacts, Wildcats, Mavericks, Streamline, Dreamlines, weren't practice enough? Don't worry though, they got it right now!(?) Many used to, and still do, criticize FX for releasing product too fast, mostly because they weren't ready to buy more. Well, that wasn't me. Make it, if it's good and I want it, I'll buy it. Don't make and sell something though that isn't fully vetted and your best effort. The Panthera/Dynamic/King guns were not at the low end of the product line either, to me there was/is no excuse for this. It's good that they recognized that they could do better, and have, but I just find it maddening that such an experienced manufacturer is still learning this stuff. People always ask, "when do I jump in," like even I did, and we were told, this is the gun, the evolution of the knowledge, obviously not. I'm thinking the same about their regs, so yeah, I want to hear all of it. The problem lately, is that nobody wants to post anything that might be construed as negative, even if it would be helpful. Having said all of this, and being mad about it, I am still heavily enamored with how my FX manages to shoot. It peeves me to know that if I had waited just a little longer that I would have got the tight tolerances that I thought I was getting in the first place, and possibly, somehow, shoot better. You really do just have to jump in at some point, it's never the same river.

 

[Billm]

I’m trying to not post as much. I know that I have no filter and tend to say/post whatever is on my mind and I realize that I probably come across too negative. I can’t say enough how disappointing it is in my opinion that mediocre service and quality control is the norm in the worldwide airgun community. Take ten minutes and read through the various threads on here and the posts decrying receiving defective guns, weeks or months to complete warranty work, Preorders that rarely ship in the same quarter as promised, orders not handled properly and the list goes on. Not to say that there aren’t good companies and products - there are. My point with all of that: FX is not alone.
Keeping to the topic: I use a Picatinny mounted SG pulse electronic level. I use it on every rifle that I own that has a Pic rail, except the FX Panthera MKII. It slides off the rail on the FX when fully clamped. I haven’t measured it yet, but I suspect the FX pic rail is not to spec. But, it could be that the Pic clamp on the Pulse is off. I bought into the better barrel system with the MKII too. Unfortunately that’s actually a future upgrade.

 

[Solo1]

Me too! I want to hear all of it. It would not surprise me at all if the tolerances were tighter with the Huma. Why do I say that, you might ask. Well I'll tell you what, this is going a little off-topic but it's as good a time as any to mention it. I was more than a little bit upset when FX released the Dynamic MkII and said that they tightened up the tolerances on the barrel connection to be a better fit, WTF!, they still didn't make things to the tightest possible tolerances until now? The Impacts, Wildcats, Mavericks, Streamline, Dreamlines, weren't practice enough? Don't worry though, they got it right now!(?) Many used to, and still do, criticize FX for releasing product too fast, mostly because they weren't ready to buy more. Well, that wasn't me. Make it, if it's good and I want it, I'll buy it. Don't make and sell something though that isn't fully vetted and your best effort. The Panthera/Dynamic/King guns were not at the low end of the product line either, to me there was/is no excuse for this. It's good that they recognized that they could do better, and have, but I just find it maddening that such an experienced manufacturer is still learning this stuff. People always ask, "when do I jump in," like even I did, and we were told, this is the gun, the evolution of the knowledge, obviously not. I'm thinking the same about their regs, so yeah, I want to hear all of it. The problem lately, is that nobody wants to post anything that might be construed as negative, even if it would be helpful. Having said all of this, and being mad about it, I am still heavily enamored with how my FX manages to shoot. It peeves me to know that if I had waited just a little longer that I would have got the tight tolerances that I thought I was getting in the first place, and possibly, somehow, shoot better. You really do just have to jump in at some point, it's never the same river.

Like me with the drs i waited a year got a stock adjustable hammer and reg bought it and 2 or 3 months later out comes the mkii! Why didn’t they do the mkii first?

 

[Billm]

Like me with the drs i waited a year got a stock adjustable hammer and reg bought it and 2 or 3 months later out comes the mkii! Why didn’t they do the mkii first?

Because then it would be the MK1

 

[jps2486]

Well, so far, no one has focused on the regs. Buy two and take them apart. Examine the dimensional clearances, surface finish, O rings. As my own observation and experience, I'll bet a lot of shooters are constantly adjusting the regs up and down experimenting with tuning. I don't think they like that. Other rifles, like RAWs and such, have their regs buried in the gun and folks don't like taking the gun apart to adjust it. I had an older IFX Crown that was set up for a .30 cal with a reg set at 165. I wanted to see if this would be a good gun for .177. I adjusted the reg below 80 then up and down a bit. Sure enough, the reg started to leak. If I had left it alone, it probably would have been ok still.

 

[Solo1]

Well, so far, no one has focused on the regs. Buy two and take them apart. Examine the dimensional clearances, surface finish, O rings. As my own observation and experience, I'll bet a lot of shooters are constantly adjusting the regs up and down experimenting with tuning. I don't think they like that. Other rifles, like RAWs and such, have their regs buried in the gun and folks don't like taking the gun apart to adjust it. I had an older IFX Crown that was set up for a .30 cal with a reg set at 165. I wanted to see if this would be a good gun for .177. I adjusted the reg below 80 then up and down a bit. Sure enough, the reg started to leak. If I had left it alone, it probably would have been ok still.

The reason i have 3 ghosts only on 1 do i play with the reg and thats as little as i can get away with. I agree that the worst thing to do is get happy turning the reg screw

 

[Pumacarl]

Well, I'm not actually disgruntled by FX, or their regs, or their designs. It's a company run by people and they are going to make design or manufacturing mistakes, here and there, like everybody else. I don't prefer the complexity of their designs at all, but do really like how they end up working when there are no problems.

I don't like things they have done that are not mistakes but just bad decisions in my book, most notably the pressure cylinder on the Leopards and DRS guns. They never should have used 6061 in the first place, and promised carbon fiber later and then renege on that promise. They should have just used 7075 from the start. SPA can do this and FX can't? Please! Nobody, today, wants a top tier gun that only charges to 230bar, but people sure are willing to settle. People need to stop making excuses for them and hold their feet to the fire.They gambled that people would buy them anyway, and for the most part won. Not because of me, that's for sure. I wanted a Leopard with a cf cylinder, oh well. I don't want one of the few cf unicorns out there floating around either. I'm tired of beating this horse, especially now that the DRS MKII is out and is still 230b. Enjoy your gun.

Anyway, to get back to @Billm's point, of the mediocre nature of the service or manufacturing quality control from the whole airgun industry. Where it exists, it's everyones fault that supports it anyway. Me included, sometimes. Let's face it, we often openly admit that these are just toys that we really don't need so we don't sweat over a lot of stuff that we should, so long as it works at all.

As far as regs go, I will say that I have never had one that I screwed up adjusting, and I've adjusted some a lot. I have had to replace some old orings, but that's it. If you always air down the gun I don't see how the user could do anything to screw one up besides scratching a groove with a pick. But, that's not a design problem either.