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Airguns of Arizona has asked me to do a deep dive into the Daystate Blackwolf, and a couple of Sub MOA barrels as well.
I've reviewed a few of their guns in the past few years. Here are the links to them, in case you're new to the forums and/or haven't seen them prior.
(a good number of these were done prior to the advent of the HAM Community)
There's no retailer or manufacturer oversight in my postings when I do a review. I share my impressions, pros and cons, warts and all. For full disclosure, I don't get paid for my reviews, although I was gifted the Ghost when I asked if I could purchase it after we had spent a pile of time together and I wanted it in my collection for continued use.
Now, on to what I was sent, and my very preliminary first impressions....
What I was sent...
A Daystate Blackwolf, chassis version, with an OEM 28inch/700mm barrel in .22. AOA has it listed as a "HiLite Chassis" on their website.
Daystate Blackwolf .22 HiLite Black Chassis 28" Barrel: Airguns of Arizona | Premier Airgun Store
The following accompanied the gun...
First Impressions and General Ramblings...
VERY prelim thoughts here but this is where I'm at so far...Much of this info was gathered and shared by @Arzrover in the week that he had the gun. He and I had scheduled a day to shoot prairie dogs at my place and AOA made him a Blackwolf mule to get the gun to me.
I've shot the gun less than 100 times, maybe even less than 75 times, not even two full fills to be precise. All with the 1:22 MOA barrel and pellets. About half of those shots were at 50 yards, and the other roughly half were at 100 yards.
Prior to shooting it I swapped the grip out. Personal preference, but I've found I just don't love that 90 degree angled grip that seems to be the current rage. The BW accepts standard AR grips. I went with a finger-grooved grip that I've found I like.
I also needed to scope it. I went with a 20x SWFA. This will primarily be a bench gun. And I've found the simple 20x SWFAs turrets to track true, eliminating the scope as a confounding factor. Yes, the BW probably deserves better glass. And no, I'm not a scope snob, being fairly tolerant of just using what works. The most likely scope upgrade it would get would be going to an Athlon Midas Tac 6-24x50, stolen from one of my personal guns.
Added a couple picatinny rails to the MLOK channel in the fore-end, end-goal here was to be able to shoot it from a bipod.
I dug around in my scope mount orphan bin and found a set of the correct height that will allow me to access the two grub screws that hold the barrel, without needing to remove the scope. The grub screws come down from the top of the breech block on the BW, similar to a Red Wolf. This scope mounting situation will allow barrel swaps (reminder that I was sent 4!!! barrels) without pulling the scope off of the gun.
Overall length with the 24 and 5/8" SubMOA barrel, plus a 0DB moderator in the 110 size is just shy of 47inches. Yes, it's a long gun.
Bobby recorded some weights and shared them....
Some Pros (again, in light of this being very preliminary)
This was a handful of groups at 50 yards, mostly with the intent of zeroing the scope. The larger printed circles are just under 0.75." Only tried three different weights of pellets, all JSB: the 20.83, the 25.4, and the 28.55. I was blowing out the back of my rubber mulch pellet traps. This was with a reg pressure of 175bar (as shipped), and the blue hammer spring. This was so unofficial that I didn't even have a chronograph out. I suspect the 20.83s were close to 1100 fps. Best accuracy seemed to be from the Grands with the hammer wheel at 10, which still might have been too fast.
Then this was with the Grands at 100 yards. That last (bottom right) group had 3/5 into the same bout 1/2".
Scores were arrived at with this method...
No, this initial session isn't showing any earth shaking accuracy. This is the absolute definition of quick and dirty, undertaken just to get on the gun a bit. I will need to get serious enough about it to get out the chrono and figure out a general "tune" and what the barrel likes. From the speeds that 1:17.7 and 1:30/32 barrels like, I suspect I'll find best accuracy around 900-930 from this 1:22 barrel, but that is of course variable with the projectile that I'm shooting.
The following are a couple images from the manual that I found interesting.
Conclusion
I'm a bit overwhelmed at the number of permutations possible with this gun, the barrels, the reg pressure, the hammer springs, various projectiles, etc. Along the same lines of how many hundreds of thousands of words are in the English language, starting from an alphabet of only 26 letters, arranged in various ways....The variables with this review of the Blackwolf combine to create a VAST potential for testing and tinkering and subsequently reporting the results. Current plan is to work through some of those, and share the results here. Having an often more than full-time job, and kids and a wife, I'll test and share as time allows.
I've reviewed a few of their guns in the past few years. Here are the links to them, in case you're new to the forums and/or haven't seen them prior.
(a good number of these were done prior to the advent of the HAM Community)
- BSA Gold Star "Union Jack" in .177, ongoing review
- Red Wolf Standard with G2 board
- Brocock Concept Lite XR (.177)
- RTI Prophet .22
- BRK Ghost Review
There's no retailer or manufacturer oversight in my postings when I do a review. I share my impressions, pros and cons, warts and all. For full disclosure, I don't get paid for my reviews, although I was gifted the Ghost when I asked if I could purchase it after we had spent a pile of time together and I wanted it in my collection for continued use.
Now, on to what I was sent, and my very preliminary first impressions....
What I was sent...
A Daystate Blackwolf, chassis version, with an OEM 28inch/700mm barrel in .22. AOA has it listed as a "HiLite Chassis" on their website.
Daystate Blackwolf .22 HiLite Black Chassis 28" Barrel: Airguns of Arizona | Premier Airgun Store
The following accompanied the gun...
- The 28" barrel OEM barrel, which appears to be a true polygonal rifled bore. I'm told this is a 1:17.7" twist rate. It also has the tensioning system new to the BW platform. At a future point I will share detailed photos of that tensioning system. And of course accuracy results of how that barrel performs.
- A 24 and 5/8" barrel, also in .22, from the relatively new-to-the industry Sub MOA barrel manufacturer. This is a 1:22 twist rate. I was told the intention here is pellets, but that this configuration also performs well with certain slugs in their testing.
- An additional Sub MOA barrel, same length, also in .22, but with a 1:16 twist rate. I was told this is a slug barrel.
- (additional Sub MOA information here: Sub-MOA Barrels - Exclusive First Report - Hard Air Magazine
- Both of these Sub MOAbarrels are:
- Cerakoted black to match the gun
- have spiral fluting
- tapered, with a diameter of 0.981" at the largest, and tapering down to 0.692" at the muzzle.
- HEAVY and SUBSTANTIAL, and visually striking, especially paired with a 0DB moderator with a similar spiral pattern.
- They strongly remind me of a firearm barrel.
- A moderator adaptor was supplied for the Sub-MOA barrels, standard 1/2x20 male threads.
- A set of hammer springs (blue, white, red I believe)
- Finally, the gun arrived with a bare .177 barrel that will eventually go on to @cavedweller. He worked out a deal to have this barrel machined by mutual friend @Arzrover. This is a standard twist, 12 land and groove Lothar barrel, from the Sterling Armaments days, so 20-25 years ago. The .20 cal barrel in my Ghost and reported on extensively in the link above is also a Sterling/LW barrel, and is exceptional. This .177 has big shoes to fill. @Arzrover machined a .177 Sterling sister to this barrel for his .22 to .177 EVOL conversion, and reports that the one in his EVOL is as good as barrels get.
First Impressions and General Ramblings...
VERY prelim thoughts here but this is where I'm at so far...Much of this info was gathered and shared by @Arzrover in the week that he had the gun. He and I had scheduled a day to shoot prairie dogs at my place and AOA made him a Blackwolf mule to get the gun to me.
I've shot the gun less than 100 times, maybe even less than 75 times, not even two full fills to be precise. All with the 1:22 MOA barrel and pellets. About half of those shots were at 50 yards, and the other roughly half were at 100 yards.
Prior to shooting it I swapped the grip out. Personal preference, but I've found I just don't love that 90 degree angled grip that seems to be the current rage. The BW accepts standard AR grips. I went with a finger-grooved grip that I've found I like.
I also needed to scope it. I went with a 20x SWFA. This will primarily be a bench gun. And I've found the simple 20x SWFAs turrets to track true, eliminating the scope as a confounding factor. Yes, the BW probably deserves better glass. And no, I'm not a scope snob, being fairly tolerant of just using what works. The most likely scope upgrade it would get would be going to an Athlon Midas Tac 6-24x50, stolen from one of my personal guns.
Added a couple picatinny rails to the MLOK channel in the fore-end, end-goal here was to be able to shoot it from a bipod.
I dug around in my scope mount orphan bin and found a set of the correct height that will allow me to access the two grub screws that hold the barrel, without needing to remove the scope. The grub screws come down from the top of the breech block on the BW, similar to a Red Wolf. This scope mounting situation will allow barrel swaps (reminder that I was sent 4!!! barrels) without pulling the scope off of the gun.
Overall length with the 24 and 5/8" SubMOA barrel, plus a 0DB moderator in the 110 size is just shy of 47inches. Yes, it's a long gun.
Bobby recorded some weights and shared them....
- The SubMOA barrels weigh 3lbs, 3.8ounces (remember I said SUBSTANTIAL).
- The 28inch OEM barrel weighs 2lb, 8.6ounces
- AOA website lists the BW as 9.5lbs with the 28 inch barrel. That would be un-scoped.
- Total scoped weight Bobbie recorded was 11lbs, 14oz. That was the SubMOA barrel and an Athlon 5-25 scope that he had on it briefly (probably in the 25ounce range).
- The bottle is not valved like a Ghost bottle. Degas means losing all the air.
- Lowering the regulator pressure requires a degas.
- Barrel machining is different than the Ghost/Alpha and Delta Wolf-was hoping for cross compatibility of barrels here.
- Magazines are also not cross-compatible between the BW and Ghost/Alpha and Delta Wolfs.
- Action has to be removed from chassis (or stock) to be able to swap hammer springs.
- Safety has to be removed from action to be able to pull action from chassis. (I'm not a safety guy, as I choose to single-feed and de-cock almost exclusively. So the safety will just stay in a baggy in the case while the gun is with me.)
Some Pros (again, in light of this being very preliminary)
- Feels more solidly built than a Red Wolf and/or Ghost, Bobby and I both got this impression from our short times with it.
- Shot cycle is MUCH improved over the Ghost. That was one of my criticisms of the Ghost. Much less of the "kachunkity schlunk" Ghost feel when a projectile is fired from the Blackwolf.
- Trigger is better than the Ghost. Another of my Ghost criticisms. I've yet to even adjust anything on the BW trigger, and it is out of the box a better feeling trigger than the Ghost. More crisp, more predictable. It's easily under a pound as-is. And Bobby told me he didn't do any trigger fiddling.
- VERY enjoyable bench gun, which might go back to the shot cycle being so docile, even at pretty high power.
- Power potential. This thing is ROCKING! and that's without even trying very hard. I'll include an image of the chrono testing from Daystate, but they were getting 988fps with the .22/34grain pellets, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn they weren't leaning on it very hard. It's making more power than I'm typically interested in, without even pushing it.
This was a handful of groups at 50 yards, mostly with the intent of zeroing the scope. The larger printed circles are just under 0.75." Only tried three different weights of pellets, all JSB: the 20.83, the 25.4, and the 28.55. I was blowing out the back of my rubber mulch pellet traps. This was with a reg pressure of 175bar (as shipped), and the blue hammer spring. This was so unofficial that I didn't even have a chronograph out. I suspect the 20.83s were close to 1100 fps. Best accuracy seemed to be from the Grands with the hammer wheel at 10, which still might have been too fast.
Then this was with the Grands at 100 yards. That last (bottom right) group had 3/5 into the same bout 1/2".
Scores were arrived at with this method...
No, this initial session isn't showing any earth shaking accuracy. This is the absolute definition of quick and dirty, undertaken just to get on the gun a bit. I will need to get serious enough about it to get out the chrono and figure out a general "tune" and what the barrel likes. From the speeds that 1:17.7 and 1:30/32 barrels like, I suspect I'll find best accuracy around 900-930 from this 1:22 barrel, but that is of course variable with the projectile that I'm shooting.
The following are a couple images from the manual that I found interesting.
Conclusion
I'm a bit overwhelmed at the number of permutations possible with this gun, the barrels, the reg pressure, the hammer springs, various projectiles, etc. Along the same lines of how many hundreds of thousands of words are in the English language, starting from an alphabet of only 26 letters, arranged in various ways....The variables with this review of the Blackwolf combine to create a VAST potential for testing and tinkering and subsequently reporting the results. Current plan is to work through some of those, and share the results here. Having an often more than full-time job, and kids and a wife, I'll test and share as time allows.
You mentioned an upcoming gun review, it never dawned on me it could be the balckwolf. I am glad you are comparing it to the Ghost, as you know that platform very well. As far as I know they are the exact same barrels as the other recent Daystate/Ghost platforms, same length & twist just machined differently as you said. Real curious at what speed accuracy will fall apart with mrds in the 1:17 L.W. barrel vs the 1:32. The degas/reg adjust/refill bottle thing is a forehead smacker.....c'mon daystate!
I am shooting the BlackWolf TAC in .177 HP and it is very accurate and powerful with the added VoluMax extended plenum 
