Diana Eleven Background
Today we’re taking a look at the Diana Eleven. This is a compact, low power, .177 caliber, spring/piston air rifle selling for $100. And it’s pretty much a mystery.
Why do I say “mystery”?
Well, it’s because I could find almost nothing about it on the Internet. It’s not featured on the company’s German website. A Google search finds no reviews. The Eleven is not even listed in the encyclopedic Thirteenth Blue Book of Airguns – all 1,008 pages of the latest edition!
There’s just a small number of old YouTube videos. But, it’s selling for $99.99 at both Pyramyd and Airgun Depot. So I had to investigate…
First I’ll be clear. This is not a typical, comprehensive Hard Air Magazine review. That’s partially because I am without doubt the least capable spring/piston air rifle shooter there has ever been! So no test targets would be in any way useful: just embarrassing for me and a complete dis-service to the product…
Also, aging eyes and trifocal glasses mean that I’m completely unable to use the open sights with which the Eleven is fitted. I bolted-on a scope to do some happy plinking.
So this is an informal review and personal exploration of what turns out to be a surprisingly interesting airgun that includes a completely unique – yet apparently unknown – feature in this price range.
Diana Eleven Sighting Options
The Eleven is supplied with a pretty fair set of conventional open sights. The rear sight is click-adjustable for windage and elevation. The square notch was sharp and easy to focus on.
Sadly, I could not focus on either front sight or target as well at the same time. But that’s my problem. Someone with better eyesight would be able to take the Eleven out of the box and start shooting immediately – after all that’s the key value proposition for a spring/piston air rifle: no accessories necessary, just a tin of pellets!
The front sight is well hooded and also functions as a comfortable hand stop when cocking the gun.
Of more interest to me were the dovetail rails and scope stop hole machined in the rear of the compression chamber. These allow the fitting of a scope – which I definitely needed to shoot the Eleven.
Another thing to bear in mind is that the low-powered Eleven has a short compression chamber. This means that a short scope is required, otherwise the breech will hit the scope when attempting to break the barrel and cock the gun. Not good!
I mounted an Air Venturi Mantis 3-9x32AO scope as it’s just 12.25 Inches long. At $69.99, it’s also a low-cost solution to complement the price of the Eleven.
However the appearance did offend me, so I removed the rear sight for shooting. Unscrewing two Phillips screws did the trick.
Shooting The Diana Eleven
With the scope mounted, our Eleven weighed-in at a very manageable 7 Lbs 1 Oz. That complements the 39-Inch out-of-the box length. This is a short, light air rifle that could be used by all the family, including kids with supervision.
It took about 10 shots for a small amount of Dieseling to disappear. That was also the number of shots it took me to have the Eleven’s scope sighted-in for some serious can-punching.
For the record, I also fired some 7.0 Grain RWS Hobby pellets across a chronograph. The Muzzle Velocity averaged 565 FPS. That represents just under 5 Ft/Lbs and about 10% lower than the spec shown on Pyramyd’s web site.
But I didn’t care about that. The Diana Eleven is a backyard plinker by design and intention. In fact, low power is a benefit for anyone shooting in confined spaces like a backyard or basement!
Low power also means low noise. And my Eleven was quiet. Like really quiet. That’s another benefit for everyone hunting feral soda cans on a backyard safari.
(Pro tip: make sure the soda cans are nice and warm. Also shake them well before placing into position. Stand well back. The hydraulic shock of a hit from even our low-powered Eleven will cause the full, pressurized soda can to explode when hit with a most satisfying spray of liquid. I LOVE reactive targets!)
The Eleven’s low power level has multiple other benefits, too.
One is low cocking effort. Once the barrel is tapped down to break from its in-battery position, the cocking effort is extremely low. I measured it to be around 15 Lbs for our Eleven.
That makes it possible for almost anyone to cock. It also means that you could shoot for hours with the Eleven without becoming tired or shaky from the cocking effort.
That low power is also likely a contributory factor to the surprising low trigger pull weight displayed by this Eleven. (The pressure on the trigger sear will be low). I recorded an average of just 4 Lb 2 Oz. That’s much lower than I expected.
The trigger blade is metal and nicely curved for comfort. There’s a loooong pull and the release is somewhat lacking in predictability. Plus, there’s also no adjustment capability for the trigger either.
“Trigger snobs” will be unhappy here. But let’s be realistic. This is a $100 air rifle and – at this price level – it’s probably better than most others in its class. At least in my experience.
Then there’s the safety. It’s a typical Diana automatic safety that must be pushed-in to disengage before every shot. It’s located right in front of you nose and is completely ambidextrous.
Personally I prefer a manual safety. But there’s no doubt that an automatic safety is a good thing for inexperienced shooters and for those most likely to be shooting the Eleven.
And even if you don’t like it, muscle memory soon sets-in and you become used to that automatic safety after a while. Sort of…
Now we come to another benefit of the Diana Eleven’s low power. Low recoil!
The low recoil means that there’s more chance that shooters – either inexperienced or (like me) just not good with springers – will have success hitting what they aim at.
For my unstructured shooting test, I picked-up a tin of the closest pellets to hand. These were 8.18 Grain H&N Match Heavy wadcutters. Setting-out some soda cans at 20 Yards, I had no trouble hitting them every time. Very satisfactory!
Would different pellets give better accuracy? Dunno. It would take a better shooter than me to make that determination. But I was very happy with how the H&Ns were performing.
And now for a comment…
“Our” Diana Eleven shot just fine. But I couldn’t help noticing that the breech seal was seated to just below the level of the surrounding breech surface. You can see this in the photograph below.
This means that the breech seal was almost-certainly ineffective at sealing the Eleven’s breech during firing. It may well be the cause of the slightly low Muzzle Velocity.
I must stress that there were no obvious “blows” when the gun was fired. However, it would be interesting to replace the seal with one that protruded – just a few thou – beyond the metal surface, as would have been the designer’s intent. My guess is that there would be a gain in velocity.
But I didn’t do it as the gun was shooting well and I had no need of any additional power.
The Diana Eleven’s Unique, Mystery Feature
OK. So here’s the mystery, completely un-advertised feature. The Diana Eleven is supplied with a set of three butt spacers. This means that the Length of Pull can be adjusted to suit the shooter, if required.
Yes, a few other air rifles have this feature, but none of them are anywhere the price of the Eleven. So this is an unique benefit at this price.
Below we see the Eleven’s buttpad attached with two spacers in place. The third shows the profile. Diana gives you the hex (Allen) wrench too.
With all three spacers in place, the out-of-the-box Length of Pull is increased from 13 Inches to about 13.75 Inches. Here it is below. Not pretty, but definitely effective!
Being long-armed, I found this a particularly beneficial feature. It enabled me to take a more comfortable hold on the gun. In addition I was able to more easily achieve an ideal eye relief for the scope with all three spacers in place, without craning my neck.
This is an outstanding, unique benefit for the Eleven at this price point. I completely fail to understand why it’s not promoted heavily. Even Pyramyd’s extremely-comprehensive web page for the gun doesn’t mention it!
But there is one slight snag. It’s shown in the photograph below.
As you can probably tell, with all three spacers in place, the attachment screws (one is shown) are not long enough to hold everything in place securely.
With one or two additional spacers, the screws were long enough. However when all three were stacked, the top screw would not bite into the buttstock.
If you’re using all three spacers, you will need to source a couple of longer screws. (There’s no problem in factory configuration, or one or two spacers installed).
The factory screws are Metric (of course). They are socket head cap screws M4 diameter with 0.7 mm threads. That’s a standard. The length is 35 mm.
Replacements should be 40 or 45 mm long. These are standard lengths.
Diana Eleven Conclusions
I found the Eleven to be a fine little backyard plinker. It’s an object lesson for why low-powered air rifles can have considerable attraction for the right user.
Backyard soda can safaris or informal target practice will be much more fun with this gun than using some huge, “Zillion FPS”, loud, hard-kicking, hard cocking (and more expensive) breakbarrel.
As you can tell: I liked the Diana Eleven.
BUY FROM PYRAMYD
Diana Eleven Breakbarrel Air Rifle 0.177
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