ALPINASUB "Dolphin" 3 ball sear pneumatic speargun

This is the Alpinasub "Dolphin" speargun that was brought to my attention when posting information at www.apox.ru concerning the Doroganich "Sea Hunter" as this gun also uses a 3 ball sear or hitch. This "Dolphin" (Delphin) speargun is a wet barrel pneumatic gun that uses many plastic components to make it a floater after the shot. In fact it floats very well with the muzzle poking out slightly while the gun is just off the horizontal due to being slightly heavier in the rear end than at the front.

The "Dolphin" pneumatic speargun has an excellent standard of finish, being powder painted as many Eastern Bloc spearguns are and in my view it is a very attractive underwater weapon. Here is the gun’s schematic parts diagram and a couple of gun photos from the website. http://alpinasub.ru/collection/podvodnoe-ruzhje

Here is a translated Operating Manual as a pdf file. The manual is for the Dolphin 50 cm model.

While I had to approach the manufacturer directly when I purchased my gun from Russia, they are now available on eBay as I discovered while clicking on a link to something else. The gun has rather quirky looks, but works OK. Unusually the spear tail has a small "O" ring on its rear tang, which you can see in this photo, to provide friction to engage the piston. Like many Russian guns it has a painted finish, and that includes the “Taimen”, but will hold up unless you bash your gun on the rocks.

Just retrieved my Dolphin from the storeroom to make sure that it still works, which it does. One curious thing about this gun is that it has a long trigger pull before anything happens, which is OK once you get used to it. I think it is a function of the ball system and they have deliberately delayed the action so you do not get any surprises. By way of contrast the Doroganich speargun with a 3 ball sear has a very short throw of the trigger, just a press and the spear is off. The advantage of the Dolphin, besides its relatively low cost, is that it floats after the shot, albeit tail down on an angle. Will look at it in a bit more detail later.