Bought a Maco2

[mighty kc]

I just ordered a Maco2 "Grande" Co2 or air powered gun. I am looking forward to using it on my upcoming vacation. Does anyone else have any experience with co2/air guns such as the Maco2, Pelletier, or Bazooka? I am wondering if there is any performance difference between air or co2. I plan on using air since I can easily refill the bottle.

Thanks,
Keith

 

[popgun pete]

I just ordered a Maco2 "Grande" Co2 or air powered gun. I am looking forward to using it on my upcoming vacation. Does anyone else have any experience with co2/air guns such as the Maco2, Pelletier, or Bazooka? I am wondering if there is any performance difference between air or co2. I plan on using air since I can easily refill the bottle.

Thanks,
Keith

Air gives you about 3,500 psi, if using scuba tank type pressures, carbon dioxide liquid transforms to a gas at about 900 psi. The advantage of using carbon dioxide is the shooting pressure stays constant while any liquid carbon dioxide remains in the rear tank, so shots are repeatable in terms of their power until there is no more liquid to transform to a gas, then the gas pressure drops. Compressed air in the tank reduces in pressure after every shot, so the power per shot declines unless the gun has a pressure regulation system that transfers air at a certain "shooting pressure" to be available from an intermediate internal reservoir for the actual shots, until tank supply pressure falls to that regulated (lower) pressure level.

Maybe you can tell us if the Maco2 has a pressure regulation system, when it uses compressed air, to dose the shots. I see some of the tanks have an attached pressure gauge that is marked to 350 bar!

 

[foxfish]

Can you post a picture of your gun?

 

[mighty kc]

I will post pictures as soon as it gets here. Pete, I was thinking the same thing, the gun has to regulate the pressure somewhat. If this is the case, there should not be much performance difference between the air and Co2. I will figure it out when it gets here, the attachment thread on the tank seems to be the same as a paintball tank from what I can see.

 

[Gazz]

Really looking forward to some pics and a review

 

[mighty kc]

UPS Shows that it will be here Tuesday. Tropical depression Karen has My area screwed up for the next few days. I plan on begging off next weekend for the last of fall snapper season. Cant wait. I got this gun for fish larger than Snapper, but I am planning to try it out on them.

Keith

 

[mighty kc]

Came in today, Cant wait to use it

 

[mighty kc]

Pete, this is the co2 canister that I purchased for the gun. The air canister that came with the gun is out of hydro, and the local scuba shop wont do it. I don't know if the PSI of the air and co2 are the same, but I plan to use the one with the most power.

 

[popgun pete]

Well good to see it arrived without any problems. Maybe you can check for a pressure regulator. If either tank screws in without any other changes then the gun may not have one, however the air tank fitting may be equipped with some extra control which you can tell us about.

 

[mighty kc]

Used the new MACO2 for the first time today. These fish were no test of the power of this gun. The largest fish was one of those Reds, and it may have weighed 15 lbs. I was surprised that the noise was not as loud as a pneumatic gun, and the aiming is no different than a long pneumatic. The 10mm shaft is propelled thru the water very fast, faster than any gun I have previously owned. I cant wait to use it on Cobia or Amberjack. No recoil, and no excessive amount of bubbles. Learned quickly that the loading valve had to be closed completely or you would loose Co2 after the shot was taken. Surprised to find that the gun floats with the spear out. I am very happy with the purchase, I feel that I am diving with a 30 06 rather than a spear gun.

KC

 

[kwtony]

Very cool, that video was funny as hell, also quite dangerous for anything behind it. The box litterally exploded, but I imagine it had a lot to do with that trident tip that was on there. A regular spear most likely would have traveled through the box and would have kept going. but it's pretty clear, this is no regular spear. I find that my air gun will pass a shaft clean through most fish I shoot within 10-12 feet. Sometimes its annoying, as it can mess up the mono fairly fast. Does this do the same?

 

[popgun pete]

Used the new MACO2 for the first time today. These fish were no test of the power of this gun. The largest fish was one of those Reds, and it may have weighed 15 lbs. I was surprised that the noise was not as loud as a pneumatic gun, and the aiming is no different than a long pneumatic. The 10mm shaft is propelled thru the water very fast, faster than any gun I have previously owned. I cant wait to use it on Cobia or Amberjack. No recoil, and no excessive amount of bubbles. Learned quickly that the loading valve had to be closed completely or you would loose Co2 after the shot was taken. Surprised to find that the gun floats with the spear out. I am very happy with the purchase, I feel that I am diving with a 30 06 rather than a spear gun.

KC

Did your gun come with any instructions at all? I assumed that the carbon fibre tube covered a buoyancy element, but was interested to learn that the gun floats without the spear. When the Maco2 guns first appeared they only had bare barrel tubes at the front with no covers. How many shots are available with the 24 oz tank? If the gun can use different capacity carbon dioxide tanks then that will affect the number of shots, although tank size may be matched to gun length to give a good fore-aft balance. Is the purge valve that empties the gun of water on the RHS of the gun, behind the trigger?

 

[Teenspearo225]

Can someone help me please? I made created a thread called tigulio ras90, can someone give me some more answers on that thread

 

[mighty kc]

Pete,

The gun comes with instructions, and a complete set of O rings. What I meant was, you have to open the valve more than a couple of turns to block off the air flow. The purge valve is in the starboard side, and it is necessary when loading the gun in the water. The gun has no regulator system on it as far as I can tell, and the air tank that I received with it has no regulator on it also. I have not used air yet, I need to obtain the scuba air fill station so that I may fill them myself. Funny thing is, the air tank that comes with the gun does not have the little fill port on the side of the nozzle, and all of the scuba/paintball fill stations that I have seen use this connection to fill the paintball tank. I need one that screws directly to the end of the paintball tank, and then adapts to the scuba tank.

 

[popgun pete]

Anything in the Maco2 instructions about the procedure to be followed when using compressed air in the rear tank, such as a sequence of valve operations that differ from their manipulations with carbon dioxide being used in the rear tank? The shooting pressure with compressed air could be set using a built-in, blow-off valve (with greater than 900 psi break pressure) as an indicator while the main tank valve was used as a throttle by the operator to restrict and cut off the air flow into the gun once the blow-off valve signaled that the desired internal pressure had been reached. You would lose some gas, but if that gas could also be used to purge the gun of water through the blow-off valve then it would be reasonably efficient. Ideally the blow-off valve would need to be in the rear end of the gun with the gun tipped upwards at the muzzle and the gun turned upside down, i.e. grip handle facing upwards, to push the water out of the now lowered rear end of the gun.

 

[Diving Gecko]

Sorry, totally unnecessary post so I deleted the content.

But since I can't delete the post itself entirely, let me just congratulate you on the new gun!
I came across a pic of one a year or so back and was very intrigued.

Great to see that you like it and more importantly that it is making you catch fish again!

 

[Gazz]

Now the BIG question.

What is its Range?
How many wraps of line do you use?

On the Mac website they believe your gun will shoot the 10mm spear at over 100feet per second

 

[popgun pete]

Carbon Dioxide powered and high pressure compressed air spearguns that expel a volume of gas with each shot are prohibited in most countries as they fall within the same legal definitions as air powered rifles and pistols, and possibly firearms in some places. Fortunately the pneumatic spearguns that most of us use have been exempted because they are "closed cycle" weapons that derive their shooting energy from the user's muscular loading effort, although it was not that long ago that confusion on this issue had unfamiliar brands of pneumatic spearguns often stopped at Customs while the situation was considered anew by yet another group of inspectors who were encountering such underwater weapons for the first time. Much of this uncertainty was caused by changed regulations restricting the air rifle pellet (BB) gun which is manually charged/cocked by breaking or folding the weapon and the lack of distinction existing between it and a pneumatic speargun which fell under the same basic legal definition about 15 years ago. The key difference that gas was expelled by the former and not the latter is basically what got pneumatic guns "off the hook" once the definitional problem was sorted out. As things now stand a Maco2 would be a prohibited import in Australia. The gun's home country of France also prohibits them, but the guns can be used in their overseas territories. I have been told that Mexico banned the carbon dioxide speargun (and the pneumatic speargun too as the latter was not easily distinguishable from the former) due to a high predation rate on large resident reef fish such as Groupers and Cods by professional spearfishermen using these spearguns.

 

[mighty kc]

I don't think that it will shoot 100' per sec. underwater. I think it shoots faster than my pneumatics or band guns, but 100' per sec. would be a stretch.

 

[Arthur p]

nkI need some help before I order a Maco2. I'm a disabled vet have had 4 shoulder surgeries, So a rubber band gun I can't pull back, and on the Pneumatic spearguns, you have to pump them up and then pull the spears back, and all the pumping kills my arms anyway.
So on the Maco2 spearguns do you just drop in the spear and then open the pressure value (I'm hoping), are does it take a lot of arm power to load the spear. Thanks.
I have also looked at the AR-22 that uses the 22 blank, but that's a lot of trouble reloading under water.