new OMER pneumatic!!!

Some interesting comments here from an "Airbalete" user. http://www.extremespearfishing.com.au/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3088

Thanks Pete that was a very interesting read.

I did some calculations and got very interesting result. To load Airbalete 90 and Cyrano 850 at 20 bars, one need almost the same energy.
What does that mean? To me it means that with the same shaft both guns would have very similar performance regarding the energy and the speed of the shaft at the same distance.

The energy stored in the "Airbalete 90" and "Cyrano 850" after muzzle loading their spears is interesting, but is only part of the story, although for a fair comparison of speargun performance one should always attempt to compare spearguns with the same amount of stored energy as Tromic has previously stated. Another consideration is the mass and drag (profile, length, surface area, etc.) of the spear being projected from the gun as well as the type of connecting line used to tether the spear. These factors will determine the amount of initial kinetic energy imparted to the spear at launch from the gun and the degree of dissipation of that energy as the spear flies towards the target.

What such calculations do not show is the back pressure in the inner barrel opposing the piston's movement towards the muzzle. Also unknown is the amount of friction in the inner barrel as the piston slides over a wet inner barrel in front of it and an oil lubricated inner barrel behind it. The inner barrel back pressure is minimised by the presence of large muzzle relief ports which allow the water to escape as rapidly as possible from the inner barrel; the inclined ports of the "Airbalete" may produce a slight improvement in the rate of water outflow. Another consideration is how much water there is to flow out as a smaller diameter shaft means that there is a greater volume of water surrounding the shaft in the inner barrel. So there is a degree of interaction between the variables which makes comparisons somewhat difficult as more than one variable may be changing for any particular gun configuration.

Ultimately when using a speargun you are competing against fish, not another speargun! Provided the gun shoots straight and in a predictable fashion with a fast enough shaft for the task required then it will be a useful device for spearing fish. If it makes little noise when doing so then hopefully other fish may stay around for subsequent shots at them. I think the "Airbalete" is basically an attempt at incremental improvement on existing pneumatic guns rather than a revolutionary one. As a floater after spear discharge it can look after itself while you dispatch the fish, assuming you eventually have the luckless victim within your grasp. What more could one want (except perhaps for a more attractive purchase price)? As Mr X says that will come once the "early adopter" phase is over, provided enough spearguns are sold to justify their continued production.

popgun pete said:

The energy stored in the "Airbalete 90" and "Cyrano 850" after muzzle loading their spears is interesting, but is only part of the story, although for a fair comparison of speargun performance one should always attempt to compare spearguns with the same amount of stored energy as Tromic has previously stated. Another consideration is the mass and drag (profile, length, surface area, etc.) of the spear being projected from the gun as well as the type of connecting line used to tether the spear. These factors will determine the amount of initial kinetic energy imparted to the spear at launch from the gun and the degree of dissipation of that energy as the spear flies towards the target.

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I agree, Popgun pete, that is why I said

tromic said:

...with the same shaft both guns would have very similar performance regarding the energy and the speed of the shaft at the same distance.

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popgun pete said:

What such calculations do not show is the back pressure in the inner barrel opposing the piston's movement towards the muzzle. Also unknown is the amount of friction in the inner barrel as the piston slides over a wet inner barrel in front of it and an oil lubricated inner barrel behind it. The inner barrel back pressure is minimised by the presence of large muzzle relief ports which allow the water to escape as rapidly as possible from the inner barrel; the inclined ports of the "Airbalete" may produce a slight improvement in the rate of water outflow. Another consideration is how much water there is to flow out as a smaller diameter shaft means that there is a greater volume of water surrounding the shaft in the inner barrel. So there is a degree of interaction between the variables which makes comparisons somewhat difficult as more than one variable may be changing for any particular gun configuration.

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If someone would make comparison to both guns (Airbalete 90 and Cyrano 850) with the same shaft, slider and line, best the original Airbalete shaft, it would show the real benefit of Airbalete. I suppose that the Airbalete would have better results thanks to the lower piston's friction and absence of throttling effect of the Cyrano's power regulator and the inclined ports of the Airbalete's muzzle. I guess that advantages all together would not be more than 10 %. To remind, I measured the advantage of the vacuum barrel over the wet barrel and it was about 25 %. The advantage of good hydrodynamic shaft as Airbalete has, to the Cyrano's shaft with the factory supplied harpoon, was about 25 %. To be more clear, I expect that out of the box Airbalete 90 to be up to 35 % better in energy of the shaft than out of the box Cyrano 850. But Cyrano 850 with tahitian shaft and good vacuum barrel system (maybe karayo, tovarich or tomba or the new type mamba) could be up to 50 % better than out of the box Cyrano 850.

I do not know if the spear tails of the Omer and Mares models are identical in terms of their rear taper, but if they are then swapping shafts will be easy between the guns. I assume that the "microspeed" line slide comes off the Omer shaft by undoing the shaft tail, so if the rear connection threads are the same then shafts tails can be changed over to suit the pistons in each gun.

From memory Omer say that closing the power regulator on the "Airbalete" muzzle cuts the shaft speed by 15%, so that gives you the full back pressure effect unless some water can still escape through the plastic cover that sits over the relief ports when it is rotated to the closed position. I only know the cover is plastic courtesy of that thread I referenced in my recent post, I have yet to see a gun "in the metal". The absence of the conventional power regulator bulkhead certainly improves the internal air flow as a pneumatic speargun shoots. It is interesting that while Mares offer mono-power versions of the Sten, they have never offered them with the Cyrano, although the rear handle moulding is the same on all their guns since the release of the Sten 2001 series.

I bet it does - link?

No kidding 43 mega bytes.

Fondueset said:

I translated it with google - hilarious - but readable.

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RE think that's funny, you should go to Italy and try order "mussel soup" then, unless you're Italian or you have an impeccable pronunciation you're very likely to illicit strong laughter. My wife made that mistake on our first trip together...rofl

I'm going to have to pick up one of these air cannons some time. I've had limited use of pneumos, but want to give it a try.

Thanks to all for the great info and points of view in this thread.

spaghetti said:

The article is a review of the Airbalete 90 written by engineer Filippo Anglani, which I assume has worked for Maorisub before (he's the author of the essay "Balistica comparata delle armi subacquee" on the Maorisub website). He gives a positive opinion of the Airbalete 90: gives 5 stars (5/5) for power, accuracy and recoil, 4 stars for range.
Bluworld - Articoli Tecnici
PS: let's keep it a friendly discussion: Deeperblue has its style.

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Hello Spago & all. I agree with you and I read all three of these reviews including the latest one from a forum in Australia and think there is some good information there, particularly the first hand "in water" accounts while the technical article in Blueworld makes for a good discussion. Technical tests like this can be interpreted a million ways. Here are a couple of generalizations I'll make for argument's sake:

The first point to keep things in perspective has to do with the graphs in the BW test. While some of these Medium velocity figures may appear to be impressive compared to each other, a stock 90cm Band gun (single band x 6.5mm shaft) med/max velocity range between 30-32m/s at a distance of 1,8m away from the gun. Stock gun and I'll admit there are even better bands out there now...point is, if someone is looking for high intial muzzle velocity then they can do better than a pneumatic to begin with.

Okay, the graphs in these tests measuring speed start at 2.0 meters rather than 1.8m away but still there's probably not 10m/s
of difference.

Then, if I were to make a test like this I would first modify all of the guns to be similar (ie. turn them all to dry or wet), and as another astute member pointed out, make sure they all had slide rings and the same line, the shaft thickness was the same etc etc.
This test, which is supposed to be a technical test, compares 11mm inner barrel diameter guns (wet AIrbalete & dry Mamba Vs dry 13mm's 90/75) to 13mm inner barrel...no wonder the 13mm's dry barrel guns outperform, I would have actually thought much more than these tests showed! Shaft lengths vary by as much as 160mm and the thickness .5mm. Not to discredit the tester as they obviously went through a lot of trouble to do this test since the author even wrote that for "health and work reasons they didn't have time to conduct a more even test". I am glad he at least pointed that out. Another thing is way weird, I've screwed in a pressure gauge into AIRbaletes 100 times or more in my own tests of a 110, these guys do it once and from 20ATM it leaks to 14ATM so they can't get a proper reading compared to the other guns that plainly show a 20ATM read like the other guns. I could just be a cynic

The first thought that comes to my mind is that if you are going to test pneumatics that are considerably different animals from each other, 11mm Vs 13mm inner diameter barrel guns, find a common ground. Obviously (I'm spelling this out for the not so experienced pneumatic users out there) a gun with 20 ATM of pressure with an 11mm barrel (AIRbalete & the other gun) is going to be easier to load than their 13mm counter parts, because while the internal pressure on the piston may be the same the volume is not. Hence one (the 13mm) is harder to load than the 11mm gun at the same pressure. This is a big advantage of 11mm guns like the AIrbalete and the Mares Cyrano in terms of loading effort. So it would have made much more sense to level the playing field equally by testing the guns according to equal loading effort, not so hard of a test if one was to set it up properly. After all citing band guns as an example, harder bands to load generally have more power than weak ones even if they are the same length. That's more of an apples to apples comparison.

The three tests I'm talking about:
1. TEST AIRBALETE (luciano.garibbo) (technical)
2. Bluworld - Articoli Tecnici (very experienced pneumatic user who worked with dry barrel mod. Co. in past)
3. Extreme Spearfishing Forums-viewtopic-New Omer AIRbalete (good diver/new pneumatic user)


moral of the tets, without having to get so technical it's easier just to read and interpret in common spearfisherman lingo what first hand accounts between different users of varying skill level are because the traits that come out of those tests are more realistic and make more useful sense in practical terms to divers.

Mr. X said:

I would think the price will gradually fall (hopefully for the ice fins too ). They probably want/need to recoup their design, development and tooling costs -- they've no doubt made a significant investment to come up with this interesting new product (typical Omer)

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Whoever reads this forum has the advantage of knowing your prediction is coming true in 2010 mostly because next year it will be sold w/o reel version. We found that particularly w/smaller versions many customers did not want a reel. Only the new Mimetic will come w/the reel.

I do not know if the spear tails of the Omer and Mares models are identical in terms of their rear taper, but if they are then swapping shafts will be easy between the guns. I assume that the "microspeed" line slide comes off the Omer shaft by undoing the shaft tail, so if the rear connection threads are the same then shafts tails can be changed over to suit the pistons in each gun.

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Not only are the threads of the back end of the shaft the same
(6mm) but the pistons are interchangeable. I know because I tried it. However, changing this alone from a Cyrano shaft into an AIRbalete and vice versa would void any sort of warranty should some mishap occur. I didn't have any when I tried it since the shaft tails are similar although not exact.

strangelove said:

No kidding 43 mega bytes.

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Don't worry the picture on page 17 with the guy holding the tuna makes it all worth it