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Omer quitting Pneumatic Spearguns

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.

popgun pete

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Jul 30, 2008
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As mentioned in another thread Omer appear to have abandoned pneumatic speargun manufacture due to their 2020 catalog not listing any bar the accessories. I had a look and some stores have Omer pneumatic guns on clearance.

This may also eliminate the Sporasub pneumatic guns as Omer own Sporasub.
 
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As mentioned in another thread Omer appear to have abandoned pneumatic speargun manufacture due to their 2020 catalog not listing any bar the accessories. I had a look and some stores have Omer pneumatic guns on clearance.

This may also eliminate the Sporasub pneumatic guns as Omer own Sporasub.

Omer pretty much eliminated the Sporasub product line as an independent line with its own website and catalog about a year ago or even more than a year ago. What remains from Sporasub is just very few products that are consolidated within the Omer website and catalog. They don't even have a seprate section in the website or catalog for Sporasub at all. For all practical purposes, Sporasub doesn't exist anymore except for a sticker on some, very few, products.
 
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Anyone who has one of these guns may be wise to stock up on any unique spares as at some time they will disappear.
Airbalete piston.jpg
 
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If you could buy a Sporasub "One Air" at a bargain price during the forthcoming clearance sales then an interesting project would be to replace the 11 mm inner diameter barrel with a 13 mm diameter inner barrel and put a Salvimar vacuum muzzle on it. The side tanks could be plugged with additional pressure bulkheads and the internal walls drilled through to use the entire gun body for pressurization, not just the central column. The STC muzzle could either be binned or given to someone who wants to use bare tail spears.

Bear in mind that Mares scaled up their 11 mm Cyrano to 13 mm and scaled down their Sten (13 mm) for the Sten 11.
 
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Ah, that was why... About a month ago or so an old friend told me he wanted to get into spearing and I started window shopping for him and did see the One Air on fire sale. I have a 120 myself, so gave it a brief look over but then decided to recommend a Predathor Vuoto to him instead. He got one second hand back home for a steal.
The One Air is an interesting gun. It has so much mass compared to all the others and a few of us users have previously described it as feeling like a scalpel when you shoot it. I know it sounds weird, but it's just so easy to shoot, the trigger pull feels nice and the gun seems very accurate. But that said, while the demountable handle results in a very high grip much more in line with recoil forces than all the other traditional oleos, the handle is also what reduces the efficiency of the gun. To make it detachable, the barrel stops in front of the handle, in a bulkhead in the rear of the reservoir - as a result, the piston travel length is substantially shorter than on any other similarly sized Mares, Cressi, Seac, Salvi, etc.
I know people say that the Airbalete, which share the same internals and handle, is hard to aim but I would personally think it is the better gun - if it could be picked up for cheap. But again, it will have that short shooting barrel. That said, a Danish spearo had one in the 80cm size and he shot loads of sea trout with it and liked it.
The more I think about these guns, the more of a conundrum they become. It's a bit like one step forward and two back or some unfulfilled promises, at least. Perhaps, for a person who absolutely can not stand any recoil, this is a gun to consider.
 
Putting an 11 mm barrel in the "One Air" was pretty stupid, but enabled them to use all their "Airbalete" parts straight off the bench. If you make a heavier mass gun then you should give it more firepower, not just make it a variation on an existing model. The STC vacuum muzzle was another mistake as with so many new guns coming on the scene with nozzle type vacuum seals the bare tail spear option was not very attractive.

Inner barrels can be bought as replacement items, such as these ones, although the ones on offer here are too short.
 
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It's been years since I concentrated on this gun but from my fuzzy memory, the muzzle seals may not even be compatible with STC, though the muzzle is an STC design...
[edit] just found a five year old email correspondance with STC in which they say the Omer seals are not compatible with the original STC ones. That would make me a bit nervous in reg. to buying this gun now unless you checked with both Omer and STC about the stock of these spares. One good thing about a front tied shaft is that there's less wear on the vacuum seal so they probably last for a long time.

I actually posted the question about whether Omer/Spora has stopped making oleos in their official segment of the Italian pescasubapnea forum. Let's see if they'll reply.
 
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[...]The STC vacuum muzzle was another mistake as with so many new guns coming on the scene with nozzle type vacuum seals the bare tail spear option was not very attractive.

If by nozzle seals you mean the cuff type a la Vuoto, I think the One Air launched about two years before the Vuoto Air and three years before the fancier Predathor Vuoto. And the Airbalete launched two years or so earlier than the One Air.
If we can say that Salvimar really popularized this "new" type of vacuum seal, there's still a two to four year gap from the Airbalete/One Air until the world saw the Vuoto, so we can't really blame Omer this time around;)
 
The Russian "Taimen" started the nozzle type vacuum seal if you ignore the home-made versions using engine valve stem oil seals out of Russia. The “Taimen” is the successor to the earlier “Skorpion” and began in 2000 which is when my “Soviet” contacts told me about it and the then new “Mamba” from Italy. The "Mamba" lives on in the LG guns.
 
Sure, which is why I took the liberty of saying Salvi popularized it as Taimen can’t be said to be widely known in the West. It’s such a “river” gun even the Italian engineers can almost be excused for not thinking about it. But then again, they didn’t actually come up with the Vuotu either - that also has a strong Eastern Block heritage and I think Dima's version of the nozzle seal (which was later cloned by Pelengas and Salvimar, the latter with permission) dates to around 2007(?). So, perhaps there’s some poetic justice in that after all;)


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The Russian "Taimen" started the nozzle type vacuum seal if you ignore the home-made versions using engine valve stem oil seals out of Russia. The “Taimen” is the successor to the earlier “Skorpion” and began in 2000 which is when my “Soviet” contacts told me about it and the then new “Mamba” from Italy. The "Mamba" lives on in the LG guns.
The forerunner of LG could also be the Spanish karayo system made by Ramon. He had three kits: Tovarich (for free shaft), Karamba and Kara-yo (slider versions). Kara-yo was most similar to LG design.
 

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The Omer XII 90 cm seems a good buy at AUD 190.99, for some reason it is cheaper than the 80 cm at AUD 220.99!

The Omer XII has a bigger bore at 12 mm inner barrel diameter and doesn't have the bulbous bow of the "Airbalete". Unless you want to make believe your gun is a band gun my view is this gun is the best of the three "handle dangling out the back" guns for general spearfishing.
OMER XII.jpg

Omer should have produced three guns, "Airbalete" 11 mm, "Omer XII" 12 mm, "One Air" 13 mm or even 14 mm for the heavy hitters.
 
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It's Confirmed
[edit]...
I actually posted the question about whether Omer/Spora has stopped making oleos in their official segment of the Italian pescasubapnea forum. Let's see if they'll reply.

I got a reply on the other forum. As mentioned, they have subforums for the major brands where a representative from each brand often replies. In my case Alessio De Carne replied. His title does not show on the forum but judging from his LinkedIn, I think he is a Sales & Marketing Manager. An older article quoting him titles him Omer-Sporasub Sales Director so either way, I think it's close enough to the horse's mouth.

First, here's what I asked (I had previously asked about where to find spare vac seals for my One Air):
While I have you, perhaps you can help with another Omer question? In your newest catalog there is no showing of any oleos - Has Omer and/or Sporasub stopped making them?

Alessio replied:
Yes, correct. Our plan is to focus more on our history and heritage, which are more related to arbalete spearguns.

Short and a bit bitter and I am not sure why. I don't know the inner workings of the two companies and how healthy they are financially. But maybe they have just not sold enough of the oleos and if they needed to revamp the line, perhaps the money is better spent elsewhere. Also, I suspect oleos are more of a hassle in terms of assembly and after service than the simpler arbeletes.
 
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Most companies contract their spearguns out, especially full line equipment companies which sell every type of diving product, thus Omer/Sporasub probably have some other company make their guns which produces other speargun lines, or at least component parts. Once this would have been an Italian company like Salvis and Figli which made many machined parts for other companies until they went into business for themselves. In Omer's case that work went to China in recent years and they may only have assembled in Italy, but the guns may have been shipped ready to go from China as I have no way of knowing. With the emphasis on band guns and having been kicked around the block in some quarters Omer probably decided to quit pneumatics once key people left the organisation. Sporasub has been a shell ever since it was sold around various companies once it ceased to be an entity on its own back in its early days.
 
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If the productions molds are in China or Taiwan then it will be interesting to see if they are acquired for a look alike gun out of Asia. Perhaps the "Me Too Atmosphere" speargun or the "Etiquette"! "Wun Air" might be a bit obvious.
 
I can't recall if I have said this publicly here before but some years ago, at a dive show in Shanghai, I met a guy from a Taiwanese manufacturer who insisted his factory was making the One Air. I had shown him a pic of my gun and he said: "Yup, we make that one".
A lot of TW companies moved their factories across the strait a few decades ago, so where exactly it was made, I don't know.
Also, years ago in a group chat on Chinese social media pics of the latest CF sporasub gun (SK40?) turned up. They were stacked up on a table in what, ostensibly, looked like a Chinese factory (Asian looking workers, and very much a Chinese factory look - I have been to many).
 
Well if the molds are in Taiwan then maybe a company like Hang Fung (Aqua Gear) may continue some of them, most likely the "XII" as it has a simple tubular tank. The "Airbalete" may be less likely with the hydroformed tank. The "One Air" depends on who makes the extrusion for the triple chamber tank tube. The brand names are relatively easy to remove from the molds to create new nameplates on the guns.
 
Just had a look at a brand new Omer XII pneumatic speargun and on the end of the shipping box where the product number and bar code are printed on a labelling sticker it says "Made in Taiwan" (in tiny letters). So no doubt now where these guns are made. The shipping box is quite good as it keeps the gun, spear and hand pump and zip lock bagged hand loader well apart so that they cannot rub on each other during shipping. This is accomplished by using a stiff cardboard insert which is folded and slotted in strategic places to keep everything in place in the long white cardboard box. No shooting line included, but there is some black cylindrical object which was with the hand loader that must have some purpose, might be a spare shock absorber.
 
As for rebranding, I think the molds already have inserts for the logos. At least I see a sort of box shaped separation line around the “Sporasub” name on mine.


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