Omer quitting Pneumatic Spearguns

[popgun pete]

"Warning! We made the world's heaviest muzzle so YOU HAVE to buy our larger, uglier, foam nose cone to alleviate wrist pain!".
Just kidding, of course - what's the real warning about?

Actually, the 120 is very well balanced but perhaps the shorter guns are not.

It is instructing you to push the line release back before you cock the gun, hence the finger pointing at an image of the line release arm. However if you had no idea what the inside of the line release arm looked like it might not be immediately obvious. I expect it is the last line of defence if a new owner peels the red sticker off and never looks in the instruction book before loading the gun and they can say “we tried” at any future inquest.

Basically they made a potentially dangerous to load gun which can shoot as soon as you take your hand off the loading bar and rather than fix it they have resorted to signs and stickers. Omitting a strong return spring also saved money.

 

[Diving Gecko]

It is instructing you to push the line release back before you cock the gun, hence the finger pointing at an image of the line release arm. However if you had no idea what the inside of the line release arm looked like it might not be immediately obvious. I expect it is the last line of defence if a new owner peels the red sticker off and never looks in the instruction book before loading the gun and they can say “we tried” at any future inquest.

Basically they made a potentially dangerous to load gun which can shoot as soon as you take your hand off the loading bar and rather than fix it they have resorted to signs and stickers. Omitting a strong return spring also saved money.

Ah, that thing, of course.
Mine did ship with the red sticker on the handle but at that time, they had not yet updated the manual to include the warning (I think). With the auto resetting spring, which I think the Airbalete had, I guess it's not an issue, but Sporasub took that out - maybe to differentiate the product, maybe to save a cent, maybe because a strong spring allegedly can mess with accuracy.
Since the line release is so short it didn't take long before I made a longer one myself and there's actually a sweet spot where you can trim down the height of the line release enough that you can still flick it open after loading without tripping the trigger.
But I AM TALKING ABOUT A DIY LINE RELEASE! If you have the stock line release, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS.

 

[popgun pete]

There was no return spring on the Omer AIR XII, so it looks like later guns had no spring. Most side release pneumatic guns have a return spring such as the Mares and Pelengas guns. Salvimar have their four arm "windmill" line release arm, so they did not need one.

 

[popgun pete]

This is the red warning sticking that wrapped the "One Air" gun just forwards of the detachable rear handle. I had to stick it back together as it tears when you remove it, hence the slight misalignment.

 

[Diving Gecko]

Yep. Same as mine back in 2013.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[popgun pete]

Could be a business opportunity for someone to manufacture and sell stainless steel replacements, particularly the transmission pin that crosses a pressure boundary. Every one of these Airbalete family guns are going to have problems eventually with plated pins, although the long one in the removable handle is just a push rod and sits in water for its full length. I guess we should be grateful they did not make it out of plastic.

 

[popgun pete]

Just realized all the Omer and Sporasub manuals can be downloaded from here: http://www.omersub.com/en/download/
These are the manuals you receive with the gun, there are no parts lists or exploded parts diagrams unfortunately. That said as they have no regulator blocks they should be fairly simple guns inside, most of the works are shown in those mechanism diagrams about how the sear lever operates.

 

[Diving Gecko]

[...]That said as they have no regulator blocks they should be fairly simple guns inside, most of the works are shown in those mechanism diagrams about how the sear lever operates.

As a service to anyone coming here in the future looking to take their Airbalete/One Air/Air XII apart here's a thread with a whole lot of pics of a One Air "tear down":

Sporasub One Air Assembly (and other related stuff)

I just took apart my One Air to change the piston and another part that Spora/Omer had sent to me. And... just to have a look at how it is put together of course:-)Some things are quite nice. Some less so. But we can take that as it comes.First five pix are an introduction to the major...

forums.deeperblue.com

 

[popgun pete]

It has been a long time since I looked at those photos, but they are very good for seeing the inner works. Knowing what we know now some quirky aspects can be sheeted home to the Taiwanese. The trigger transmission pin being 2 mm on the inside and 1.5 mm on the outside is to stop it being blown out of the gun. In most pneumatic guns the presence of the trigger stops it being blown out, but on the Airbalete family they cannot do that as the handle comes off taking the trigger with it. Because they had to machine this pin to create a step that holds it in the gun they made it out of brass! I remember dismantling a GSD Katiuscia gun full of machined and threaded pins and all were stainless steel, but then GSD were expensive guns made in Italy.

 

[popgun pete]

The on-line pdf version of the Sporasub "One Air" manual has the warning page incorporated rather than being an afterthought which is stapled into the booklet. When someone decided that it would be a good idea to actually display this message on the body of the gun they obviously took it literally!

 

[popgun pete]

Interestingly at one time early "Airbalete" guns had a return spring on the line release lever, but it was later deleted. Possibly the spring was weak and useless, or too strong, particularly as with the "One Air" with its front tied spear as soon as the spear moves it pulls on the line release lever.

Another possibility it was too fiddly holding everything in position when mounting it in the gun as you belted the pivot pin in with a hammer.

From the "Airbalete" manual:
-Be certain that the spring of the line release mechanism is in perfect working order, that it maintains the proper tension level and it is properly positioned.

 

[popgun pete]

Interesting to look at the pumping tables, especially as all these "Airbalete" rear handle guns use the same hand pump.

 

[Diving Gecko]

The on-line pdf version of the Sporasub "One Air" manual has the warning page incorporated rather than being an afterthought which is stapled into the booklet. When someone decided that it would be a good idea to actually display this message on the body of the gun they obviously took it literally!
View attachment 56338

Wow... That nose cone; just wow. In the end, they actually spent quite a bit of time, energy and resources dealing with this issue. You would have thought that them knowing since about 2012, they would have sorted out the root issue instead of all these band aids.

 

[popgun pete]

Wow... That nose cone; just wow. In the end, they actually spent quite a bit of time, energy and resources dealing with this issue. You would have thought that them knowing since about 2012, they would have sorted out the root issue instead of all these band aids.

I suspect that the Taiwanese were eventually left to their own devices, plus back home Omer/Sporasub had probably lost interest. Looks like that number on the side of the gun is a serial number after all as I saw an “Airbalete” 90 cm which had a similar plate showing 11483.

 

[popgun pete]

The larger the tank volume is in a gun then the more pump strokes are needed to reach a given pressure. The "Airbalete" must have a bigger tank than the “One Air” as for the 100 cm guns it is 1270 vs 961. The "Air XII" 100 cm requires 1135 for the same pressure of 30 atm.

This explains why the "One Air" stayed with the 11 mm diameter inner barrel as a smaller tank makes the compression ratio go up. It would have been a different matter if the entire "One Air" gun body was a tank as then it could have used a 13 mm diameter inner barrel as the compression ratio would be much lower.

 

[popgun pete]

One way to remember to swing the line release lever back on these "Airbalete" family guns is to apply the safety lever after a shot and the victim has been collected and dispatched. This is because the safety will not move fully forwards to be "on" until the trigger is swung forwards, and that requires the line release lever swung back. You can then muzzle load the gun, complete the line wraps and when ready to resume hunting switch the safety lever "off" by swinging it back to lie horizontally. Personally I don’t like the safety on these guns, but here you can put it to good use.

 

[popgun pete]

I was looking at the piston nose which has a ring of small hemispherical bumps on the face of the piston. Mares was one of the first to do this and I think their purpose is to align the piston as it presses on the shock absorber anvil by the bumps sitting just inside the bore hole (although in my original Cyrano those bumps are positioned well inside the hole, so there they seem to do nothing). Therefore the ring of bumps may have a piston centralizing function.

Thus it was with some surprise that I noticed the similar bumps on the Omer piston nose actually sit on the face of the shock absorber, not inside the bore hole, which means a high contact pressure when the bumps slam into the shock absorber face. This would seem to be a recipe for cracking pistons and shock absorbers until those bumps flatten off as it concentrates the impact on small contact areas. I noted that the “Air XII” had what looked like a spare shock absorber in the bag that contained the hand loader and the gap between piston and shock absorber could be easily seen by looking through the relief ports as the piston was sitting on the bumps!

 

[popgun pete]

If you have problems with the small sliding pin and its "O" rings that cross the gun's pressure boundary in order to operate the release mechanism then you can purchase this part as a sub-assembly. The item is referred to as the "Main Cork" and seems to be a better proposition than levering out the brass inserts that hold the "O" rings in place if you need to replace them as most likely the chrome plating on the pin would be damaged unless you were very careful. Of course if the plated pin is already corroded then you can replace the original part and just put it aside in case you may need it. With the guns discontinued I would advise not throwing anything away.

 

[simy696]

OMER AIRXII PNEUMATIC GUN found one of these for sale worth me buying 1 as a beginner

 

[popgun pete]

I have seen them sell for 150 bucks in 90 cm and 80 cm in recent times to get rid of them, so at that price it is a good deal. There are better guns, but they don't often get that low. The AIR XII is probably the best of them, but is equipped with a tiny speartip which may be worth replacing as it has very short floppers.