From the Dumb Questions Dept. This time HW80

[Stretchabusa]

Hello again,
With all this talk of HW80 Mk1's Mk2's etc I have a couple of questions to pause to the 'Fountains of Knowledge' on this Forum.

1/ How many Mk's have been made.
2/ Apart from collectability in the early ones, which are the best.
3/ The last Mk made, previous to to the new and current Silenced model, is that the last of the so called tamperproof models.

Sorry to be a pain, but some good could come out of this, for other Forum Members benifit.

Best regards Stretchabusa.

[Hsing-ee]

Easily the best one is the R1 for sale by DM80. Only £250, I'd have it but for 'liquidity issues' as they say.

[Stretchabusa]

Easily the best one is the R1 for sale by DM80. Only £250, I'd have it but for 'liquidity issues' as they say.

Yes, it turned out a very interesting Thread that one of DM80's
As you know he removed it from sale, also, Mrs Stretchabusa might not be too happy at an imeadiate purchase due to me having just resurfaced and
buying the HW77, only last week!, still get Crimbo over and who knows!!

Thanks for you're response Hsing-ee.
Best regards Stretchabusa.

[RustyBuzz]

It must be remembered what a huge impact the 80 made when launched. From the pics that were circulating, we were all looking forward to a FWB sport with a record trigger, what we got was anything but.

On first handling the rifle it was enormous, the 35 was big but this thing was huge. The reason for this only became obvious when it was shot.
At the time reaching the 'legal limit' was a real challenge for most air rifles, the 80 however had the opposite problem. We had seen nothing like this, all of a sudden Airgun World was featuring ads advertising 17, 18 even 19ftlbs. This was incredible, a whole new world of possibility, no one had dreamt that this was possible from a spring rifle.

And that one attribute is the secret of the HW80's success. In all other aspects I have always found them to be very mediocre (Heresy to some I know). I have owned many but always found their accuracy, at sub 12ftlbs, to be disappointing compared to the 124.

A very, very important air rifle though, changed the face of our sport forever.

ATB

Richard

[Hsing-ee]

Part of the success of the HW80 is that alot of the first batch were erm - a bit HOT to say the least. Chronographs were rare and no-one knew what their guns really put out, just took it from the mags that it was ' 11.9 ft/lbs'. I borrowed one from a mate and it severely damaged my backstop in an afternoon's plinking, the housebricks it was made of couldn't take the pounding. Everyone who used the early 80s for hunting thought it was knocking the rabbits down because of some special HW magic, rather than a few foot-pounds too many.

The other thing was that, as Richard says, it is a very large, heavy gun and this might have made it easier to shoot accurately for some people than the Feinwerkbau Sport, which is rather hold-sensitive.

Personally, I didn't like it nearly as much as my HW35 Export, which was much better balanced, smoother, more accurate and had a beautiful stock. But then, it couldn't blow a brick in half!

[I. J.]

the 80/77 has a lot to answer for they put to death the FWB sport/original 45/arnie 335/BSF's/BSA's mercury & airsporter s models/ even the great HW35 lost sales. i still consider these 2 airguns the best ever even though i love my big original/diana 52 & 54's.

dave.

.... and the Relum Tornado!
Totally agree (again) Dave. The quest for 'dustbin killers' put a lot of good quality and accurate rifles into the shade and in a few cases extinction.
It appears that many collectors and the more appreciative are now finding again the joys of these character rifles with the help of this BBS, of course.

ATB
Ian

[BTDT]

As far as the HW77 is concerned, I know that Weihrauch did not use nor recognise the 'Mk.1, 2' etc model names that we tend to use. Was the HW80 the same?

[pennineway.fswo]

With regard to accuracy, I agree fully with Richard.

I bought one of the first .177 HW80's to use for FT

It settled down to about 11.5 ft lbs after a couple of tins of pellets, however despite its excellent trigger, it just could not match the accuracy of my FWB 124 and so was never put into competition

I used to be a member of a small bore club at the time and one or two members brought along .22 HW80's with stronger springs(square section I believe). These were well into the fire-arms class for power, but were not nice to shoot and accuracy at 25 yards was pretty bad, in fact it was absolutely terrible.
In the field, rabbits at 20 yards or beyond would have been very safe from harm from one of these rifles.
The only spring rifle of the day that I found could match the FWB 124 was the Original 45. However the HW77 then moved the goal posts and was the gun to own

[RustyBuzz]

In my experience the rifle that killed off all the air rifle diversity of the early 80s was the karbine version of the HW77. The 80 had an impact on general sales but the FWB and also the 45 to a degree, were still strong in field target. They even stayed strong for the first 18 months of the 77s existence. I was still winning well into mid 1985 with my 124.

What changed everything was the introduction of the Karbine version of the HW77. Sales of everything else died overnight, 49 out of every 50 rifles that we sold was a 77k, fitted with a Tasco 2-7x32. Which begs the question I guess, where are all those scopes?

[Hsing-ee]

49 out of every 50 rifles that we sold was a 77k, fitted with a Tasco 2-7x32. Which begs the question I guess, where are all those scopes?

I have seen one or two of these Tascos for sale on the BBS, none of the 611VFMs. You do get the odd Optima Moonlighter and Supermoonlighter for sale, both of which were considered good in the 80s.

[fat man]

I have a Mark 1 model in .22 customised by the Airgun Centre by John Stevens,. Its 26 years old this March, when i returned to shooting after a near 22 year lay of i sent it back to Airgun Centre for a refurb. It is just as accurate and powerful as allways. 11.7 with Accupels. Question why do we not here more praise for Airgun Centre or Sandwell Feild Sports !. Shoot the 80 and enjoy.

[Nemesis]

I think you'll find that discerning owners of Tasco 2-7x32 scopes tended to keep them, as they were optically very good. I still have three of them together with a 615W (1.75-5x40) and a later 2.75x40 model, currently fitted to an HW100 KS. There's no faffing around with parallax rings with a 626V and the "TV" view helps prevent canting to some degree.