Gamo Centre and Target Pistol

[zooma]

I bought a Gamo Target pistol off the BBS this week and it arrived this morning, so I took it to the Rossendale Club tonight and was pleasently surprised - as well as enjoying a small overdose of nostalgia.

After setting the sights to shoot at 10 metres, even I was able to get all 10 shots in the black after the pistol had "settled down" a little and stopped deiseling ( I had forgotten about this sort of thing) and it brought back fond memories of when I first started shooting target air pistols back in Exmouth in the early seventies. The recoil, the sound and the smell brought the memories flooding back!

In those early days our target pistols varied from a Webley Junior, an HW70, an Original Model 5, Walther LP53, and several Gamo Centre underlever pistols as they were the best value for money and they shot well enough "once you got used to them"- but all the pistols were .177 - so we did it right.

We never had this "posh" GAMO Centre "Target" version at all surprisingly - but if we did I am sure it would have been very popular. Probably by the time this version came out the first of the recoiless pistols like the Original Model 6 had arrived and spoiled its sales potential hugely, and that's probably why we never saw one in the Exmouth Club.

When compared to the standard Centre pistol, the plastic grip gained an adjustable handshelf and a better trigger - both a good upgrade over the standard Centre. I still have an old GAMO Centre so the comparison was very interesting.

The Centre has a grip that is adjustable for rake, so it was possible to get the classic "wrist down" free pistol position for those that wanted it - not possible with the Target, but the trigger was not so good in comparison, but it was still OK once you had practiced with it and it was actually lot better than the Webley.

Overall, a great experience and already we are talking about a monthly "springer" competition to help drag all those old springers back into action and fill the range with those old sounds and smells!