Quote Originally Posted by ChrisC View Post
Boingers are just as popular as ever, well except maybe in my regions FT winter league where they seem to be dying out a little.

One thing that always makes me giggle though.......Springers are tuned so that they'll shoot as close to a PCP as possible??
Hi Chris ... I have to agree with your final comment but I do so in an amused way. There is, of course, a natural desire in all shooters to get their rifle shooting as sweetly as possible and if you enjoy your shooting there can be a tendency to want to inject cash on 'improving' or modifying your rifle. Sometimes this even extends to changing the rifle. So a shooter gets an 'out of the box' rifle and spends some money on a 'tune' of some sort generated by an itch to improve the feel of the rifle and also the performance. Once this itch has been satisfied, another one develops and another change is made or equipment added; etc etc. All perfectly natural and not peculiar to springers.
The desire to bring a springer into pcp territory is clearly real but will never be totally achievable without a recoil eliminating mechanism ... no matter what people claim, recoil is always there even in the 'tuned' rifles; it is just that the performance and shooting characteristics have been modified or hidden from the shooter so that the perceived recoil is far less. In this respect, spring bearings, top hat and spring guides, heavy stocks, barrel weights are all routes to achieve this. But the thrill of shooting a springer remains. You can still feel the life pulsing through the stock and action rather than the dead wffp of a pcp. Occasionally I shoot a Park, a truly 'dead' springer than can feel deader than a pcp. It is very pleasant to shoot but you still know it is a springer, both physically and mentally.
Cheers, Phil