Benjamin Trail NP break barrel pistol Nitro Piston by Crosman
Benjamin Trail NP break barrel pistol Nitro Piston by Crosman bought @ http://www.ppschietsport.nl
Nitro Piston, .177 cal, rifled steel barrel, tactical synthetic frame, fiber optic front sight, adjustable rear sight, includes a cocking aid
quote from the review section on this pistol's product page on crosman.com:
Good pistol/ Don't rush to judgement
By Will
2014-01-25 17:16:31
Kudos to Crosman for making the jump to fitting a nitro piston to a small profile operating system. Before purchasing I read several reviews most of which contained some negativity to one or more aspect of this pistol but I was intrigued by the innovation of a nitro piston in a small airgun platform.and ordered one. My background in the Military and Law Enforcement over the years enabled me to fire just about every shoulder and hand held weapon made and most took some time to identify strong and weak points. With that in mind I performed a detailed break in and self testing of the BBP77. First I went over the pistol and found the screws attaching the receiver to the stock were all loose which was fixed easily with a drop of loc-tite blue on not more than two threads and re-tighten. Based on reviews before the first shot was fired I thoroughly cleaned the barrel which took half an hour to reach my standard of a clean bore. Then I removed the rear sight and was pleasantly surprised that Benjamin had the foresight to mount these in the scope grooves milled in the receiver giving me some options of placement of a red dot optic that has a 3 MOA dot. (The primary use for this pistol is rat hunting in my chicken barn so all my air handguns get a red dot for humane shooting)
Although Benjamin states that normal breaking is around 250 shots I elected to shoot 500 for a thorough eval. Ammunition used throughout the eval. was Crosman single die premium wad cutters at a range of 10 meters. All shooting was done from a sandbag bench rest for control purposes. It took about 20 shots to achieve an acceptable POA to POI . Once done I began break in and evaluation. First noted was heavy and long trigger pull resulting in numerous flyers. At about 50 shots I began to notice the trigger smoothing somewhat and right before discharge there began to develop an over center sensation on my trigger finger. After feeling this sensation the pistol consistently discharged with another 1/4 inch of pull which I was able to measure at 2 pounds vs. initial starting trigger pull at 6.75 lbs. I think we have a two stage trigger here. The more I shot it the more familiar I taught myself to use this over center sensation to my advantage and the flyers immediately ceased. The more I shot the pistol the smoother the trigger felt which I believe was result and of moving parts of the trigger mechanism wearing in.
By shot # 75 I began to notice grouping tightening up to about one inch. By shot # 100 I noticed cocking becoming easier. Based on reviews I opted not to utilize the cocking assist but found that without it the.front sight was a little painful on my palm while cocking. The solution was simple. Grab a cleaning rag out of my kit and cover the front sight with it while cocking. No more discomfort. Using the cleaning rag to aid cocking is an insignificant inconvenience and one of these can be kept in the pistol carrying case.
Between shots 75 and 250 all that happened was the pistol demonstrating a visible and palpable response to break in. Shot groups tightened down to about the size of a dime, cocking became easier and my familiarity with the heavy initial trigger pull transitioning the over center sensation became better.
I continued on until a full 500 shots were discharged during which time I carefully adjusted the optic until I was shooting groups measuring about 1/4 inch from 10 meters.
In summary, don't believe everything you read about this pistol. Yes it's heavy, Yes it's big and yes it has a heavy and long initial trigger pull than Benjamin should deal with for their customers. Don't expect immediate out of the box wonder weapon status but give it a thorough bore cleaning, properly break the pistol in and find that over center spot on the trigger pull and you will have an enjoyable virtually silent, recoilless and accurate pistol ( provided you put decent optics on it) that should give you loads of shooting pleasure.
Is it perfect? No. Can you learn it's idiosyncrasies and have some fun? Absolutely.
Sorry for the long winded post but I believed the pistol was one in which new ground was broken (nitro piston in a pistol) and it deserved a fair unbiased evaluation.
Benjamin, if you read these posts there and two things you could to to improve this pistol: 1) refine that trigger. 6.75 pounds is way too much for a .177 cal anything ; 2) develop and market this shooting platform in a .22 caliber version. I would purchase one in a heartbeat.
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