Are You Ready to Give Up that Airgun Hand Pump?

If you shoot PCP rifles or have been wanting to go beyond your break barrels and enter the world of PCPs there’s no doubt you’ve asked yourself how you’re going to get enough air to push that airgun pellet or slug to your airgun target. Making a trip to the local scuba shop is a hassle and shelling out a lot of money for a dependable air compressor that’s not easy to travel with isn’t attractive, especially for airgun hunters.

And let’s face it, none of us enjoy using an airgun hand pump. It gets tiring real quick. Just watch that Rossi Morreale video where he uses a hand pump to air up the Umarex Gauntlet! And he was young then! My .177 Gauntlet sat in my airgun safe for quite a while because I just wasn’t looking forward to the workout. I did it once and then shrugged the hand pump off, at least until the Origin .22 came along. That rifle is certainly manageable with an airgun hand pump but it’s not ideal if you’d like to shoot through more than 30 to 40 rounds. Now that I’ve got more than one PCP rifle, it’s time to have the handpump as a backup and own one of those air compressors for airguns.

Convenient High Pressure Air Filling for PCP Airguns

We all “want” something. It’s just our nature. It might be a new truck or maybe just a new knife. For many of us that shoot airguns, it’s an electric compressor that we want. High pressure air for airguns is not readily available and the compressor in your garage you use to power your impact wrench, spray gun, or to air up your tires with just won’t get above about 150 psi. To power your airgun likely requires at least 2,000 psi and more likely 3,000 psi. That’s a huge spread!

An airgun compressor will open up the doors to a whole new realm of airgunning and now that I’m ready to buy one, the Umarex ReadyAir has entered the scene. That’s significant because it doesn’t require oil to operate and is virtually maintenance free for the backyard airgun enthusiast!

The Umarex ReadyAir Airgun Compressor is a Workhorse

At the 2020 Athlon Rendezvous shooting range event, where a few outdoor writers wanted to shoot the .50 caliber Hammer, there was no electricity. It took place in the potato fields of Idaho. As Eydin Hansen (@TXHogDude) can attest, all that was available was the generator at the field tent too far away from the range bays or a vehicle battery. Fortunately the Umarex ReadyAir is equipped with the ability to run off of a 12-volt vehicle battery and it comes with long battery cables, which I have not seen with other airgun compressors on the market. There were two Hammers on the range and one compressor. That machine was hooked up to a rental car and those .50 caliber rifles alternated fill after fill. For five straight hours that compressor ran in the blowing dusty wind after every two and sometimes three shots out of a Hammer with just a couple of minutes in between fills as the guns were swapped out. Never was a drop of oil added. It just ran and ran and ran. If there were any doubt about the ReadyAir’s capability before that, they were certainly dissipated.

This compressor is built solid. It has the look of a small welding machine but doesn’t weigh all that much at just 25 lbs. Our family pug-zu weighs more than that. If you were to take the cabinet off you’d find solid metal parts, high-power fans and a smart electrical system under the hood. It doesn’t look all that complicated really.

The Smart Way to Air Up Your Airguns

Setting up the Ready Air airgun compressor was simple. It came in a special corrugated shipper box with plastic straps holding it shut and inside the unit sat in a dense foam that protected it during shipping. The power cable, battery cables, manual, and piston ring maintenance kit were tucked inside nicely.

After a quick read through the ReadyAir manual set-up was extremely simple. Just plug it in. If you wanted to set the digital readout panel from English to Spanish or from PSI to Bar you’d have to navigate through some buttons, but it’s not complicated at all. To set your desired pressure just hold down the up or down arrow. Put on some safety glasses, connect the fill hose to the unit and your PCP gun and ensure the bleed valve is shut tightly. Turn it on and watch the pressure rise. It really was that simple. It smartly shuts down the filling when the pressure reaches the number you set it at.

I’ve locked up an airgun compressor before rendering it useless until I was able to get it serviced. Admittedly, I didn’t add oil when I should have so it overheated. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it wasn’t mine. So there’s a tremendous peace of mind with the ReadyAir because its smart technology automatically shuts down the piston compression and keeps the cooling fans on when it reaches its pre-set overheat threshold.

Now the Gauntlet doesn’t sit so long in my air gun cabinet between uses and I’ve got my eyes on another PCP Rifle that’s better suited for the range as opposed to my backyard. Something that can put the smackdown on a bit further out. With the Umarex ReadyAir range bays without electricity and airgun hunting excursions are now not a problem.

What are you waiting for? Keep that air gun hand pump as a back up and get the Umarex ReadyAir electric airgun compressor. It’s time to start shooting a PCP rifle or pistol!

Shoot safe. Shoot often. -JB

JB is just a man in pursuit of a deeper relationship with God, a lover of his wife and family, the outdoors, and moments of quiet stillness when not shooting, fishing, camping, or hiking. Oh, and a workaholic.