crosman nightstalker tk review

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Picture courtesy of Ten Gelm.

Average Ratings

Accuracy	7/10
Handling	7.6/10
Value for Money	5.5/10
Reviewer Rating	6/10
Overall Rating	7.4/10

50% Recommended13 out of 26 Reviews

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By CenturionKX1230 on 22nd Feb 2007

CenturionKX1230's Ratings

Accuracy	9/10
Handling	9/10
Value for money	3/10
Overall value	3/10
CenturionKX1230's recommendation

Good Points

Attractively styled
Pleasantly dimensioned
Good ergonomics
The blowback lock gives a decent impression of a tactical shooting experience

Bad Points

Shoddy manufacture - bad choice of using a plastic rotary clip instead of a cast/milled metal one. The clip advance mechanism is not properly protected and it is prone to getting stuck. The clip advance lock is not well made, and it allows the clip to be out of line with the barrel.
No heat/cold sink to deal with the CO2 expansion temperature drop.

General Comments

At first I was nearly delirious with the arrival of the NightStalker, and after testing and centering the sights, I had a blast on the 50 meter range. If and when it works, it's absolutely fabulous, and if you can manage to deal with the oscillating bolt, it's well designed for being used by lefties as well as by righties. I managed rapid-fire (<5 second for 12 rounds) .50 inch groupings at 25 meters and just over 1 inch groupings at 50 meters, which is fairly impressive for a weapon with a barrel that's not bolted or threaded into the main structure of the mechanism.

But...
Over the next couple of days, I started noticing that the weapon sometimes mis-fired, and upon inspection of the pellet, it appeared that the clip and the barrel are sometimes not properly aligned, and therefore the pellet will get stuck, which sucks for the following reason:
The moment this happens, you can throw away the plastic clip because the advance mechanism acts as a chisel and shaves off an advance tooth on the clips, and the clip will from that moment on, invariably fail to advance past the damaged tooth. Also, the clip appears to get more play and starts leaking at the propellant gasket.

The rotary advance mechanism principle is no rocket-science, and it has been very successfully used for nearly 200 years in revolvers. This is just a severe case of ill-design and of shoddy manufacturing.

Worse still is the fact that there is no proper provision on the weapon to vent off the cold of the expanding CO2. This causes condensation of normal air moisture to accumulate on the metal parts inside the weapon; the barrel being one of them, which in turn can and will lead to corrosion of the rifled barrel. Since it is not advisable to take this weapon apart, it is impossible to properly clean it of moisture in other ways than heating it up after each used clip, adversely impacting the accuracy.
That is an unacceptable inconvenience for competition sports shooting, and renders this weapon, nicely styled and pleasant to shoot, but utterly useless after about 1200 to 1500 rounds.

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