RWS 9N Pistol Reviews

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Good Points: Powerful, accurate, compact. Well engineered, easy to load and cock. Built like a tank.

Bad Points: Rear sights not adjustable for elevation, windage adjustment is problematic. No longer in production.

General comments: The RWS 9N pistol is a "nickel" variant of the 9B. Both guns are actually made by a Spanish company, Cometa, and are known as the Indian. Whichever branding they receive, they are all .177 calibre, spring-piston, overlever air pistols.

These guns are constructed with a very interesting feature: the barrels are fixed in place, above the compression tube, and the piston is cocked into the forward position by means of an external lever which pivots at the muzzle end of the frame. Pivoting this lever up and over the muzzle, and so down below the frame, turns a small gear which engages a perforated metal bar, racheting the piston forward until it is caught by the sear. Cocking is smooth and silent, and remarkably easy, entailing roughly half the cocking force of other overlevers, like the Webley Tempest (also a very nice pistol).

Because the barrel is fixed, the breech is located at the very back of the pistol, and is released by rotating the cocking lever forward (the lever serves as a block, to keep the spring-loaded breech assembly closed during firing). With the lever up out of the stowed position, the breech snaps open to the rear. A pellet is then layed in the loading trough, and fed into the breech by pushing the breech assembly closed. The pellet is seated by a long, integral loading pin, with O-ring seal.

There is very, very little plastic on the RWS 9N/9B (Cometa Indian); the handgrips are molded resin, as is the rear sight assembly, and the breech - which is only 1 inch long. The frame is very chunky, and slightly reminiscent of guns from movies like "Blade Runner" or "Robocop". I can't prove this, but it is my belief that the entire frame is Zinc alloy. The frame is very large, as is the pistol grip. The handgrips are nicely molded, and mine has a prominent thumb shelf on the left side grip, so it's RH specific. The barrel is definitely steel, good quality, and very nicely rifled. Mine has no crown on the muzzle whatsoever.

As the piston travels rearward during the firing cycle, this pistol has a (very pronounced) rearward recoil. It is similar to the recoil felt when firing a .22 LR target automatic. There is not a lot of noise on firing, the pellet is subsonic so there is not a "crack", like you hear with some high-powered spring rifles. The powerplant is also pretty quiet, and there is not much vibration.

There is little or no possibility of mounting a scope - if nothing else, a scope would interfere with cocking the over-lever. Unfortunately, the sights are pretty dismal; they consist of a square-notched rear and a post front. The rear sight has a miniscule amount of windage adjustment, achieved by loosening a locking screw and shifting the sight side to side by hand. There is no provision for elevation adjustment.

For a pistol, these guns are rather powerful. Realistic muzzle velocities in the mid 500's (fps) can be expected. I have seen advertisements claiming over 700 fps, but have never seen those kind of numbers for myself. My particular RWS 9N likes Crosman Premier Match pellets and Gamo Hunters, as well as RWS Hobbys. The Hobbys typically shake out around 530 fps. That's roughly 4.5 ft/lbs.

Accuracy is pretty good for a spring piston powerplant. I use mine primarily to shoot Coke cans in the back yard at 20 meters with a one-hand hold, and out to 35 meters using a two-hand hold. I'm not steady enough to deliver a good score on paper at 10M, so I don't have any anecdotes about cloverleafing 10-shot strings :) But I have heard other owners say they shoot 10M with their RWS 9x's (Cometa Indians) and that they can achieve scores of 85+.

Like the Webley Tempest, this is a plinking arm, and is built to survive years and years in a glove compartment or toolbox/tacklebox. For years of trouble-free plinking, the RWS 9N/9B/Cometa Indian is hard to beat.