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RWS LP8 Pistol Review
By Tom Holzel
LP8 Pistol Builds on a Long Tradition
I was as thrilled as many other owners of the Walther LP53 air pistol (“LP” is German for Luft Pistole) when James Bond appeared on movie posters for four of his films holding this svelte pistol. And it was a decent target pistol as well, producing 1/2-inch groups at 10 meters by a skilled shooter. What the gun lacked was horse-power and range. Trying to shoot pigeons annoyed them more than anything else.
Now along comes RWS with a real powerhouse of a pistol, the Walther spring-piston Model LP8. With five lbs-ft of muzzle energy, this hunter’s pistol carries four lbs-ft out to 20 yards and three lbs-ft (enough for the smaller pest birds) to 45 yards. Using light weight pellets such as the RWS Hyper MAX results in a relatively flat trajectory when sighted in at this reasonable distance. In fact the working range of this gun can be varied greatly all depending on just how flat you want it to shoot.
Obviously, you can’t go after the larger varmints such as squirrels and wood chucks, but pest birds such as the English sparrow and grackles make excellent targets and result in human kills up to as far as 40 yards or so.
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Trajectory of the HyperMAX pellet when zeroed to 25-yards. The 1-inch envelop begins at 8 yards and reaches out to 31-yards. Darn flat shooting!
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Zeroing the LP8 to 40 yards increases the range (obviously) and trajectory envelop thickens to a manageable+1-1/2-inch from 5 to 45yds. Quite impressive for an air pistol.
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Standard-weight (8.2 grain) SuperPoint pellets (left) look just like the light-weight HyperMAX cousins, which have a mass of only 5.2 grains—37% lighter. Using the lighter pellet gives the LP8 air rifle-like trajectories
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Here is the energy output of the LP8, using the lightweight (5.2 gr) HyperMax pellets which are ideally suited for this gun. |
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Sunlight brilliantly illuminates the fiber optic tubes of the front (red) and rear (green) sights. Place the red dot in-between the two green ones and level the three lighted dots just below the target, and you’ve got a perfect sight picture. A gentle squeeze of the trigger and “chunk’”—the LP8 fires a pellet down range.
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The pistol is a break-barrel and if you do a lot of shooting at one time, you might want to use a glove to protect your hand from the front sight, or use a cocking assist handle, which provides a more comfortable way of cocking the barrel, and allows the shooter to get a better angle for easier cocking.
The LP 8 provides outstanding fiber optic sights, resulting in rapid target acquisition in even the beginning of twilight. The small fiber optic tubes are horizontal to collect the maximum amount of ambient light and transmit it straight back to the shooter’s eye. These sights light-up even in early evening shooting.
Novice pistol shooters might be surprised at how difficult it seems to get on target, especially after racing home from the post office to try the gun for the first time. They should use a two handed grip to steady the gun. A great practice exercise is to aim the gun at a large target—say an unfolded newspaper. Then close both eyes and gently pull the trigger. You won’t hit the bull’s eye very often, but after a while you’ll start to get closer—and you’ll quickly get a sense of when the gun is going to shoot. And you won’t feel the need (as all beginner shooters do) to jerk the trigger just as the sights wave across the bull’s eye—a classic mistake. Just realize that this is an accurate pistol. All the aiming errors are yours! So practice, practice, practice. And pretty soon you’ll see significant improvement. Once you get the hang of it you’ll be ready to try your hand in the field.
Items mentioned in this article:
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