Work. Physical activity. Labor. These terms in an age of automatic this and power that are a bit anachronistic. When I was a kid, I always thought that working out in the gym during the summer break was a neat concept, but I was too tired from mixing cement and keeping the brick layer I worked for supplied with brick and block during the day and bucking hay bales for local farmers at night. I was pretty stout for a 14 year old, comparatively speaking. Good old fashioned work is good for the body.
But work, that in the form of utilizing a manual hand pump to fill the tank or bottle of a pre-charged pneumatic air rifle (PCP) might seem overrated at a “grown-up” phase of life. Why on earth would anyone want to consider using a handpump? Let’s take a quick look at a few reasons you might want to keep a high-pressure hand pump close by.
Your Electric Pump Might Fail
Yes, you spent good money on an expensive high pressure compressor but it is time for some routine maintenance or the thing just kicks the bucket. It’s either wait until you can get the pump fixed or purchase another one. If you have a hand pump, you can easily maintain the fill on your PCPs with just a small number of pumps. A hand pump is essential for this scenario.
The Power Might Go Out
It’s no problem to wait out a short power outage but what if the power outage lasts longer than a few hours or even a few days? Hey, it’s happened before. Just ask the people in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. Extended power disruptions are a real possibility in this crazy world we live in. If you don’t have a generator and an electric PCP compressor, then you certainly need a hand pump.
Hand Pumps are Very Portable
With a total weight of about 4 pounds, a handpump offers the ultimate in portability. Even a compact electric compressor will weigh in around 20 pounds– far too heavy to carry around in the field. Put your hand pump on the back of your quad, in your backpack, or behind the seat of your truck and be ready wherever you are.
Hand Pumps are Good Exercise
If you are reading this, you could be in better physical condition. Yes, you, tubby. Adding some exertion to your life in the name of your favorite hobby is far from the worst thing you could do. If nothing else you will prolong the maintenance intervals of your electric compressor.
Smaller Tanks are Easy to Fill
For people who have a compact PCP air rifle like the Umarex Notos or Notos Gen 2, a handpump is the easiest, cheapest solution for filling. These smaller caliber airguns sip air from the tank and simply don’t require a huge tank to sustain several magazines of shots fired. Rather than going whole-hog with an electric compressor, a simple, affordable hand pump makes for an excellent pairing with a compact PCP air rifle.
Hot Tip
No matter what else you have in your airgun accessory closet, you definitely need a high pressure hand pump. A great strategy for use, should the above mentioned conditions arise, is to fill more often rather than shooting several dozen pellets before filling. Using this strategy, you will pump less and the rifle’s tank will never get close to falling off of the regulator pressure. If you apply a shoot-until-the-pellets-start-dropping strategy, you will be pumping for a long, long time. Shoot a magazine or so and then top off with a handful of pump strokes and you will be no worse for the wear.