So, today we're going to have a look at the Air Arms S510 TDR takedown rifle
which is in this very discreet injection molded plastic security case and inside
there you have everything you need for day shooting. As you can see it's compact
everything is in there that you need, not only is the case robust so you can put
it in the back of your car along with the rest of your gear and equipment and
it's not gonna get damaged, but it's also discrete. So if you're
going shooting and you want to keep that private this is a great way of
transporting your rifle and where your equipment without letting on what you're
doing. Now, as you can see everything is in here in the case, their rifles in
two sections a front end with the action and the pistol grip and the rear ends
with the butt, there's also storage place for pellets.
This little bag with the filler adapter and allen keys and also the N plug for
your barrel if you want to take off your moderator if you not concerned about
sound or you only really confined space and you don't want that extreme length.
Now the rifle itself when it's been fully assembled is 1.06 meters and
weighs in about two point eight kilo so it's quite a lightweight rifle, however
still has that standard rifle dimensions. If you're shooting an Ultimate Sporter
which the same action and their weight in about 3.6 kilos should give you an
idea this is significantly lighter. Comes together very easily, take the front end
back end, as you can see here there's three pins on the butt plate and there's
three receiving holes on the action, slot them together turn the mill grip at the
back which pulls the butt assembly into the action and the rifle is now
assembled and ready to go. Now, the rifle won't fire unless the butt plate has
been fully fitted into the action so it's pretty straightforward and simple
to do. What I'm going to do here is there is an accessory rail on the bottom of
the rifle, I'm just going to put on this bipod
and there we have it, nice compact and lightweight. It's a great rifle for all
hunting scenarios in standard versions some 12 foot pound version but there's
40 shots in both .177 and .22. If you get a higher power version which is 20 foot
pounds on .177 and 29 foot pounds in .22 and the shot capacity comes down to
15 which actually for a days rabbit shooting is probably about right but for
most of us 40 shots as it is a pretty good day out in the field. Now, looking at
the features and functionality starting from the back isn't adjustable butt pad,
I'm a great believer in getting a rifle to fit you as closer as possible and
using every plane of adjustment to your advantage. The quicker and more
intuitively the rifle comes to the shoulder the more likely it is your eyes
going to be aligned behind the scope and you can acquire that target in there and
the sight picture much easily. So, just simple butt pad nice soft touch cheek
piece underneath which can store two of the 10 shot Air Arms magazines, each of
those magazines itself indexing ten shot magazines two in the stock and then one
in the rifle itself gives you 30 shots that haven't fiddle around and reloading.
So as you come into the action itself as you can see it's Air Arms S510 side lever
action which is one of my favourites, it's fast indexing it's very positive you can
feel the lever in the dark so even if you're in a barn or you're hunting with
night vision then it's very intuitive to be able to use so it's a very fast
cycling I've never had any missed feeds with an Air Arms magazine or slightly
over action before so it's one of my preferred types of action for hunting
and on top of this we have an 11 millimeter dovetail scope rail to that
so fitted a Hawke Air Max 4x12 by 40. Just a little ejected scope which i
think is the ideal scope for this package. At the right level of
magnification, it's also got a TMX reticle which allows me to pinpoint my
aim points and my hold off points. Underneath that we have a walnut stock,
now this has a pistol grip which I'm pretty big fan of it allows you a lot of
versatility in terms of how you grab the rifle in terms of how you hold the rifle
your hand position can change you're not locked in by a thumb hole or by over
target style stock. I think the more variation you have on grip and more
closely fitting your butt that the better and more instinctively your shoot.
So as you move forward from there have a fully adjustable match-grade trigger
with the built-in safety, now course only blocks a trigger the only
way to be entirely safe to make sure you've never point the rifle at anything
you do on the shooter and you keep it pointing in their safe distance at all
times so safety is really down to you but it's always good to have these
barriers put in place to keep this as safe as possible. We've already seen the
accessory rail in the fore-end which can fit a stud all manner of different
accessories you know here I tend to use a bipod for a rifle this small, behind
that we have a built in manometer to let you know just how much air you have left
in the cylinder. Moving forward there's a 395 millimeter Lothar Walther
match-grade barrel, one of the things that Air Arms always do is put really
good quality barrels on there rifles, not only is the action consistent but
also the barrel will put the pellet where you want it. So, it's absolutely
vital to make sure that no expense is spared there that barrel is shrouded
which i think is a really nice touch nice feel that really solid rugged look
about it and then the Air Arms silencer on the end there. Now, this can be removed
as we've said before and a place with a plug at the end but this really does
bring the sound down to almost inaudible levels. So, there you have it lightweight,
compact, maneuverable and very well put together. One of the things you get with
Air Arms rifles is an incredible level of engineering and quality the finish on
these rifles really is second to none. Added to that how the internal workings
and mechanisms you get from over 30 years of making precision air rifles
means that the pellets that you fire from this rifle are going to go where
you want them consistently so with that in mind we're going to take this bad boy
out and have a look at how she performs on the range.
So, here we are at the range again with the Air Arms S510 TDR.
First things first, here is some of the equipment I will be using. Obviously what the Air Arms S510
itself, fitted with a Hawke 4x12 by 40 AirMax scope. We're going to start
by putting a few shots through it just to get a settle down, got the action
cycling put a few pellets through the barrel from then we're going to use the
scan crony to measure the velocity and the muzzle energy over the full charge
of the rifle to give it a shot string. We've got some HFT practice targets at
the end we're going to do a 10 shot magazine all the way through and see
what group we can secure it 30 yards. I'll be using Air Arms Diablo 2 2
pellets 16 grains and of course I've got a pen and paper and to note down all the
velocities and range data. We need to get the rifle charged up and get the
magazines loaded and the Air Arms S510 TDR runs off 190 bar fill pressure which
is easily topped up through this quick release valve at the end of the cylinder.
Loading the magazines on the Air Arms S510 TDR is very straightforward.
This is a standard 10 shot rotary indexing magazine that's familiar to all Air Arms
users. You open up this cocking lever, pull out the magazine dropping the
pellets and rotate the cylinder. Simply slide the magazine back into the action
throw the cocking lever forward, the rifle is now loaded and ready to fire.
So, I've fired 30, 40 shots through the barrel. I'm very happy that it's grouping
consistently so hopefully the actions all settled down now
these rifles shoot pretty well out of the box I know there's a train of
thought that says you need to let in a barrel but I've just had it 30 yards
down they're a group that will fit inside a five pounds piece I'm very
happy that she shooting consistently now I'm gonna run her through the
chronograph and see what the shot string delivers you know what the sweet spot
for this particular rifle is it's a long and laborious task, but here goes.
So, I have to say that was pretty remarkable. Air Arms claim 40 shots per
charge, but I've just run a hundred shot string through the TDR firing off three
shots just to get the barrel settled down get the hammer active. Shot number
one was five hundred and fifty two feet per second and shot number eighty was
five hundred and fifty feet per second. Now, the variance across all 80 shots is
17 feet per second so the highest only had one 567 that's a 2.9 percent
variance across 80 shots within that as you'll see from the graph and there are
little sweet spots here and there so for the first 30 shots it was around 555 to
557 the next 30 shots in the early 560s late 550s. But overall I think Air Arms
have pretty much undersold themselves here. I'm not suggesting that you need to
use all 80 shots, but it's great to know that if you do have a full day
out in the field that you can expect to have more than the 40 shots that have
been laid out by the manufacturer. Not entirely sure why it's so different but
it's a great thing to have in your arsenal. So, now that we know you've got
plenty of capacity and there's good shot to shot consistency within that capacity
now let's see how it actually performs out there on the range and see if we can
get some nice tight groups out at 30 meter. So I've kept the magazines loaded
and I'm going to do 4 10 shot groups. Now, there's a little bit of breeze in the
air but these are pretty average wind conditions I'd say for hunting in the
field so it'll give you an idea as to not only the consistency of grief but
also how the pellets handle the wind.
So there we have it, you know that's some pretty good groups f4 10 shot
groups fired back-to-back each at different targets first ten shot group
here second third and fourth and as I say it's not particularly windy there's
a little bit of breeze that would have added some of this variance but if you
imagine that each of these squares here there's 25 millimetres or you know close
to an inch none of these groups have gone outside edge to edge an inch across
so that's a pretty consistent shooting there and of course that's with me on a
bipod with a back end floating in my hand so if you're something a little bit
more stable a little bit more consistent than imagine these are tighten up by
another 10 to 15 mil but that's not how we shoot in the field you shoot up
bipods we lean on trees we shoot off sticks so this thing is a fair
representation of the accuracy now that you get out of this rifle in normal
field conditions in normal wind. I think for such a small compact maneuverable
and lightweight package this is some pretty insane performance so so well
done to Air Arms. So, there we have it the Air Arms S510 TDR sporter rifle.
It's pretty much everything it professes to be lightweight maneuverable accurate
and comes in a discreet hardcase but also it's not a gimmick it's not a rifle
that you should have in addition to a sporter rifle. The TDR S510 could be
used as your everyday go to hunting rifle. All of the functions and features
you'd expect from an air rifle from Air Arms. Quality manufacturing, the quality
finish innovation things like the 10 shot rotary magazine which were all
pretty familiar with, side lever action, easy to handle in the dark and cold
weather a good all-around package that performs well in the field.