A BREAK WITH TRADITION!

Tim Finley breaks his Kral Arms duck to review the Champion springer

- Tim Finley

I’ve never reviewed a Kral Arms airgun before and the Champion looked to be just up my street. Every airgunner should own a few break-barrelled, spring-powered airguns. They just don’t break, so to speak, meaning that they are ultra-low maintenance. They don’t need an air bottle with its gauges, a manual pump or expensive CO2 bulbs to make them work.

The Kral Arms Champion is a very modern take on the classic break-barrel spring gun format. For a start, is has a synthetic stock and fibre-optic element open sights, both of which we take for granted now when looking at the market for a springer. However, it does have a game changer, for me, and it’s something that all springers with both open sights and a scope rail should have as standard – an easily adjustable cheek piece.

NOT A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

Head position is vital for accurate shooting. Most stocks on open sight guns are designed around the head sitting in a position on the stock so that the shooter can comfortably use the open sights; i.e. lining up the rear notch sight with the front element. When the shooter then bolts on a scope, the head position must logically move upwards in order to obtain the correct sight alignment on the scope.

All scopes suffer from parallax error to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon the power, object lens diameter and if they are parallax adjustable, so a consistent head position mitigates a lot of this in-built error. The head then has to slide up the stock on the ‘open sight designed’ gun, and it sometimes necessary to hover, or lightly touch the stock, in order just to see through the scope – not a recipe for successful or even comfortable shooting.

ADJUSTABLE CHEEK PIECE