In my quest to find the cream of the crop of inexpensive Chinese air rifles, last week I purchased a Stormrider in .22
The 5 lb. weight appealed to me. After adding a 3-12x side focus Bug Buster, the rig weighs right at 6 lbs.
Many PCPs, and a good many new air rifles these days are 8 to 9 pounds before adding an optic.
Another thing I liked about the Stormrider is that it uses the same 7 pellet rotary magazine that another rifle I just ordered uses : the Seneca Dragonfly Mk2.
Although the Dragonfly is a multi pump rifle like my old Sheridan, it is a repeater, using the same magazines as the Diana Stormrider and Bandit.
The lightweight Stormrider came charged to 2900 psi. All I had to do was clean the barrel and mount the scope to start shooting.
I unscrewed the moderator and removed the barrel in order to give it a proper scrubbing.
While I had the moderator off I dry fired the rifle, man it is loud without it ! It might be a cheap plastic moderator but it works.
I installed the BugBuster scope and like it, just like the one I had years ago. The rings that came with it are a bit much, thick double strap ones.
I'll probably replace the rings with some slim and good looking Sportsmatch ones.
The magazine, once you figure out how to load it properly, works great. This is my first magazine fed air rifle, and it sure is nice not having to fumble with pellets getting them into the tray.
The new Stormrider seems to like almost every pellet I tried, except for the Ruger Superpoint.
The first group with the inexpensive Crosman Hollow Point had one shot deflected to the right by the flag hanging from our back porch.
Had the pellet not clipped the swaying flag, that group would have been good as well.
(The bottom groups of the first target are the JSB Exact RS on the left and the JSB Straton on the right).
I can't wait to see how this rifle shoots when it gets properly broken in !
I have another .22 repeater made by Snow Peak Airguns on it's way, the Seneca Dragonfly Mk2. I'll do a short review of it in a week when it gets here.