Hi. My name is Scot, and I'm addicted to cheap CO2 air pistols.
Within 48 hours of finding out that it existed, I went to WalMart and
paid my $28.43 plus tax, and became the proud new owner of a Daisy
15XT CO2 BB pistol.
The first impressions were good. The pistol was, suprisingly, made in
Japan. The detailing was good, a copy of a 3.5" single stack 1911.
There was a built-in BB magazine holding 15 BBs, and a 3/8" scope base
molded into the top of the slide. The barrel was smoothbore steel,
and quite thick. The sliding trigger was not too heavy, and was quite
smooth, with just a bit of stacking before the break, and no
appreciable overtravel. The sights were fized Patridge style sights,
the front sloped and a with a bit of tendency to show glare. The left
grip panel snapped off to insert a CO2 powerlet. All in all, it felt
a bit more substantial than the 693, with good sharp checkering on the
grips and the classic 1911 feel that I'm quite fond of. The mechanism
is rather odd, a variant of the old Daisy model 1200 CO2 repeaters.
When the trigger is pulled, the barrel slides forward about half an
inch, and a BB drops into the "chamber". At the rear of the trigger
travel, the barrel is released, falling backwards under spring
pressure to chamber the BB and actuate the valve. The hammer is the
barrel itself, which explains its sigificant mass (the 693 uses a bit
of thin walled brass tubing for a barrel). An odd system, maybe, but
logical, as at the moment of firing the inertia of the barrel should
form a nice seal at the breech.
I loaded it up with 15 Daisy MaxSpeed BBs and a Crosman powerlet, and
prepared to fire a few rounds through it. That's when the trouble
started...
I sqeezed the trigger back, and at the moment of release...nothing.
The gun didn't fire. I released pressure on the trigger, and it
remained back. I kept the gun on target, and sqeezed again. Still
nothing. I carefully reached up (gun still pointed downrange) and
pulled on the magazine follower (which is located at the top front of
the slide), and the gun suddenly fired.
Well, I thought maybe by some wild coincidence I might have ended up
with an oversized or oddly shaped BB. I've run across a couple of
them, so large the 693 wouldn't chamber them, but only a couple out of
the several thousand BBs I've used out of that same 6000 round carton.
So I tried again, and was rewarded with an authoritative POP and a
suprising amount of recoil for a BB pistol. Several more shots formed
a nice group, about an inch at 10 feet centered just under point of
aim. And then it jammed again. This time it fired as the trigger was
released. That, needless to say, quite ruined the group. By the time
I finished the magazine full, I had 3 jams. I fired off a few
"blanks" just to make sure that things were functioning correctly, and
to make sure any debris that might have been left over from
construction would be blow clear of the chamber area.
I went ahead and finished off the CO2 cartridge, getting about 70
shots out of it (the last few being significantly underpowered). It
was averaging about 2 jams per magazine, with firing occurring
sometimes when the trigger was released, sometimes on a second pull,
and sometimes only after a release of pressure on the magazine follower.
Now this pistol has got to be a lemon--I have so far been impressed
with the Daisy guns I've used. They are admittedly cheap and crude,
but they are CHEAP, and they have up until this point been quite
functional. The 15XT, however, disspointed me. Not only did it fail
to function reliably, but the failure was a dangerous one. When the
BB jammed, it invariably held the barrel in the forward position,
where it could slip closed at any point, with or without the BB in the
chamber. This one is going back to WalMart, and I think I'll trade it
in on a 617, because I just don't trust the 15XT design. Even if the
gun functioned flawlessly, there is still the chance of finding an
oval BB that would jam the barrel in the foreward position, leaving
the gun in a highly unstable and dangerous state. Or, you could get
an oversized BB that would just plug up the barrel, and extracting the
oversized BB would be a pain due to the fixed magazine which prevents
easy access to the breech.
