First Look At The Daystate Delta Wolf PCP Air Rifle
A new Daystate Delta Wolf PCP air rifle has arrived at the HAM offices. We’re excited to explore this new “ultimate air rifle” from the British manufacturer!
The sample we have here is in .25 caliber. The Delta Wolf’s electronic brain is already pre-programmed and set for this caliber, so it’s ready to shoot.
In fact, we already have a good idea of the performance of this gun as it’s accompanied by no less than two test certificates. The first is the factory test. This confirms that our gun produced 946.6 FPS and 67.5Ft/lbs of Muzzle Energy when shooting 33.95 Grain Daystate Rangemaster Emperor pellets.
The second is from Airguns of Arizona. This includes a test target and indicates that the same gun shoots 25.39 Grain JSB King pellets at 900 FPS. That calculates out to 45.56 Ft/Lbs of Muzzle Energy with the lighter pellets.
So – unusually for the HAM Team – we already have a good idea of the performance of this Daystate Delta Wolf PCP air rifle before even taking a first shot!
Initial impressions of the Delta Wolf are that it’s somehow smaller than expected. In particular, the photographs I’d previously seen made the buttstock – with LCD display – look rather large. But “in person” it doesn’t look so at all and the design looks very harmonious and balanced.
The next impression was of the beautiful level of finish everywhere on the product. Of course this is expected for a Daystate, but it’s still pleasing to have expectations met when examining a new airgun for the first time.
I tried out the ambidextrous safety. It’s perfectly positioned and engages and disengages with ease and precision. Personal opinion is that this has to be about the best safety that I’ve ever used.
The safety is also the cause of a surprise! When I flicked it off then on to test operation, the LCD display came alive. That was as expected. What I didn’t expect was an unexpected noise from the gun some time later when it wasn’t even being touched. That was the electronics switching off after a set period of inactivity.
Well, it was a surprise the first time…
Most of the publicity photographs for the Delta Wolf show it being used with average-size, or compact, riflescopes. Being impressed with the quality of the Sightron SIII 10-50 x 60 scope, I determined to install this, using Leapers UTG P.O.I. rings. The Sightron is a long scope, but the resulting combination balances and handles well, in my opinion.
It was also a simple matter to fit a Spartan Javelin Lite bipod to the Delta Wolf. This will provide good support when shooting from a bench, while adding the minimum additional weight to the complete rig.
Although the gun is ready to shoot already, I plan to spend some time reading and understanding the programming options before we start HAM testing. The Daystate Delta Wolf PCP air rifle is extremely sophisticated, yet the user interface – both hardware and software – is amazingly streamlined.
In particular, the ability of the LCD to display the specific tune setup, precise HPA pressure and Muzzle Velocity in such a simple, direct manner is clearly something that represents a step change in the way we interface with an air rifle.
Software has changed everyone’s lives in just about everything we do. Now it looks likely to make the set-up and tuning of air rifles much easier and quicker than conventional, mechanical controls. We’ll be investigating this as we proceed to learn more about the Delta Wolf!
