Let’s Take A First Look At The RTIArms Prophet PCP Air Rifle
The Prophet PCP air rifle is an interesting airgun with some unusual features. It’s manufactured by RTIArms in Slovenia and is yet another example of the innovative, high quality airguns that are being developed in Central and Eastern Europe.
HAM readers first saw the Prophet when a pre-production model was shot in the 2019 Extreme Benchrest competition. As you can see from our report, RTI Arms sent a large team to EBR. They were rewarded by an outstanding performance that included winning the 50 Yard Benchrest competition. Very impressive!
Now that the Prophet PCP air rifle is in full production, it’s a good time to take a look at what it has to offer…
The Prophet is available in .177 caliber, .25 cal, and .30 caliber. It’s also available in “.22 Caliber LR”. No, that’s not Long Rifle, the LR stands for “Long Range!
You see, the .22 caliber LR Prophet has a custom Lothar Walther barrel that is deigned to be shot with 25.39 Grain, redesigned JSB Exact Jumbo Monsters out at 100 Yards. The gun you see here is in .22 caliber.
In a further indication of the Prophet’s long-range performance intent, the built-in Picatinny rail is machined at a 20 MOA angle. This makes it less likely that the scope will run out of elevation adjustment at long ranges. It’s an elegant solution compared to the need for adjustable mounts or scope shimming for long range shooting.
Even though the Prophet PCP air rifle is a small gun – just 30.5 Inches overall length – we decided to mount a riflescope with comparable long-range credentials. The Sightron SIII FT 10-50 x 60 is just such a scope. Hey, go big or go home!
Using Leapers UTG PRO medium rings produced a surprisingly well-balanced and manageable combination, as we see below.
Ahead of the trigger guard is a second, short, Picatinny rail. This, of course, is for attaching a bipod – something that is very necessary for an air rifle intended for long range shooting. We mounted a Leapers UTG PRO “TBNR” bipod. This also fitted and worked well with the Prophet PCP air rifle.
The Prophet has a shrouded barrel. However this is a powerful air rifle, expelling a lot of air with each shot. And generally, more air means more volume on firing.
So we took advantage of the removable 1/2-Inch UNF thread protector to screw-in a 0dB “airgun only” silencer. This calmed the report significantly, at the expense of a little additional length.
The Prophet is supplied in a hard plastic case. What makes this case relatively unusual for a manufacturer-supplied case is that there is space inside to fit both the gun AND an mounted scope. Even a large riflescope like our Sightron 10-50 x 60, as we can see below.
With a smaller scope, there might also be space for an attached bipod. Bravo RTI!
We’ll take a further, detailed look at the Prophet’s other features in a future post…
