"The P-800 pistol made by the Spanish firm Gamo is a very rare thing these days. It is a brake-barrel, spring powered air pistol.It's an out and out plinking tool too, but should not be sniffed at jus beacause it doesn't follow the current mania for CO2 powered guns.

I had a Gamo spring-powered pistol back in 1980s and wore it out by constant use because I enjoyed shooting it so much.I must have put 50 000 pellets through it, at least. So I was keen to see what Gamo's latest spring-powered pistol had to offer.

In keeping with modern manufacturing methods it has a plastic body, including the barrel shroud, but the internals are all steel of course, including the rifled barrel.It is a break-barrel pistol in   .177 calibre, and on opening the box, I was struck how 'modern' it looked compared to my olda Gamo.Well I suppose it would really, wouldn't it?

The textured grip is ambidextrous and it has a safety-catch just behind the curved plastic trigger blade.The safety is pushed in from the left to make safe and back out from the right to fire.The button is marked on top with a small red panel whcich can only be seen on the left-hand side when the pistol is ready to fire.

To cock the gun the barrel is gripped and pulled down to unlatch the indent locking system just under the breech.The front sight post is covered by a protective hood which prevents the post sticking into the shooter's hand as they hold the barrel to cock the action.The action cannot be de-cocked, so once the pistol has been engaged on the triggger mechanism, the only way to release the tension from the spring is, to fire the pistol.A pellet should always, be loaded in the gun.Any spring-powered airgun,can be damaged internally by firing the action without a pellet to buffer the pistol's forward momentum.Choose a safe back stop and discharge the gun.

Over the chronograph the Gamo P-800 gave a respectable power output of 1.6 foot pounds with very good consistency, as I would expect from a spring-powered pistol.It only varied six feet per second, shot-to-shot.

The open sights are a bit crude and the rear sight has no elevation adjustment, but can be moved for windage via a screw on the right-hand side.This screw is very user friendly as the slot in its wide enough to use a small coin, which is handy as most plinkers do not walk around with a screw driver in their pocket.The open sights have a 250mm long sight base and in the loft range I found them easy to use and very accurate.I shot a 12.03mm, five-shot, center-to-center group with the recoiling pistol, which is great return from the 140mm long barrel.

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(The review was written by Tim Finley, Air gun world Mag(azine),June 2008.)