Jkhan Noblesse B

Ray Hales of AC Guns in Hastings, Sussex, has an eye for finding quality air rifles from a country that few people in the UK would associate with airguns, Korea. However, Ray’s been importing air rifles from there for quite some time now and recently contacted me to tell me that he was bringing in precharged pneumatics (PCPs) made by a company called JKHAN. I got to see them in the flesh at the British Shooting Show and on handling them they certainly looked very impressive. We met up at Pete’s Airgun Farm in Essex and it was great to be able to examine them better and to actually get to shoot a few.

Pick Of The Litter

Ray had brought a selection of Bullpups with him and I must admit to being rather pleased at how good they were, as it’s always nice when things turn out to be as good as you’d hoped. The actions were essentially the same, in that they were side-lever-cocking PCPs with a rotary magazine system. They both share the rather large diameter, 280cc air reservoirs beneath the fully shrouded barrels; the main differences were in the stock materials used.

The Iluda N280 has an extruded alloy ‘chassis’, with weight-saving, angled cut-outs along the sides and a Picatinny/Weaver style raised scope rail on the top. Alloy section is also used to form the butt and there’s a rubber pad at the rear. The only thing that stops the Iluda looking completely ‘military’ is the wooden cheekpiece that is fixed to the upper part of the butt!

The other type of rifle was the Noblesse B (the B is for Bullpup by the way and Ray says it’s “no bless”, and not anything else that might sound a bit rude! It had a rather stylish, one-piece walnut stock with an attractive portion of wood that joins the upright pistol grip to the butt; this gives a great deal of extra strength to the grip area but is also rather elegant. Laser-cut panels of chequering are to be found along the forend and grip, and the trigger guard is part of the woodwork- all in all a very nice bit of furniture!

Although I like the look of ‘black guns’, be they airguns, rimfires or fullbores, I really preferred the cosmetics of the walnutstocked Noblesse B and I spent most of my time shooting it. There is actually an all-black version of the Noblesse B but the stock is black painted sepatia wood, not synthetic. The alloy action has a Picatinny rail along the top and a riser rail was fitted to allow correct eye alignment with the scope.

 

In Use

The Noblesse B obviously needed charging with air; it’s really easy though, as it should be. The inlet valve is at the front of the reservoir, protected by a rotary collar. Turning it reveals the inlet port, which accepts a probe-type adaptor. I slowly filled to 200 bar, closed the main valve on the dive cylinder, bled off the air in the hose and withdrew the probe and then finally turned the dust cover. With so many shots available, it wasn’t something I had to do very often! I initially thought that there wasn’t a pressure gauge fitted but it’s up out of the way, just behind the grip and quite a clever place to put it actually!

The well-designed and made magazine is the sort you see on most PCPs these days, a 10 shot, internally sprung unit and it’s dead easy to load. The internal rotor clicks round to reveal an empty chamber but the pellets do need to be seated each time- this may sound like a bit of a pain but I just used a small Allen key to push them in a touch and it soon becomes second nature. To insert the mag into the action, pull back the side-lever and push the mag in, from either side- and that’s it. Push the lever forward and a pellet is loaded into the barrel. The two-stage trigger could have done with a quick tweak but I was keen to shoot not twiddle! The safety catch is at the rear of the action, back for SAFE, forward for FIRE. Not an ideal position when compared to the grip-mounted cross bolt of the Daystate Pulsar, but with practice your hand soon finds it easily enough.

 

Lock In!

We had a really late session on the range and I put hundreds of pellets through the Noblesse B. One of the main reasons I used it so much was because it was so much fun! It was just so damned accurate and it never seemed to let me down, no matter what I was shooting at! It wasn’t just me that thought these guns were accurate though, as there was a group of hardened HFT shooters on the range that night, and they’ve all taken home the odd trophy or two and they all really liked the JKHANs.

I was shooting off the bench, using my rolled up beanbag cushion as a support and I was easily hitting spinners at 50 yards. One of the shooters, Kyle Hampton saw me hit one of the 12mm spinners and commented that the rifle I was shooting was obviously as accurate as his gun. He then witnessed me place the next pellet smack bang on top of the first one! I then did it for the third time, just as I ran out of pellets in the magazine! That was good enough for me though; I don’t know what barrels they use but whatever they are, they’re very good! I’ve shot some seriously expensive rifles over the years and these Korean Bullpups were up there with the big boys accuracy-wise. They were obviously very consistent as well, as if they weren’t, I doubt if I’d have been able to place pellet on top of pellet at 50 yards.

 

Standard Or Upgraded?

Ray can fit regulators to these guns if a customer wants, but I don’t think that they actually need one! Fair enough, a ‘reg’ would give a higher number of consistent shots from each charge of air, but as the large reservoir already provides 170 shots per charge in .177 and 200 in .22, I think most people will be more than happy with the standard rifles. Ray had a rather nice example of the custom guns he is offering, this Noblesse B had a satin silver Cerakote finish and it looked fantastic. Cerakote is sprayed on and then the item cured in an oven and the resultant finish is extremely had-wearing, as well as attractive.

I can see this range of rifles being very well received in the UK and I’ll be using the Noblesse B that I’ve got on test as much as I can; before I have to reluctantly give it back…

PRICE:
Walnut £899.99,
Black sepatia, £799.99.
Iluda N280: £850

CONTACT:
AC Guns Ltd. www.acguns.co.uk