Brocock Air cartridge guns - remember them ?

Brocock air cartridge system - or BACS for short - anyone here into them back in the day ?

How long ago was it now 96 - 97 ?  My memory is not what it was .

You could see how they might appeal to modelgun fans being as how they are probably one of the best firearm replicas we ever " had " access to - short of going FAC that is . At least until they were banned in any case .

Mostly they were revolvers but all sorts of weird and wonderful models came along .

Remember the Fox rifle ? (  Day of the jackal clone ? ) single shot takedown jobby .

There was the herald rifle - or was it the Safari ? ( centrefire hunter copy - single shot or mag fed - bolt action )

I read and viewed pictures of various bolt action military rifles converted to the bacs carts - what better replica could you have than the real thing ??

I had the Specialist .22 cal revolver ( bit like a python ) and a little silver auto that fired a smaller cart than standard .

I remember the carts took a hammering as they were manually ejected ( no power left to work the action ) and invariably hit the ground or tried to do a runner under your decking .

For such a tiny thing ( ppk size ) it produced 3 ft lbs ish easily and was loud , recoiless and very very accurate at airgun ranges .

I don,t recall seeing many automatic pistols converted to the bacs system - I,m sure there would have been in time despite the above problems with no blowback . The BACS system seemed to favour more manually indexed systems . I recall there were a few lever action rifles - believe there is one right now up for sale on Gunstar ( deactivated - and he still wants £800 + for it !! )

I heard about pen guns being built for the system and one of my favourites , the Remington over / under derringer !! I set off to a lovely old gun shop - jeans military memories - in Great Harwood Lancs - ( now long gone like the guns - thanks to the UK Govt VCR Bill ceasing online trading )  

The derringers were all sold when I got there and later banned as someone decided to start rebarrelling them with .22 rimfire barrels - obviously not happy with the ballistics produced by compressed air then ?

I reckon that in time we would have seen semi auto full power airguns firing these carts - I was thinking of rifles like the current UK full bores which use a  straight pull system as we are not allowed semi automatic firearms except .22 rimmys .

The straight pull would allow the feed system to work until some way was devised to automatically cycle the action . Such would allow possibly full auto actions - which the UK Gov would never have tolerated .

Looking back now - the air cartridges were a pain to use and to load - very very time consuming and you needed loads to have a decent shooting session before major reloads were required . The slim jim cheapo pump was hard work and needed lots of welly to get anywhere near full power - then the carts would leak or misfire and you have to start all over again .

Still , I would have liked the Fox rifle I think - money was a little tighter back then and this model was expensive and always eluded me .

Anyone else got any BACS memories or experiences to share ?

Carl. 

They started out as Saxby and Palmer IIRC. The Ensign was an early bolt action rifle, if not their first. They got into trouble with the Police over their Lee Enfield conversions. As I remember, they kept the action and replaced the barrel with a Walther .22. Externally there was no sign that it was an air rifle. They were banned following the Hungerford shooting. When the Govt reacted with another restriction on firearms the Home office altered the Act to include a section on re-classifying weapons; it was either a firearm or deactivated, you (and S&P) could no longer make an existing weapon into an Air arm. No matter that the muzzle energy was within the legal limit, post conversion it was still a Lee Enfield.

They got around it with having the Specialist revolver designed and manufactured as an air pistol, but then that was soon banned after the conversion by some idiot into a firearm. IIRC before the Specialist, they had a couple of revolvers with cut out cylinders. The cuts rendered it nigh on impossible to use live ammunition.

 :Smilie  68:

YES! I remember these, and loved them! I had a silver satin finish ME38 in .22 with black hammer and trigger with finger grooved wooden grips. Also an Orion 3. Neither of these had cut out cylinders. These were beautiful guns and were lovely to shoot, but another victim of ridiculous UK legislation.

I would love to get one of these again - maybe one day the law will see fit too exercise some common sense! I always wanted a Safari rifle.

Come to think of it, I remember Jean's Military Memories too. Michael Tawn used to make custom grips and stocks - his 'Tawnado' range, and I always wanted one of those revolvers. Again stupid legislation - I can fire real firearms on an FAC, but cannot own am airsoft gun unless it is brightly painted in case someone mistakes it for a firearm - which I'm allowed to own!

English law, eh?

It's funny, do a Google search and you can still see these coming up, as many people were not aware of the ban. One guy at the rifle club was given one by a friend the other week and sadly had to chop the barrel and hand it to police.

Interesting article:

http://www.airgunmagazine.co.uk/features/10-years-after/

joelhall wrote:

Interesting article:

http://www.airgunmagazine.co.uk/features/10-years-after/

Thanks for the info and link Joel

An interesting read - made me think about the old Brococks again after all these years .

More recently there are now airsoft / paintball models which use pre charged cartridges .

The Goblin range of paintball markers - and the APS Cam M870 CO2 Shotgun and the APS Sniper rifle .

These guns all use pre charged cartridges using CO2 as a propellant - then fed into the gun just like the old Brococks were . I can only assume it is down to the lower power levels is why these are allowed wheras others are not ?

If they were to become more popular one could imagine these CO2 cartridges being developed and used in other models in the future ?

Carl

It is a strange state of affairs. I think you're right about the power levels, although if I remember rightly it's because the VCRA deals with imitation guns whereas Wiggins are covered by firearms legislation. Either way it's a confusing mess. The closest we get at the moment is the odd CO2 gun like the Dan Wesson revolvers or Russian ones (forget the name right now).

I read somewhere about the elusive APS sniper CO2 rifle .

There are great videos of it on youtube - linky :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjZkBPqh2FI

One of the cartridge types hits 800 fps with metal 30g bbs !!

Not one to use for skirmish I think ouch !!!

Put my order in from UK source where I got my APS shotgun and they are trying to get one for me .

Carl.

Very Nice