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BSA Tech Star
America’s lowest-priced precharged rifle is loaded with features, accuracy and power!

by Tom Gaylord

BSA’s new Tech Star is a compact and powerful. Though there are no frills, the rifle still offers a lot of features at a very low price. To cock the gun, push the large button in front of the forearm straight back. Note the free-floated barrel.

The .22-caliber BSA Tech Star is an entry-level precharged air rifle that shares many of the advanced BSA features, like a precision rifled barrel, a great two-stage sporting trigger, a sturdy base for mounting a scope and adjustable power. The compact carbine is made exclusively for Compasseco and their dealers and is geared for no-frills hunting of small game such as rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, turkeys and woodchucks. The Tech Star represents a very low-cost entry into the world of precharged airguns, which are those filled from a scuba tank or hand pump that’s separate from the gun. The advantage of this type of air rifle is that it has no bad manners and requires little in the way of special handling to be accurate. If you can shoot a .22 rimfire, you can shoot a Tech Star, though you'll find the Tech Star to be a lot more accurate than the average rimfire out to 50 yards or so.

The Tech Star is closely related to BSA’s new Hornet rifle, but it does have differences. It is less expensive than the Hornet and sports a plainer stock, but contrary to the normal way of things, the Tech Star is MORE POWERFUL than the Hornet! Go figure! The tradeoff is fewer shots per fill with the Tech Star, but the capability of longer ranges in the field.

The carbine is short but also substantial. It weighs about 6.5 lbs. but feels heavier because it is so compact. The wood stock is beech, a harder, tougher wood than walnut that has a pleasing but straight grain. It is uncheckered, in keeping with the low price of the gun. The forearm is square-sectioned for a good resting place on the open palm of the shooter’s off hand. The balance of the gun is toward the muzzle, making this a real rifleman’s piece — perfect for offhand shooting.

The open sights that come standard are fully adjustable and high quality. They let you use the gun from the moment you unpack the box, though I strongly recommend mounting a scope to realize the full long-range accuracy potential of this air rifle.

The rear sight is fully adjustable and has two different notches to suit shooters’ preferences.

The front sight is a square post that's ideal for bullseye shooting.

Cocking this powerful carbine is unusually fast and handy. By pushing back a steel button extending from the end of the forearm, the rifle is cocked in an instant. The effort needed to cock the gun is on the high side because of the strength of the hammer spring, but an adult can cock it with two fingers. After an initial wear-in period, cocking becomes easier and smoother, though with that powerful spring, it will never be very light.

The right thumb presses down on the bolt release, and the bolt flies open to accept the next pellet.

Loading is just as fast. By pressing a catch at the right rear of the action, the spring-loaded bolt flies open, making way for the pellet. Since closing the bolt does not cock the mainspring, all it takes is a light push of the thumb. The trough that accepts the pellet is large and smooth to facilitate loading without looking. Such a feature is perfect for hunters in a concealed position.

BSA is a recognized leader in rifled barrel technology, so the Tech Star should be capable of remarkable accuracy with the right pellets. The barrel is completely free-floated as current design dictates for top accuracy.

The short rifle is designed for the hunter, and the power is in the low- to mid-30-foot-pound range. That dictates the use of medium and heavyweight pellets, which develop the maximum muzzle energy. Lightweight pellets will give higher velocities, but once they exceed 1,000 f.p.s. or so, accuracy tends to go right out the window. What is needed is the heaviest accurate pellet that will give velocities above 750 f.p.s. at the muzzle for accurate shooting out to 50 yards and a bit beyond. Heavy pellets also have better wind-bucking capability that adds to their accuracy at longer ranges.

LET’S SHOOT THE TECH STAR

First we need to fill the rifle with compressed air. This can be done with a scuba tank or a hand pump. The gun comes with a quick-fill probe that needs to be attached to some kind of fill device to connect the gun to a source of air. Compasseco supplied the rifle with a BSA pump that has a built-in hose that connects to the fill probe, so that was used for all testing. The Tech Star is filled to 3,500 psi, which only the rugged BSA pump can achieve. So, if you plan to use a scuba tank, make sure it can go that high, too.

The BSA pump is the most robust manual pump on the market. It also reaches higher pressures than other pumps, and the Tech Star needs those pressures to operate at its best. If you buy the pump from Compasseco, it will fit the Tech Star fill probe without any other equipment required.

The air reservoir is a compact 75cc volume, so you don't have to do a lot of pumping to fill the gun. Added to that, the BSA pump puts out a higher volume of pressurized air than other hand pumps, so the gun fills quickly. Hunters will find the Tech Star easy to fill in the field; but if you plan to do a lot of plinking with the gun, you may want to invest in a high-volume carbon-fiber air tank.

Once the gun is charged with air, you're ready to shoot. You can experiment with all sorts of pellets, but I found the Beeman Kodiak to be perfect. As a higher velocity alternative, the 15.9-grain JSB Exact in .22 caliber is another fine pick.

The .22-caliber Beeman Kodiak pellet gets the best accuracy and power out of the Tech Star carbine.

I sighted-in at 10 feet. I always wear safety glasses when I shoot, and it’s a good thing because I was certain that I would be hit by exploding pellet fragments at that close range. The bullseye was blurry in the scope at that distance, but all I wanted was confirmation that my pellet was striking the paper in line vertically with the small bull and approximately 2.5" below the aim point, which was the distance between the center of the bore and the scope tube. With a pellet moving 800 f.ps., you will hit the point of aim at 20 to 35 yards, give or take if you start with that scope setting. Shoot closer than 20 yards and the pellet will strike below the aim point of the scope. It will also strike below the aim point at distances farther than 35 yards.

The first shot was a little to the left at 10 feet, but a quick scope adjustment moved it to the centerline. My second shot was perfectly in line and about 2.5" low, so I immediately moved to 25 yards. I shot several groups with both Kodiaks and JSB pellets without adjusting the scope further. The groups shown here demonstrate how close the scope came, using the initial 10-foot sight-in.

The Tech Force 3-12 variable-power scope goes well with the Tech Star. It, too, carries a modest price tag and performs at a level well beyond what it costs.

Kodiaks averaged less than a half-inch at 25 yards. JSBs opened that up a few hundredths of an inch except for one tantalizing group that measured just 0.007"! I can’t say that one is representative, but I have seen other BSA rifles shoot that well and there’s no reason to think the Tech Star can’t do it too when everything goes right.

Five Kodiak pellets went into this 0.431" group at 25 yards. This is representative of the accuracy the test rifle delivered. No attempt was made to center the group in the bullseye. It was simply shot with the sight setting obtained at 10 feet. Total time to sight in was under 10 minutes.

Although this group of five JSB pellets looks much larger than the Kodiak group, it's only slightly so - measuring just 0.465". And, the lighter JSBs gave velocities over 900 f.p.s.

How many shots you get from a fill depends on what kind of velocity spread you will accept and how high you have the power adjusted. The highest power setting will clip off a few shots from your useful total. Rather than dictate a setup, let me tell you what I got from the test rifle. As it came to me from Compasseco, I got an average of 780 f.p.s. with 21-grain Kodiaks and 900 f.p.s. with JSB Exacts. That works out to 28.38 foot-pounds of energy for the Kodiaks and 28.6 foot pounds for the JSBs. Ten shots stayed within 15 f.p.s., and by shot number 15, the spread had opened up to 20 f.p.s. If I were hunting with this power setting, I would shoot 15 to 20 shots before refilling.

By adjusting the power as high as it would go, I got an average of 830 f.p.s. with Kodiaks and 932 f.p.s. with JSBs. That comes to 32.13 foot-pounds and 30.68 foot-pounds, respectively. The number of shots per fill dropped by two at this level, using the velocity spreads and numbers of shots given above. All accuracy testing was performed at the high power setting.

SUMMARY

At the time this test report is written, the Tech Star is the lowest-priced precharged air rifle in America, yet it has features that rival more expensive guns. Certainly the accuracy and power are both there in abundance. If you’ve been waiting to get into precharged airguns, this is a great place to begin!

I would further encourage most people who buy this rifle to purchase the BSA pump at the same time. It’s a well-built mechanical pump and a most cost-effective way to get to the 3,500 psi pressure level the Tech Star requires.

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