I presume since you are asking, this question as written, he has adequate funds to purchase a tier 1 pistol. IOW $2,000+ budget.Electronic trigger is a good idea, and has many advantages over mechanical. BUT, you are dependent on the electronic module working for a LONG time. As they get to smaller components, that repair will be harder. If you are in a national program, someone else is paying the bills to repair/replace the gun.If you are an individual, repair/replacement is on your wallet.I can still shoot my mechanical 30 year old FWB-80, and my even older FWB-300.As was said, the tier 1 guns (Styer, Walther, FWB, Morini, Pardini, etc.) will ALL shoot better than 99.99% of the shooters out there.So, the difference becomes:- Fit and feel. How does a particular gun feel in your hand. With the correct size grip.- - Example1, if you have a small hand, it makes no sense to try a gun with a LARGE grip. It won't feel right, simply due to the grip size.- - Example2, My Walther CPM-1 feels much larger in my small hand than my Pardini K-58, and barely fits me. And that is after carving out as much wood as I could. I don't know if the current Walthers also have large grips.- Local support for purchase and repair.As Jeff said, start with a used tier 1 pistol, less cost and just as accurate.AP shooters generally take very good care of their pistols.My Walther CPM-1 is "obsolete," but will still shoot better than me.Have him go over to Targettalk.org, and hand out there for a while.That is where the 10m target shooters are.
I’ve been using my Pardini for 10 meter pistol and I also use my Air Arms Alpha Proj which is a very accurate shooting pistol.
I'll offer up some data on the AA Alfa shot count. I bought one to dip my toe in the 10M water, and I have a long way to go to get to the point that I could compete with it. I do like the gun, but I think it is in need of some tuning to get the best speed and shot count out of it. I have attached my most recent shot string from it, and you can see that it easily gets 70 shots on the curve before the speed starts to rise. So I would say that you are right in your assumption that one would want to top it off some at some point during a match.As you can also see, this gun is only running about 455 fps, and that is about 10 fps faster than it was shooting when I received it - I was only able to increase the speed 10 fps with the hammer adjustment on the gun. While it shoots fine, I would like it to put out a little more speed as I get a lot of torn targets at this speed, and I think a little more would help whit that.I do think that it is more speed there to get, but I would need to adjust the regulator down a bit to do so - the speed increase as the pistol comes off regulation is a clear sign that the reg pressure is too high for the available hammer energy. Unfortunately I can find no information at all on this, and I am reluctant to take it apart without knowing anything about the insides of it. Getting the hammer energy more in line with the regulator pressure should help reduce the ES some too, although I don't worry much about the amount that is there.Anyways, I hope that helps. And if anyone knows anything about the air reservoir/regulator in these I would love to hear about it.