Air rifle Accessories question

[smhagger]

My wife is asking me what I would like for my birthday next month, so I need some help in prioritizing air rifle accessories. First of all, I currently shoot an Anschutz CA 2002 Aluminum rifle with the Anschutz sight set (the nicer rear sight that compensates for canting). I also have the Centra riser blocks that allow for adjustment of the lateral sight offset.

I am considering adding one of the following accessories: the MEC Contact III adjustable buttplate, the Centra 19702002 adjustable front sight, or the Centra 19201001 adjustable rear iris/filter.

All three of these items can be seen at www.centershot.com after clicking on shopping (on the left side of the page). Note that under "Sights and accessories" two options (for front and reat sight accessories) show up on the left side after clicking on this option.

My questions are the following: Is the Rear Iris helpful in air rifle? Do the color filters really help to reduce eye fatigue during shooting? Are rear irises commonly used by the top shooters in air rifle or is they used more in 50m?

Finally, how would you rank the priority / usefulness of these accessories in terms of overall benefit noticed while shooting? Another way of asking this is which added adjustability will benefit a shooter the most, in your experience?

Thanks in advance for you replies.

[Guest]

Those are all useful accessories. I would recommend getting an adjustable rear iris for the air rifle first. It DOES help, and is probably the most important accessory available. Get one with just the iris, no colors, if you only shoot indoor air rifle. If you shoot outdoot smallbore, then the colors and polarization are worth it. But indoor, you will not need colors. The MEC buttplates are great, I have a MEC II, love it. I used to use an adjustable front sight, but I found the ring was too thick. The thin ring offered by the Centra High End aperature works best for me, and really improved my trigger control. I have seen several studies that show similiar results.

Hope this helps,
david

[Sparks]

Get one with just the iris, no colors, if you only shoot indoor air rifle. If you shoot outdoot smallbore, then the colors and polarization are worth it. But indoor, you will not need colors.

True - though I do use the yellow filter a lot indoors. Seems to help my head seperate out the two images from my eyes. But that's a rather personal thing - the iris isn't and you do need one.

Besides, there are irises you can get with add-on or press-in color filters if you want.

[Guest]

Get the rear iris.

I use the yellow filter indoors, but it probably isn't worth the extra $50 just for indoor use.

[Bob]

Another vote for the rear iris, but I would get the colored filters. They can improve the sight picture, particularly if you shoot in different ranges.
Should you ever shoot outdoors (.22 in your future?) it will be nearly required.

[mikeschroeder]

Hi

I don't understand this one:

Another vote for the rear iris, but I would get the colored filters. They can improve the sight picture, particularly if you shoot in different ranges.
Should you ever shoot outdoors (.22 in your future?) it will be nearly required.

Why does shooting the .22 require the filter inside, but shooting the air rifle doesn't? In my experience shooting inside is pretty much shooting inside. Usually air rifle is worse since the lighting isn't designed to throw light at one end of a rented building where the targets are.

Mike
Wichita KS

[Guest]

Hi

I don't understand this one:

Another vote for the rear iris, but I would get the colored filters. They can improve the sight picture, particularly if you shoot in different ranges.
Should you ever shoot outdoors (.22 in your future?) it will be nearly required.

Why does shooting the .22 require the filter inside, but shooting the air rifle doesn't? In my experience shooting inside is pretty much shooting inside. Usually air rifle is worse since the lighting isn't designed to throw light at one end of a rented building where the targets are.

Mike
Wichita KS

It appears to my eyes for a few reasons - the air rifle targets are close and stay very black - the 22 targets, are smaller at 50 ft and tend to get gray real fast. Most air rifle matches take care to have nice lighting. (MOST! not all). A lot of 22 is shot on ranges that just have whatever the club accepts. Not to mention, some don't pay attention to indoor lighting because they are all using scopes, not irons.

[smhagger]

Thanks for all the input from the many of you who replied. I have decided to go with the adjustable rear iris as you have recommended. Since I don't know what this iris may be used on in the future (perhaps smallbore as well are 10m AR), I am planning on getting the version that has the color filters and the polarization filter built in. Besides, I'd rather have more than I need after making a purchase than to be left wishing I had spent the extra money for the added options.

BTW, yesterday I read the post by the gentlemen pointing TT readers to the ISSF TV clips and downloaded 3 of the AR clips (I just got DSL, so it went pretty fast to download over 100MB of DVD clips). One thing I noticed on nearly ALL the rifles that were shown: almost everyone had an adjustable rear iris on their rifle! Several of them clearly showed the color markings on the outside of the iris indicating the use of the color filters. This was a nice confirmation to the recommendations that I received from you guys here at TT. If you have a broadband connection, I'd recommend checking out the DVD clips--they're pretty cool.

Thanks again for the advice. Sean