Sightron svss 34mm

Sightron are really going places as a brand and now have World Champions in F Class full-bore and Airgun Field Target shooting both using Sightron scopes – and you can see why when you look through a Sightron scope, as the optical quality is at a standard that’s way, way above their price tag.

The firm’s new scope is a major advance for them. It’s still made in Japan but has a single piece body tube of 34mm diameter. They have gone for the tried-and-tested side-wheel parallax system with a 10 to 50x magnification and a 60mm diameter objective lens. Other features of the scope’s specification are all new and some are very innovative. Being a one piece tube it puts the weight up and comes in just 193 - 0.07kg heavier than a certain German big mag 34mm tubed scope. The bigger 34mm tube obviously enables larger lenses to be fitted into the body, which gives you more light and a brighter image compared to a 30mm tubed scope in the same conditions.

It comes in a very large box in which the owner gets a 76mm long screw on sun shade, lens cloth, instructions, an Allen key and a neoprene stretch cover to go over your precious optic. For a limited time, Aim Field Sports, the UK distributor, are also throwing in a free Sightron baseball-style shooting cap – that’s a lot for your hard earned money.

Price Is Right

Speaking of which, the scope is only £1550, which took me aback. You would need an additional thousand pounds to get one of the Germanic 34mm tubed 50 mag side-wheel scopes. The new Sightron has an adjustable eye bell and a matt black tough surface finish. The reticle is in the second focal plane and is available with Sightron’s MOA – 2 or a Mil- Hash reticle. Both are set to bracket on 24x magnification. A clue to this is the smaller 24 number with a dot on the magnification zoom ring. It is not illuminated but has a ¼ MOA diameter centre dot – the MOA reticle is very popular with F Class 1000 yard full-bore shooters as the marks on the horizontal windage line has indicators at 2 MOA, perfect for aiming off if you spot a sudden wind change, hence the mane of the reticle MOA -2. Of course, at 48x magnification each mark is at one MOA – very useful.

As an aside, I can see airgun Field Target shooters getting excited about this scope. Sightron scopes have already won World FT championships, in no small part due to their superb optical quality and snappy rangefinding. Sightron have ramped up the range-finding by fitting a finer geared wheel on top of the parallax wheel on the left-hand side of the scope. This turns the inner wheel four times faster, so is called fast focus.

It does work, and I can see FT shooters fitting a bigger read off wheel on the inner section and a slightly bigger one on the fast one to speed up the range-finding; FT shooters are against the clock on every shoot, so every second counts.

Vision On

Back to full-bore, and the turret adjustment system on the SVSS is new for Sightron too. The large turrets for windage and elevation have ¼ clicks and they lock off by simply pushing them down, which means they have to be pulled up in order to turn them. They have an anti-tamper Allen screw fastening them onto the scope and can be set to zero if the bottom section is loosened off with three 1.27mm Allen screws.

Sightron supply the Allen key for this purpose. They also make it very clear in the concise instruction booklet NOT to undo the screws in the centre of the windage and elevation turrets.

I liked the system in use, it’s a simple idea and very practical. I fitted the scope with 34mm rings, of course, to my .308 Remington on which it sat rather well and it does the normal Sightron trick of letting the shooter see their bullet holes in white paper at 600 yards. The Japanese coated lenses are up to the usual Sightron quality, the reticle grew on me too as it’s not too thick and still has windage marks on the horizontal bar.

Conclusion

This is a very, very impressive scope. I still think they are selling it much too cheaply, but hey, that’s good for us shooters. Sightron are committed to continuous improvement – I remember looking at their scopes with John Dean the UK distributor back at the 2006 IWA show and just wishing they would put some useful reticles in the otherwise very impressive scopes. Just look at them now, they listened to the shooters who use them and now win World Championships.

Give Sightron a look through, you will be impressed; even more so when you find out the price. The new SVSS 34mm comes with a free sunshade and Sightron hat, what’s not to like.

Thanks again to all at Sightron and Karen and John at Aim Field Sports with help in producing this article.

RRP: £1550
Contact: Aim Field Sports 01606 860 678, www.aimfieldsports.com