MTC Viper Connect 3 – 12 X 32

MTC Optics are known for taking great ideas and making them reality. Basically that’s what the company was founded on. Their Viper had everybody sit up and pay attention back in 2005/6 due to Gary and Sammie Cooper (co-owners of MTC) putting all their competition shooting and hunting experience into designing a scope to suit a wide range of disciplines. Obviously the now highly acclaimed SCB (Small Calibre Ballistic) reticule being a large attractor for many, along with locking turrets, side parallax and their own-design, metal flip-up lens covers.

In my opinion for airgunners; in fact even firearms owners they started a whole new trend in optical design that others followed. Their latest creation the Viper Connect 3 – 12 X 32 is in its own way as ground breaking, if not more so than their other designs. However, as we shall see; though a new product it uses a concept that caused quite a stir in the industry a good few years ago.

FOV

One of the major downsides of most scopes is the field of view (FOV.) This being the ‘width of the sight picture’ as seen through the eye-piece when set on any magnification. Usually you need to set on a low magnification for the best FOV that model can offer. A design that first addressed this was once briefly available by the now defunct Hebridean Tech House, and was called the HTH Connect. I’m sure you’re now making the connection? As it was this original x10, fixed magnification model that started MTC’s quest to develop their own and arguably better version.

Previously reviewed by the Editor for firearms use - my brief was to consider it from an airgunner’s perspective. At 11 ½” long it’s certainly compact given its specification, some feel maybe a bit too much so! I say it’s of a reasonable length and seems short due to it having to be mounted in a way that appears to leave the rear of the rifle’s dovetails in search of the shooter.

Zero Eye Relief

This is due to it having almost zero eye-relief so it needs to come so far back because your eye has to be right-up against the rubber-buffered eyepiece. So for airgun use it’s obviously best on a recoilless PCP. This was one of Pete’s comments as even the recoil of a 22 LR started to get a bit noticeable around the eye socket after a few rounds.

The reticule is MTC’s Advanced Mil-Dot type or AMD as it’s known. Glass-etched and in the 2nd focal plane, only the centre cross illuminates amongst the many hash lines that surround it on all stadia. The 11-position rheostat drum is positioned tight behind the saddle at 12 o’clock and unusually has a separate ON/OFF button on the left. This gives instant access to the IR facility that you can pre-set via the drum.

Turrets are dialable under low caps giving ¼ MOA clicks; on the left of the saddle is a parallax facility. Though range-marked as to distance it’s best used to get the target into sharp focus and not for range finding. Up front the objective shows an integral, shaped lens hood with long overhang at 12 o’clock. Pre-fitted is a flip-open cap that swings to the side, despite the smallish objective diameter the view is bright and crisp.
Now that huge field of view, which for the short range hunter is seriously impressive. On low power you see everything in the field on full 12X power you get an image no less than twice that given by a conventional scope. With less tunnel vision, range estimation is easier to assess and no problems searching for the target, so no wasted time before taking the shot. As an airgun hunter I feel this is possibly the biggest breakthrough for our sport and is an optic we’ve been waiting for years but never thought possible.