VIASS, I knew the plastic clamp was a mistake

Whilst doing some home training with my new LG400 I decided to try fitting the VIASS to it. To my surprise it was not quite as simple as I had been expecting. Initially the LG400 looks like it should be very good for VI shooting as the loading lever can be fitted on either side, either going up or going down when in the open position. Having the lever going down means that there should be no problems in fitting a scope to the rifle as nothing comes above the mounting rail. Well that is what I thought, but it turns out that on the right hand side of the rifle there are a couple of linking rods connecting the spindle of the lever to the sliding mechanism of the bolt and when the loading port is in the open position these actually rise up alongside the mounting rail. Unfortunately the bulky plastic clamp of the VIASS is just too wide and will get in the way of these linking rods.

Not all is lost if you want to fit the VIASS to the LG400, there are a couple of possible solutions. The first is to use a sight raising block to mount the VIASS and the LG400 comes with a sight raising block which is suitable. However if you want to avoid raising the VIASS more than you need to the other option is to consider fitting it to the rail just in front of the loading port, but this does place the VIASS further from you which means you may need to reach further when making adjustments. I cannot help thinking neither of these need to be done if the VIASS had been slightly differently designed. If it had either used a narrower clamp like that on the EcoAims VIS500 or used standard scope mounts then this problem would simply have not occurred.

New rifle

Last week I got my new air rifle, a Walther LG400 Alutec Expert. Some of you might be thinking, so why the new rifle? We may all like getting our hands on nice new bits of shooting kit and the Walther is that, but there were a few other reasons as well.

Probably the first is that for the last ten years or so I have only been shooting with my Steyr LG110 and prior to that with club rifles which don't really come to the same standard. I was given the chance to have the Walther on a trial period, so I thought may be it is time to try something different to see how it compares to the Steyr. Its always good to try a few things so you really get the chance to know what you like.

There also have been a few other things in the past where the Steyr just does not quite seem to be ideal. My steyr has had a few small alterations, mainly to alter the palm rest for the supporting hand and the cheek piece. Probably one of the biggest concerns I had on the Steyr is that for some reason my LG110 did not like going between dry-fire and live firing, with the next shot after a dry-fire always going low, in the 3 ring of a air rifle target. So with my Steyr, I had to avoid doing dry-fire within competitions.

So how does the Walther compare? Its probably a bit early to say as I have only had it a week and there is much tweaking to do, but initially it all feels good. Having said that though, the Steyr is still a good rifle and the differences probably are either personal preference or only really make the difference when you are trying to convert 9s on the air rifle target into 10s. There are still a few things about the Steyr I think I prefer, such as how dead it feels as you release the shot, but is that just learning something new after 10 years of the same?