I've run a few different rifles now, I started with a Lithgow LA101 which is a brilliant little rifle and amazingly accurate. I did a lot of work to set it up for 22 PRS shooting, made a backbone and trigger guard to fit Bravo skins and it did the job well, it was just very hard to get well balanced even with a lot of extra weight in the stock. The trigger was also pretty good with a spring change and a bit of work. I made a 20 MOA rail and fitted a Sightron S-Tac which worked pretty well for our night matches. It is my favourite all-round 22 but not the perfect match rifle.
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I didn't want to start pulling the rifle apart and fitting a heavier barrel so I ended up buying a Steel barreled Bergara B14R. The Bergara was a definite downgrade in fit and finish, had a horrible trigger and took a bit of work to get it to feed and extract reliably. The bonus was that it was incredibly easy to modify with off the shelf parts. I got it really well sorted, Put it in a KRG X-ray, fitted a Timney trigger, barrel tuner, lots of weight and won a few matches with it. I ran a Kahles 624i and then a Vortex Razor for the closer parallax adjustment. It also shot some amazing groups in rimfire F-class, the best being a 200.12 off an Atlas bipod. Then I had a lucky week where I saw a Gen 1 Vudoo come up for sale and also had a bloke want to buy the Bergara as a dedicated F-class rifle so I sold it and bought the Vudoo.
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The Vudoo already had a 20" MTU barrel, Jewel HVR trigger, Lowey Tuner and a bunch of magazines and 40 MOA rail. I put it in a new X-Ray stock, added a bit of weight inside the stock and made a brass NV bridge (to fit the NF prism). I swapped the Razor onto it in some higher rings to match up pretty well to the prism. I got a second place in the first match I shot with it by a point. It's no more accurate than the Bergara but it so reliable, it fed and ejected every round for the entire match and I was running 4 different mags throughout the match to test them out. Even though it's not obviously more accurate than the Bergara, the difference in confidence knowing that I can cycle the bolt and it'll eject and load the next round is worth a few points each match. The difference in how smoothly the bolt closes and cocks means it doesn't move around once you're on target and that's a huge benefit.
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It's been a bit of an evolution but I think definitely worth the upgrades. I might put another barrel on this at some stage but for now I think it's pretty spot on. Target for the Vudoo below testing tuner settings at 50m.
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