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I left the story of my Yugo 59/66 SKS rifle at the point where I had the trigger group worked on by Tom Prince (aka Kivaari).   In a nutshell, I was going to install the Tech Sights TS200 adjustable rear sight and a fine front sight replacement and then try out the rifle at a local mil surp gas gun match.

The TS200 is an improvement over the TS100 in that it allows for both elevation and windage adjustments on the rear sight.   If you already own a TS100, you can order the TS220, which is the elevation adjustable aperture to upgrade you sight to a TS200.  These sights help the shooter in that they increase the sight radius by 10 inches from the normal SKS sights and give a similar sight picture of the familiar Garand and M16 rifles.  Neither sight requires any drilling or tapping of your original rifle components.  There is just one piece that needs to be permanently altered in most rifles, which we will see in a moment.

I found the TS200 sight to be an extremely well designed and manufactured apparatus.  The sight base is made of high strength aluminum with a hard coating on it.  The steel components of the sight are parkerized (manganese phosphate) coated.  The whole thing is black in color and matches my SKS rifle’s color fairly well. 

The TS200 comes with all the tools necessary for installation.  In my opinion, it is an extremely well designed and manufactured hunk of metal.  It is not flimsy!

Rear Sight Installation:

Tech Sights includes several installation sheets with the sight.  They are very clear and easy to follow, more so than most other companies in my opinion.  We will still walk through the install, but do refer to their instructions.

As always, start out by checking to make sure that your rifle chamber is empty.

Start by rotating the take down lever…

and pulling it out in order to remove the receiver cover.

Remove the cover and set aside.

Next, remove the recoil spring assembly and bolt carrier. 

Finally remove the bolt, setting it aside as well.

The TS200 uses its own cross bolt screw that takes the place of the take down lever in the rifle.  This is the one part that most likely will need to be permanently modified in order to use the TS200 sight.   There is a small pin that is either pressed in or welded into place that is designed so that the lever cannot slide out of the receiver.  This small pin must be removed.  I used my Dremel grinder and quickly sliced off the pin.  Note the vice grips holding the lever in place so that it does not spin on me.

Once the pin has been ground off, the lever slide out of the receiver.  Note the small flat spot on the lever where the pin was ground off. 

Once the pin has been removed, reassemble the bolt, bolt carrier and recoil spring with receiver cover.  Place and line up the notches on the bolt to the bolt carrier. 

Place the bolt, bolt carrier and the recoil spring back into position on the receiver. 

If you did not remove the magazine follower, you will need to depress it so that the bolt carrier will slide forward.

Everything is back into place.  Lastly, install the receiver cover.

The next step is to install the four small set screws into the sight.  These screws have a coating of thread locker on them so that they will not back out easily.  Use the provided wrench to insert and tighten the screws to the point where they are flush with the front side of the sight.

According to the directions, the next step was to put the sight so that it was flush on the rear of the receiver and line up the holes of the take down lever.  However, in my case, I had to remove a very small sliver of wood from either side of the receiver so that the holes lined up and the cross screw would go through.

Insert the cross screw through the sight and the receiver and push it in tight on the right side of the sight.

On the left side of the sight, install the nut.  It has one flat side that matches into the hole on the receiver. 

Tighten the cross screw until the sight is drawn snug to the right side of the receiver.  At this point, the sight will still pivot on the cross screw (that is backwards and forwards on the receiver.)

Push the sight backwards (towards the butt) and using the supplied 3/32 wrench, slowly tighten the lower right screw in the base (I turned my rifle on its side for photo purposes). 

Continue to tighten until the horizontal edge of the sight base mount arm is parallel to the bottom edge of the receiver cover edge.

The final item to complete is a locking screw/cap that makes sure that the cross screw does not come loose.  A wrench is included to install this screw into the nut on the left side of the sight.  If you really want to make it tight, put some thread locker onto the thread of the screw.

At this point, the sight is adjusted to the receiver and will return to zero after removal.

Rear sight removal from SKS:

In order for the TS200 sight to be used, you will have to remove the original rear sight on the SKS.  Tech Sights does include their version on how to remove your rear sight in their enclosed instructions.  You can also go to  http://www.surplusrifle.com/reviews2005/skstechsight/index.asp and see how Jamie does it, which is very close to how I did it.  My rear sight was fairly easy to remove, having been thoroughly cleaned at one time and completely taken apart when I first bought the rifle.

I can simply push down on the very front of the sight and pull from the back and my sight slides down and out.  You have to push down to compress the flat spring, and you then push/pull the sight so that the two protrusions clear their mounting holes on the rifle.

Tech Sight includes a replacement pin that has a concave sight channel cut on it so that you do not need to remove the flat spring.

Push the pin through the holes, slightly compressing the flat spring. Make sure the concave cut is on top, as in bottom photo.

Installation of Fine Front Sight:

One of the biggest complaints that I have, and many of you have, is that the original front post is too large to use for target shooting.  At 100 yards, the crude post is much larger than a 6” bull and makes it very hard to sight accurately and CONSISTENTLY.  Tech Sights has a replacement post that takes care of this issue.

My front post measured 0.073” in diameter and just the post part stood 0.119” tall.  Tech Sights replacement post is 0.047” in diameter and stands 0.147”.  This should give you a sight picture where you have a very fine post that stands our clearly.

In an effort to try to keep the same front sight post height adjustment (so that I would not have to shoot too many sighters) I measured the height of the top of the post in relation to the top of the front sight.  I figured I would then simply turn in the new post to the same height.

The replacement Tech Sights front post is on the left, the original on the right.

Use an SKS/AK sight adjustment tool to remove the old and install the new post into the sight holder.

The sight adjustment tool is specifically designed to hold the front post.

Rear Sight Adjustment:

First, we need to take a quick look at how to use the TS200 sights in terms of what your sight picture should look like.  To be most successful in using these sights (and any sights for that matter) you have to be consistent.  I am not only talking about being consistent in terms of your shooting position and trigger pull, but also in terms of your sight picture.

The gray represents the rear sight aperture of the TS200, it would be fuzzy to your eye.  The black ring represents the ring of the SKS front sight with the post in the center.  The red represents your target.  Of the 5 sight pictures above, #1 and #2 would be the most correct to use.  I find that #2 is sometimes easier to use as I can use the top of the barrel to align the bottom of the front sight ring.  Most would agree that #1 is the correct sight picture, front sight centered within the rear aperture.  Again, the key is to have a consistent sight picture, shot to shot.

The TS200 sight is elevation adjustable, so you do not need to mess with the front sight (unless you want to or need additional elevation adjustments).  Simply turn the detent locked ring with some fine pointed implement.  Rotating clockwise will raise the point of impact about 5/8” at 100 yards.  Rotating counter clockwise will lower the point of impact.  By the way, if you turn the front post clockwise, it will raise the point of impact.  The peep sight hole is 1/16”, just like the original M16 sight.

A very familiar sight adjustment on the AR-15A1 style rifles, the detented drum turns easily.  Rotating the drum clockwise one “click” will move the point of impact to the right 5/8” at 100 yards.  This is the one downside about the TS sight.  Using a standard 7.62x39 FMJ round, the bullet is too big to properly push the detent in and rotate the drum.  I ended up using a small punch to do adjustments.

Range Results:

So how did the new Tech Sights handle themselves at the range?  Well, I did not simply go to the range and pop off shots from the bench, rather I shot the rifle in the semi auto mil surp matches (put on twice a month during the summer) at the Oakdale gun club.  Now, I have to confess that I did not practice at all with the rifle other than shoot some sighters.  I just brought my shooting mat (aka scrap carpet), light shooting jacket (summer time you know), the GI web sling and about a 100 rounds of Wolf 122 FMJ steel cased ammo loaded onto SKS stripper clips and, of course, my SKS with the Kivaari trigger job and TS200 sights.

The match uses the SR-1 target (6” bull) at 100 yards.  The course of fire for their matches is:

10 rounds, slow fire (10 min) offhand

10 rounds, rapid (60 sec), kneeling or sitting with one reload

10 rounds, rapid (70 sec), prone, with one reload

20 rounds, slow (20 min), prone

The match progresses fairly quickly.  Or to put it more bluntly, time flies, just not during the match.  What do I mean?  Well, most of us will shoot way faster than the allotted time, even in rapid fire.  I really need to work on pacing myself better.  I have, however, found over the many years of match shooting, that I fare better when I do not fatigue myself by dragging out the shots.  My eyes tend to get tired and blurry and my body aches more.  I tend to fire my rounds quite rapidly “naturally”.

Using the SKS, my score was 436, broken down as:

Offhand- 86

Rapid sitting- 81

Rapid prone- 94

Prone- 175

In comparison, I had fired these matches before using my AR15 (A1) and shot scores of 435 (w/o sling/jacket) and 454 (w/sling/jacket). 

Now why did I shoot so terrible in slow prone as compared to rapid prone?  Part of it lies at fault in the rifle.  Several times I had failures to feed and had to break out of my rhythm to clear them.  Later I figured that even these were my fault as I had not cleaned the rifle properly over time and the action was sort of “gummy”.   Mostly though, I attribute it to the fact that I was not being consistent in my sight picture, aiming slightly on the low side for each shot.  Oh well, there will be more matches.  Still, the SKS faired pretty well against the majority AR black rifles and Garands and odd FAL.  Mine was the only SKS there.

You will find that the TS200 rear sight mounted on your SKS really does make your shooting experience more fun.  Mounting the sight is very easy to do and when you are at the range, you will find sight adjustments extremely easy to make.  No more drifting the front sight using the SKS tool or squinting to use the old notch and post sight.  The workmanship of the sight is superb and the materials will match your rifle near perfectly.  If you shoot a lot of longer distance targets, the front sight post replacement may be for you as well.  I give their sights two thumbs up in making the SKS a better shooting rifle.

The TS200 sight runs $59.00, the TS100 sight (w/o elevation) runs $55.00.  If you already own the TS100, you can get the elevation upgrade part (TS220) for $19.  The front sight replacement (TS152) runs $5.  And, by the way, Tech Sights makes similar replacement peep sights for your Ruger 10/22 rifles as well.

Contact Tech Sights at http://www.tech-sights.com or 715-234-1793.