Scope preview: MTC King Cobra

Time Well Spent August 10, 2023

When MTC Optics was taken over by Daystate nearly ten years ago, the company inherited a strong range of scopes which had been serving MTC customers well for years. Most of the MTC range had been made in collaboration with a Chinese company called OPTISAN, who still makes good scopes today. Whilst these scopes were highly regarded, it’s fair to say that the range needed refreshing, which is exactly what the management of the ‘new’ MTC has done, taking a couple of years to find designers, and the right manufacturers to make scopes to their requirements. 

Designer features

Designing, or commissioning the designs of others in what is a highly specialised area, was a bit of a learning curve. Whilst original MTC Viper and Mamba scopes were great value, Daystate wanted something better to match its higher-end rifles, but  the market really was used to more bargain-end pricing from MTC. It’s fair to say that early scopes from the revamped MTC were loaded with quite expensive features, such as extended zoom ranges – for example 2-18 x, rather than the more usual and cheaper 4-16, and special features such as a very expensive ‘gearbox’ turret on lower magnification scopes. Great to have, but more expensive to tool up for and ultimately  sell than the airgun market really needed or wanted.

Value … and values

What MTC needed was a range of top-end scopes that reflected Daystate values, but in a specification that was exciting enough to generate sales. A decision was made to make a two major direction changes, the first was to go into niche market scopes that were different to those offered by every other optics company, and the second was to focus on airguns. MTC was able to design scopes such as the low eye-relief Viper Connect and a range of fixed magnification, prismatic designs that became the, now often-copied, SWAT series.

At the same time, it had a second look at its more conventional scopes and asked the question ‘what exactly does a shooter want?’ The answer came back loud and clear; nice glass, good build quality and a reasonable price.  

A King is born

It was this answer that created the new MTC King Cobra series. Starting with the very best lenses they could get, a scope was built around a fairly conventional design. Set-up costs were kept under control by using a standard in-line lens configuration, and commercially available turrets. Gone was the extended six-times zoom range, replaced with a more conventional four-times zoom.

The company couldn’t bear to give up its unique magnetic flip covers, so they were retained, but this didn’t really add too much to cost because most of the tooling costs were by this time recovered.
To give the maximum amount of flexibility, the King Cobra range was offered in second and first focal (FFP or SFP) plane models, and the scope we see here is an upgraded 8-32 x 50. At the same time, MTC felt that this would be a great scope to bring back its patented gearbox turret, albeit slightly improved and converted from MOA to MIL ,to match a MIL spec’ reticle, which is also a new and improved design.

Loads more to come ….

This preview highlights just a few of the amazing features to be found on the new MTC Optics King Cobra, and we’ll be taking an in-depth view of it in next month’s issue. For now, the King is back – and it’s ready to strike!

This 8-32 x 50 model will be joined by a 4-16, and a 6-24