On the Versa-pod, the legs are sprung DOWN, longer. So from your firing position, you simply unweight the rifle slightly, press the release catch and the leg springs down longer - an inch at a time.
You do not need to undo, or redo, any thumbscrews and the bi-pod helps you get higher. A bi-pod design that is sprung shorter is not needed - to do that, one could simply use
the weight of the rifle. What seems to make a whole lot more sense to me is some help making the bipod higher.... Anyway, in the field I personally find it very, very much easier to use.
The most significant difference between the Harris and the others is that the Harris has no facility for panning. This means that when one twists the rifle, even a few degrees to one side, there is then torsion in the legs and this is bad news for clean recoil. This is why you often see shooters rocking their rifles from bipod leg to leg, unweighting one at a time to take the torsion out of the legs.
This is not a problem on the range at all. In the field, for me, it is a no-can-do situation. All the other bipods here on test offer a proper range of panning. From my point of view, as an ultra long-range varminter, the need to pan quickly and smoothly without imparting torsion to the system is a must-have. The Versa-pod enables this in that you can relax a ball-joint so that side to side play is available (tilting
is independent of this, with its own tension adjuster knob).
This also proportionally enables up and down movement too... but also reduces the tension in the legs.
45
Bi-pods for Tactical & Field use By Richard Utting
This means that you cannot have a free range of movement and keep totally stiff, firm, upright legs. This is fairly unpopular in my experience. I, however, have always loved this option for looser, free-recoiling support.
The MIL SAK enables free movement but not at all at the expense of leg stiffness. This is extremely classy in that you get to have your cake and eat it: range of movement but not at the expense of solid legs and stability.
The Harris flat out does not offer it; the Versa-pod and Atlas offer free movement but as you loosen off the tension to allow this, you also create less leg stiffness – lots less with the Versa-pod and slightly less with the Atlas. I love this and the Atlas is most popular here in that it is firmer in its range of adjustments than the Versa-pod. The Versa-pod goes quickly from tight to quite loose and it can be tricky to find the sweet spot.
The Atlas has quite a steady, progressive range of adjustment and this is better although I personally found the adjustment to be globally too firm.
The Versa-pod does have that separate adjuster knob for cant tension, though.
Top adjuster is cant alone. Bottom adjuster is all other tensions ie. panning, tilting and leg stiffness
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