I don't recommend dropping the rifle down from your shoulder nor lowering the barrel when changing the mag and/or cycling the action (since there's no real need to if you have the strength), therefore you can't really reach the bolt handle above the optics without making some extra movements.

With optics, if you wish to positively rack the action from above, you'll have to drop the barrel down, turn the rifle counterclockwise, cycle the action and raise the weapon back up to your eye level. By positively I mean using a method with a least probability to fail to succeed in this without any hassle.

From below, keeping the stock on your shoulder (or like me on the plate of my PC) and the cheek weld, you turn the rifle clockwise about 30-45°, reach with your support hand from below, cycle the action and as your support hand returns to the front handguard, you turn the rifle back straight. Very quick and smooth action and you never lose the sight picture or if running, you are quickly back in the fight. If you have long arms, then you don't even have to tilt the rifle, the T-Rex me has to...

A long armed person may also be able to reach the bolt handle from the above without any extra movements to the rifle, but there's always the risk of your sleeve to snatch the optics causing partial cycling and failure to feed or at least it will cost you oftentimes invaluable seconds and wearing full kit you'll need big movements and more effort to reach the handle thus you are losing energy you should be conserving till the EOM.


Hope my babbling makes sense, I should demonstrate this with an actual AK against a clock... But remember, we all are built differently and there's no one correct way to do the job, so you should pick the way that is the most effective for you.



We seem to be diverting quite a lot from the actual subject, sorry guys...