optics / scopes

[BFEGTO]

looking for suggestions for medium to long range shooting, up to 1000yds. how much magnification do you actually need at that distance? what has worked,or not worked for you before?

which leupold's would be a good suggestion? how are ior valdada scopes also? what other suggestions does everyone have?

[greg'sgoat]

For a 1000 yards, I'd say you'd want at least a 10x magnification. A Leupold Mk4 would be a top of the line under $1000 scope, but that's a lot of money for someone who's just getting into long range shooting. I did a lot of research when I was looking into building an AR15 in a 18" SPR setup, and I decided I'd stick with a ~$300 SWFA Super Sniper Scope (Corney name, decent glass).

http://www.swfa.com/c-231-super-sniper-rifle-scopes.aspx

Most of the reviews on this say that this is the some of the best, lowest price glass you'll find. No matter what though, spend a lot of time reading about what you're looking at on AR15.com's optic section and even look at snipershide.com's forum and read about it (take some of the reviews at snipershide with a grain of salt, most of those guys are billionares and use nightforce scopes as door stops).

[BFEGTO]

i have been looking at ss scopes but was really wanting a variable magnification. i have read good things about the new falcon menace line. i was looking at the millet lrs-1, but finding mixed reviews about them.

[BFEGTO]

ok found a couple more i was curious about. 1st up is the Hawke Optics Frontier, not sure which power would be better in this scope.2nd up is the zeiss conquest line.

opinions and thoughts.

[gametech]

I never get to shoot at 1000yds, so I can't give any input on magnification. However, Zeiss scopes put top of the line Nikon and Leupold optics to shame in image clarity. Zeiss optics can really ONLY be appreciated by doing a side by side comparison to what you think are good lenses. Previously there pricing was on par with Swarovski (also great optics), but the Conquest line is much lower priced, while not being lower quality. You may have guessed by now I own a few of their scopes.

[greg'sgoat]

The only thing I know about variable power scopes, is don't go cheap. I haven't done much in the way of research on them, but the cheaper variable power scopes tend to not be as clear at high magnification and tend to not want to stay together after shooting a lot with it.

[BFEGTO]

i see alot of people talking about FFP. whats the big advantage of a first focal plain over traditional?

[DriveTOOfast]

FFP is only of use if you have some sort of non-standard reticle of some sort.
With FFP scopes and a mil-dot reticle the relationship between the reticle hash marks and the target stay consistent as you change magnification.
For example, if you crank your scope up all the way and are checking out a coyote that is just sitting and enjoying the morning sun. You look real hard and he is 1.5 mils from top of head to ground (about 500 yards away when you do the math). Next, you crank the magnification down cause you want to be able to have a good field of view before taking the shot and he is still 1.5 mils high.

With a scope that has the reticle wherever they put it (other than FFP) you would mil the object at a specific designated magnification to get an accurate mil reading. When you crank the magnification down to get a wider field of view the coyote would appear to get smaller but the reticle would stay a consistent size. If you take the power down from 16X to 8X the coyote would shrink from 1.5 mils to 0.75 mils.

There are good and bad points with both ways. For a range queen the magnification is normally set to the highest magnification anyway so it becomes a non-issue.
Another good reason to stick with a fixed power scope for a range rifle.

Where a FFP scope is definitely an advantage is on moving targets. If you know your mil lead for a specific target speed you don't have to worry if the magnification is set on milling power or not.
For instance, my mil lead on a 3 mph (hiking speed) target is 1 1/4 mils and my lead on a slow speed target (1 mph) is just a hair over 1/2 mil. All that presumes I am at milling power. If my regular scope is set at 8X instead of the 22X that needs to be used for milling my numbers would be off enough that I would send the shot in front of the target by quite a bit (depending on yardage).

The disadvantage to a FFP scope has to do with the reticle getting bigger and smaller. It is not only the hash marks that change but also the thickness of the reticle. With a 6-18X FFP scope the crosshairs are so thin as to be very difficult to see at 6X but at 18X they are so fat that they can obscure small targets.

[BFEGTO]

very informative, thanks.

[BFEGTO]

no other suggestions?

[BFEGTO]

what are the difference in the knobs on the leupold scopes? i see people talkign abotu target, m1,m2,m3 etc.....

how do leupold and ior valdada compare to eachother?