Scope talk

Blacknsilver

Well-Known Member
For many years I used relatively cheap scopes. I took a break from shooting. When I came back after many years a lot had changed. I decided to start off where I left off with a scope at about £100
Very happy with it but I fancied side parallax adjustment. So I spent a little more. £300. I went for the Hawke Airmax 6-24-50 sf 30. Great scope and I could defiantly tell the £200 spent. I recently bought a FAC Air Rifle and spent a little more on another scope. £500. I went for the new
Hawke Frontier 2.5-15-50. After using that for a few hours zeroing in the new rifle and general plinking I was massively impressed. The glass was crystal clear. The retical was very nice. I then swapped rifles in the same shooting session. I picked up the rifle with the Airmax on it. I'm not saying I was dissapointed but again I could tell the difference in quality.
Surely this can't keep going like this? I haven't looked through any other more expensive scopes than my Hawke but curious to know how good these £1000+ scopes are.

What scopes do you guys use?

I will be buying two new rifles soon and I need to look at scopes for them. I haven't got the money for two expensive scopes so I may have to do a little swapping around. The two Rifles I am buying will be the .22lr this will be mainly used for informal target shooting ( range is 100 yards) plinking on my perm and a little hunting.
Then the .17hmr.
What scopes would you put in these?

I'm thinking of putting the 6-24-50 on the .17hmr as this has the turrets to dial in.

The New Hawke sits pride of place on my Matador and works well with that.
 
I have a hawke sidewinder on my hmr. But that is mainly used at night with night vision. Your question is very open, what do you define as expensive? I have some 3-12x44 scopes which are ok and cheap but people's needs and desires are different. Try a second hand meopta, or minox. Leupolds or bushnells all come at reasonable prices secondhand.
 
I like Schmidt and bender or Zeiss, expensive yes but reliable and they have excellent optical quality and reliable turret adjustments time after time. On a .22 I would use a 3_9x or fixed 6x and in the 17 I would use something with max magnification between 10 and 20x
 
Cheers for the replies.
Good replies and I will be looking at 2nd hand more expensive range. Expensive being more than I can afford! Lol £800+
i was so impressed with the new Hawke I was curious how clear more expensive one ones be. I know reliability and build quality come into play.
 
many scopes will look very similar in the day as the high end stuff as far as clarity and image quality goes and to be honest you will wonder what you pay the differnce for but wait until the light starts to fade and the cheaper scopes will soon fall by the wayside as you will just not be able to see through them but the better quality glass will just keep going letting you see for longer, but be warned more money does not always mean better quality i could quite easily go out and spend £3-400 even more if i like on a scope and still not have somthing with as good opticaly as an old 6x42 made by one of the "big 3" which i could have got for £200. with the budget you have i would keep your eyes open for a meopta or maybe a minox or maybe even a s+b 8x56 if its enough mag for what you want they seem to be going cheap at the moment
 
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I gave up on budget scopes a year or two ago (bar one). I've found that at the cheaper end you CAN have great optics OR you might get reasonable mechanical tracking courtesy of a decently made erector tube assembly and lens group zoom mechanisms etc and adjusters but you cannot have both. It's just plain old economics. It costs more to make a precisely and well designed tracking system which will remain accurate and reliable for years than to use cheaper production and design methods. However, it has to be said that lens coatings have come on in leaps and bounds this past decade. Glass perhaps has yet to catch up with leaded glass optically (both my older camera and rifle scope lenses are in leaded glass and they have amazing edge to edge clarity) although Schott (AG) glass and similar quality lead free glass is very good indeed. I believe that Swaro, amongst others, use this glass.

I had one of the new Hawke Endurance range for a short while. It was moved on quickly. One turret seemed a little stiff so I removed the adjuster to find that a factory machining fault had left the underside of the adjuster needing shimming, so the factory has snipped a bit of a spare alloy moa top plate (with the dial markings on it) and shoved this tinny little sliver under the adjuster on one side only as a shim. I was appalled with how crudely done it was and will never buy another Hawke scope in consequence. I literally gave that one away. One prior to that on my old HMR seemed fine though.

You tend to get what you pay for with scopes. For me, holding (close to) zero at all mags and repeatability of tracking is probably more important than ultimate clarity or resolution of optics. I don't believe that you have to pay top end for adequate optical performance though these days as coating technology is so advanced. The low light performance of my £279 Falcon M18 betters my VXiii Leup. Not by much, but it has lower chromatic aberration and better light transmission. Whilst it tracks well enough, I haven't owned it long enough to judge whether it will be ok in a few years time but it's definitely at the budget end of things in that department. Paying more for something like a good Sightron, Leup, S&B (or whatever takes your fancy at mid to upper end) almost guarantees long term serviceability, trackability, reliability and great optics. That's how I see it anyway.
 
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