Scopes

Arrgghh the agony of choice.

To cut a long story short converting one of my older target rifles to have a go at F TR Class. One day might feel flush enough to ptch into F Class proper but that seems to be a bit of an arms race.

Sooo having chatted to a number of people seems there are different lines of thought on scopes for work at around the 1000 yard mark.

First is that you get the most mahoosive benchrest style variable power tube with the highest magnification (32X or 42X) and 1/8 MOA clicks in order to drill the heart out of that mo' fo' piece of paper.

Second is that you need something German, Swiss, Austrian or just hugely expensive in order to show that you can.

Third is that the adherents to (1) and (2) should get a life: up to 20X is about the minimum but something up to 25X in 30mm tube is far more realistic in terms of the real world abilities of 98% of shooters and ammo, far great range of internal adjustment available, less wobblage and lower general risk of bankruptcy.

So non silly money possibles as I see it are:

Leupold VX-III 8.5-25x50mm LRT

http://www.leupold.com/hunting-and-shooting/products/scopes/vx-iii-riflescopes/vx-iii-8-5-25x50mm-long-range-target/

Leupold Mark 4 8.5-25x50mm LR/T M1
(more expensive than the one above but drawn to that as I aready have a lower powered Mark 4 on another rifle)

Nightforce 5.5-22 x 50 NXS

http://www.nightforceoptics.com/SCOPES_OVERVIEW/5_5-22x50___5_5-22x56/5_5-22x50___5_5-22x56.html

Views, suggestions etc from the shooty sages of ARRSE welcome.

Fcukwit comments from Gobshite McCnut and barsteward relations of same not.

 

Schmidt and Bender PMII 5-25x56. A snip at £1510!
That's what I have but I understand you wanting to pay less. I would say having zoom isn't critical. A high power fixed will do very nicely most of the time. You can have problems getting a bright enough image at high magnification sometimes which is where zooming down comes in.

Benchresters tend to go for a fine simplex reticle but I think a MILDOT has great advantages in being able to measure off your corrections. Particularly useful if your turrets also adjust in mils (Leupolds tend not to - European stuff does.)

Swarovski 6-24x50 would be a contender. No mildot reticle £930 here:
http://www.rmacleod.co.uk/optical.htm#schmidt

It's worth considering a second hand Zeiss/Hensoldt, Schmidt & Bender, Swarovski, Kahles, Pecar, etc because they are so well made they don't (often) go wrong.

Leupold are good value but I prefer my scope to work in mils, it's so much easier. I've no experience with Nightforce.

 

For F class there's no such thing as too much magnification. A popular choice is the Nightforce 12-42x56 NXS. Schmidt & Bender have just introduced a 12-50x56. But they are both very expensive!

Leupold, Burris, IOR, Nikon etc are all credible alternatives. You need to ensure that you select the models with target turrets and parralax adjustment and upper magnifications of 25 or 32x. They're all still pretty pricey!

If you're only going to shoot out to 600 yards on a regular basis, then you can get away with a cheaper, lower power fixed magnification scope. I use a 10x42 Optimate on my 0.308 target rifle - a Japanese scope imported by Edgar Bros which sells for about £300. It has the target turrets and parralax adjustment.

If you want to go budget, the Chinese scopes are the way to go. Some of these really are very good for the price. I've heard good things about the ones sold by Fox Firearms.