Max elevation adjustments

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Dairyboy

Dairyboy

Member
Jul 23, 2016
5,650
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Washington, United States
This is a question I've been thinking of for along time now having looked for scopes recently. I've been using SWFA scopes for a few years now and they are relatively small scopes but have a ton of adjustment like 40mils. Lots of other larger scopes with 34mm tubes only have like 25-30mils. Why don't they have more? I mean I guess it's unnecessary as 10mil of adjustment can get my gun to around 150yds but idk just a thought I was thinking about.
 
Dairyboy,

What are you shooting that only reaches 150 yards? I’m thinking it’s a .177
I don’t know scope internals like some; but I’ve been comparing adjustability range since SWFA came into my life. SWFA is pretty much my new favorite. My limit for most scopes is $250-$800.00. At $299 SWFA can’t be beat for its range of elevation alone. I can’t see me spending the required price on any top tier type scope.

Add a set of FX No Limit rings on a slug only .22 Condor or other & VOILA! 
Thanks to the rings (rear ring as high as possible and fine tuning its elevation adjustment screw) & scope, my zero is 92-97 yards depending on the fill pressure/slug weight & if head or tail wind. That variable zero is with the turret BOTTOMED OUT.🤤 
That means I have 10 mils of holdover thanks to SWFA mil-quad hollow diamond reticle, and 27 mils of elevation on the turret.🤗 Yay! 🤗 
This has allowed me to shoot out past distances I never thought possible with an airgun.
I normally would have it optically centered. Not for this rig.
My main .22 slug rigs preferred 28.5 to 32 grain Griffin RBT slugs have hit my intended 13.5”x7.5” black cardboard target at, believe it or not 415 yards.
I’m not shooting any varmints at that distance but in no winds (early morning) I’ve seen 20 shots covered by my hand. I’d say human variables are at fault more than stringing/airguns/ammo ever would.
I need a better scope for real groups past 200 anyway.


 
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Makes sense. Quite a few guns are now including MOA built into there rails like Edgun, Taipan, AAA and sure there are others those are just off the top of my head.

James im shooting a .22 R5M tuned at 900fps with the 18gr JSBs. I'm sighted in at 35yds. I shoot pests 95% of the time and likely wouldn't even shoot out to 150yds except with my R5 .30. Now just for fun or plinking no problem can shoot much further but I rarely do that.
 
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Riflescopes have many compromises so everything in the design has optimum parameters. 

The term optical center comes to mind. It's the sweet spot in the adjustment of the erector tube where the scope will be at it's peak "image quality/IQ". But as one wants to shoot farther and farther out, if adjusting turrets to do so, the more the scope is adjusted out of optical center. That's where a compromise presents itself, because the erector gets angled so steeply the IQ begins to degrade at a certain point.

This happened to me just a few days ago and I had kind of forgot about the phenomenon because I'm used to 20 moa bases on most of my centerfires which normally don't create enough angle to degrade the IQ, or at least not much. What happened was my EVOL has a 50moa base on it and I put a Athlon Ares BTR 4.5-27 on it recently. I was thinking to myself hmmm it seems like I got a poor unit sample and was considering sending it back for replacement. Then the light came on! Duh Steve you've seen this before when you shot ELR. So I dialed the scope up 15 mils and what do you know, the scope IQ was fine again. 

Of course every scope has turret travel limitation, usually a 1" tube the least amount, 30mm more, 34mm even more, and so on, but that is a generality. Basically the erector tube can't adjust any farther because it has a stop installed or it bumps against the outer tube. Also magnification has something to do with the amount of travel in a scope, a lower mag scope will typically have more travel. As you know the SWFA design exploits about as much travel as is possible in a 30mm tube so that's something they excel in.

The Ares BTR, is a superior scope in many ways but it only has 24 mils of elevation travel(still quite a lot) so that compromise doesn't go well with a 50 moa base like on the EVOL. So I'm going to have to order some type of adjustable ring set to take out 30 or so moa out of the 50 moa angle to give back the good IQ that I've gotten used to with these scopes.

The S&B 5-25 I had on the EVOL for a while was fine because it's designed to be used with a 28 moa base and has more elevation travel so the scope was great to look through.

BTW the worst example I've seen so far was in a Bushnell 3.5-21x50 HDMR scope which at the time was a $1500 scope. When the turrets were dialed all the way up to max the IQ was really bad. Even so I was able to hit a steel plate at 2356Y, one of many 1000Y + targets we engaged that day. Somehow I won the match as well.
 
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I normally set up my scopes this way, if the scope rail doesn't have 20 or 25 MOA tilt...

Using either adjustable rings or shims (the Hawke 25 MOA shims are great), I set the scope so that it is near the bottom of the elevation travel. So if a scope like the Athlon Ares or Midas mentioned above has about 2 1/2 turns bottom to top, I'll zero the scope at 50 yards so that I am 1/2 to 3/4 turn from the bottom. This is far enough to not hinder clarity, but low enough to give you lots of upward travel. For example, with the Midas TAC on my Eddy R3 Long shooting slugs, I can dial up about 300 yards from a 50 yard zero.

For scopes like the Hawke Sidewinders, that have about 5 or 6 turns total on the elevation turret, I set the scope at 1.5 full turns from the bottom. This still gives me plenty of overhead to dial up longer shots.

Hawke 25 MOA shims - If these shims are not wide enough, grind off the forward lip of each one and they will then fit any scope rings. Since they come in a set of rear and front shims they do not stress your scope tube like just shimming the rear.
 
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I normally set up my scopes this way, if the scope rail doesn't have 20 or 25 MOA tilt...

Using either adjustable rings or shims (the Hawke 25 MOA shims are great), I set the scope so that it is near the bottom of the elevation travel. So if a scope like the Athlon Ares or Midas mentioned above has about 2 1/2 turns bottom to top, I'll zero the scope at 50 yards so that I am 1/2 to 3/4 turn from the bottom. This is far enough to not hinder clarity, but low enough to give you lots of upward travel. For example, with the Midas TAC on my Eddy R3 Long shooting slugs, I can dial up about 300 yards from a 50 yard zero.

For scopes like the Hawke Sidewinders, that have about 5 or 6 turns total on the elevation turret, I set the scope at 1.5 full turns from the bottom. This still gives me plenty of overhead to dial up longer shots.

Hawke 25 MOA shims - If these shims are not wide enough, grind off the forward lip of each one and they will then fit any scope rings. Since they come in a set of rear and front shims they do not stress your scope tube like just shimming the rear.
Click to expand...

Interesting method and perfectly logical. I had not seen the Hawke shims before. But using this method seems to completely negate the "optical centering" concept so I assume that you don't ascribe to the idea that there is benefit to that?
 
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I don't think turning the turret so your scope is out of optical center for an elevation adjustment is a good way to shoot long range for several reasons. Just because everyone does it, doesn't mean that's the way to go. Oh, I spun the turret on some of my scopes before. There's better adjustable base options to use for sure. I can't see spending the time to properly shim (Burris Signature Rings) an optically centered scope to a zero point, just to start turning it out of center for an elevation adjustment. Too old school for me. 

I'd recommend using a base with about 100 mil. of adjustable elevation designed into it, so you don't screw up the optical center of the scope. To me it's just one more small thing on the big list of things to get right. 

I use one (HHA Optimizer) with a 60 yard "shimmed" zero. I've shot 3-4" balloons at 400 yards with about 10 mil's. left on my dial shooting .25 cal. airgun slugs. Just my .02.......
 
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bandg

Interesting method and perfectly logical. I had not seen the Hawke shims before. But using this method seems to completely negate the "optical centering" concept so I assume that you don't ascribe to the idea that there is benefit to that?
Click to expand...

Bingo. With decent scopes, like the Athlon Midas TAC on up, as long as you are not jammed at the bottom or top, the scope is accurate and clear at the 15% to 85% range. I’ve never run into a problem doing it this way. I also hunt frequently and walk around a lot, so adding pounds of additional equipment to my gun doesn’t make sense for me. I’m not at the 400 yard sub MOA level yet to schwack squirrels at that range, but am very successful at 150 to 200 yards...
 
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I was considering trying out March brand a while ago but simply can't accept their limited one year warranty so I primarily use Sightron Bushnell and Leupold and some other cheaper brands like Hawke which have lifetime warranties and find out the hard way that for some companies lifetime warranty for Mueller is only for original owners with original purchase receipt and BSA charges for warranty. If you can't find your receipt or cant dig it up you are $hit out a luck. Happened to me with a Mueller purchased brand new and the illumination was DOA. Bushnell seems to be the best no B.S. for warranty they send you a brand new one often times an upgrade if it's already obsolete. Burris and Leupold are great too. Sightrons so far never needed any warranty knock knock knock on wood! YO!
 
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Great info here guys! Really appreciate it. Like said previously mainly just a hunter but recently wanting to switch from using the reticle via holdover to dialing in my shots. I've been playing around with that with my R5M and Arken 4-14 SH-4 and man is that satisfying. Dialed in on a pigeon at 80yds and head shot him. And many dove and starlings at 70yds. But yeah most my shooting is less than 100yds and with a 50yd zero that's only about 4mil at 100yds so I don't need a whole lot but yeah was just curious why some like the SWFA line have so much adjustment and much higher end scopes have quite a bit less.
 
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