My Athlon Ares ETR 3-18 with the APLR6 reticle came in yesterday. I mounted it in Athlon picatinny rings. I mounted it on my Taipan standard 22 to try it out. I bought it with the plans to put it on my 177 Wolverine for FT use. But wanted to try it on this first. I didn’t get to shoot it a lot yesterday I just sighted it in at 10 yards off the bench using the hold over I thought would be correct for my 40 yard -0- Looking thru it to focus the reticle I was immediately impressed with the glass for my eyes. I can see this reticle better than any other I have used. As I have aged I have a hard time with reticles even though my eye doctors chart says I can see 20 -10 with my corrected lenses. This reticle shows up bold and black with crisp edges or lines. I messed around with it shooting 45 yard ram silhouettes from a chair before it got dark. This morning I went out to the bench and fine tuned my zero and set my turrets to zero. The zero stop worked perfect the several times I raised elevation and returned perfect. I left the Garrage and set up random targets from 10 - 55 yards. I don’t have a large wheel on it but it seems to range as well as any scope I have used @ 16x oh this scope has a 15x mark. So shooting hunter FT it will be set to 15x. I have purchased several scopes the past few years searching for a scope that will work for me on air rifles. This scope has the better glass for my eyes than anything I have looked thru. I only had one other FFP scope for a few days it made me think a first focal plane scope was useless to me because I couldn’t use the lower half of the scopes magnification. I was pleasantly surprised with this Ares I can use the hold overs at 8x pretty reliably. It does depend on the background thou. On white paper I used them at 5x but that was a perfect background with perfect light. Also I tried the illumination outside in the bright sun. It is daytime usable. I was pleasantly surprised by that. I have never really desired an illuminated scope in the daylight but it may be neat. I finished on my back patio shooting 45 yard silhouettes offhand. Here is the only drawback so far, this scope is heavy! It is only 5.4 oz more than my Midas HMR but it is very noticeable to me. I had shot for a while, it was hot enough for sweat to be dripping off my face. I hope in a rested condition the scopes weight won’t be too much. But I do plan to put it on my Wolverine for hunter FT anyway. So weight won't be as much a factor.
