Introduction
(None of my comments/opinions/thoughts are paid for nor "sponsored" in any way. I'm just sharing).
I was generously gifted one of these by @Nofilters, as a show of appreciation for me kind being the de facto online promoter of the high power/long range field target matches that he has been putting on for the last 4 years. He purchased the scope with personal funds. Super cool of him, as my posting of the match announcements and match reports has never been done with intentions or desires of getting paid to do so. I really enjoy the matches and think others would too, so I'm more than willing to let folks know about them. I also have fun working through the match results, comparing equipment and individual shooter's performances, and also don't mind sharing that in match reports because I know other shooters like to see all that too.
As I tend to do with new guns/scopes etc, I think I'll try to maintain a sort of ongoing string of thoughts on the PARD. @Nofilters told me he expected as much.
So I've been playing with the scope off and on for a few weeks now. It's been on a couple guns and I think for now has found a home on the .177 Taipan Veteran that is mostly shot by my younger (6 years old) son. This past weekend I spent some time setting up the ballistics program within the scope to match actual trajectory. I had to feed it a non-factual scope height for predicted impact points to match actual, but fudging ballistics apps is pretty much par for the course, whether they're built into a scope or not.
The end results is a gun/scope combo that he can use for the Unlimited/Freestyle class of field target at monthly matches here in Arizona, as well as a low power pester that can be safely used by me and both sons for nighttime fun around my extended family's feedlot/barns.
For AAFTA style field target this youngest son will be using a tripod for a few more years anyway, automatically putting him in the Freestyle class. So figured he might as well get the full benefit of that class and use a scope that tells him the yardage and automatically calculates holdover. And to dispel any thoughts of nefarious intent, he will be shooting last in our squads at monthly matches (he won't be feeding me and his older brother the distances).
After getting it set up, youngest and oldest sons (11 years old) had a bunch of fun taking turns with the .177 Veteran. The process is really cool, push the button for the laser rangefinder, distance pops up in scope, push a button again, and the holdover for that distance appears on the vertical stadia within the image. Place that predicted holdover mark on the kill zone, pull the trigger, target falls (with a good trigger pull). They were both knocking down Air Venturi Rat on the run targets from 10-55 yards in the back yard on Saturday evening. The youngest is pretty excited to try it out in a match.
Me and the older son spent about 90 minutes at the extended family feedlots and barns after dark on Saturday. They've got a big grain silo that always has a bit of leakage around the base. They also have silage pits with corn as one of the ingredients. I fully expected some rats or mice to be lurking around but we saw exactly zero of them in the 90 minutes. We took turns scanning likely areas. Other than a bunch of cows, we saw one cottontail, and one barn cat (perhaps why no mice/rats). Here is the oldest on one of his turns scanning.
From a more tech and specs standpoint....
This PARD is pretty feature rich. It is an electronic day and night scope with a built in laser rangefinder, built in IR illuminator (making it night vision capable), and built in wifi (free app on GooglePlay store and I assume Apple whatever). The wifi+app allows what the shooter is seeing to be "cast" to another device (phone or tv or etc). There are 6 different reticle options, two are comparable to reticles we'd find in popular traditional style (glass lenses) scopes used by many of us these days. There are also 4 different color options (not reticle but entire scope view) to play with to see what works best for the each intended use.
The version I have has two magnifications, 5.6x or 11.2x. Which is maybe the biggest downfall I've found so far, after being used to 16x or 24X from traditional scopes for a lot of my target shooting use. The images seen when looking "through" the scope are electronically rendered, somewhat like looking at the screen on a digital camera. My oldest said it looks like VR to him. And the scope itself actually can't be looked "through" like a traditional scope. In fact, the battery goes through what would normally be the horizontal adjustment turret on a traditional scope, physically blocking the "through."
There is a "picture in picture" option in the settings that creates exactly what it sounds like in the upper margins of the scope view. Specs say the PIP option is 2x, and it "seems" like that PIP image is perhaps 22.4x? For some reason the PIP option isn't captured when recording though. Which gets me to the next point, the scope is also capable of recording video. When told to do so, it captures video in 3 minute clips. Dunno why it partitions them that way, but it does. Ie, if recording for 5 minutes straight, it will show up on the memory card as two files, one 3minutes and the other 2 minutes. It uses a TF card (128gb). I bought a two pack of the memory cards on Amazon for $15-20.
Many other features.... tells you which directions you're shooting, the angle of the shot, etc. The symbol for the hold-over indicator can be changed to suit preferences. It can hold a ballistic profile for 5 different set-ups (various pellets/slugs/zero distances/etc). Cycling through all the various settings and figuring out all the capabilities is borderline overwhelming.
It uses one standard button-less 18650 battery. Daytime battery usage is negligible. We used it for a couple hours and still had 85-90% of battery left. It was a bit more power hungry for the night-time usage, but in 90 minutes we still had more than half a battery's worth of power, call it 60%.
There are a couple rudimentary videos on my youtube channel if interested in "seeing" video quality. The live image through the scope is better than what can be seen in those videos. And I'm not an aspiring youtuber and don't have any fancy editing skills. I use YouTube as an easy place to post videos online, nothing more.
Night Vision
PARD advertises the IR illuminator as capable of 350meters. I've gone as far as the heron nests in the tops of the cottonwood trees down the creek from my house. They're at about 250 yards, and I could see them bright as day in the middle of the night. My son and I had no issues scanning for critters at the feedlots on Saturday night. The cottontail and cat were immediately visible b/c of the reflection of their eyes. It is not a thermal scope, but live animals are easily seen, even at night. Here is a photo of a photo of my neighbors horse in the middle of the night @ 97 yards. (no horses were shot).
Wifi
The wifi option was extremely easy to set up and use, and proved useful when I was walking the 6 year old through how to use the scope. I downloaded the PARD app on my phone and could see on my phone what he was seeing through the scope. This helped in teaching him the "keystrokes" to get the scope to do what he needed it to do, but also provided for some instruction when he wasn't holding enough for the wind. It also showed me just how much wobble that poor little 6 year deals with in the scope from his field target position, must be due to the rifle weighing about 1/3 his body weight, lol. As far as wifi goes, we were in the backyard, so could use my home wifi. If out in the field, I think a guy would need to set up a wifi hotspot, using the phone's data plan, for this to be functional. Here is a screengrab off my phone from using the wifi+PARD app.
Opinion
The transfer of files process was relatively easy, this being my first time doing so. It was as simple as popping the memory card out of the PARD and into the TF slot in the little internet browsing computer out in my gunroom. The files and location popped up automatically and could then be uploaded to YouTube or shared in other ways. I imagine somebody wanting to make a career out of YouTube could spend some time with editing software to really polish them up.
At this point I see the PARD as an action scope, much more suited for pesting and general use than for strictly target shooting. I am more impressed with it as a night scope than as a day scope. It is not overly difficult to use nor to become acquainted with. I skimmed through the manual and watched a couple of PARDS promo vids on YouTube and had a pretty good grasp of how to make it do what I wanted it to do. It will not replace a dedicated 100 yard benchrest scope, or a field target scope, but it definitely opens up a new type of shooting that a traditional scope does not allow. Very fun.
Links
PARD recently became a sponsor of AGN: https://www.airgunnation.com/threads/please-welcome-pard-to-our-list-of-fine-sponsors.1308704/
For more information and detailed specs on this particular scope, check here: https://pard.com/ds3-2/
(None of my comments/opinions/thoughts are paid for nor "sponsored" in any way. I'm just sharing).
I was generously gifted one of these by @Nofilters, as a show of appreciation for me kind being the de facto online promoter of the high power/long range field target matches that he has been putting on for the last 4 years. He purchased the scope with personal funds. Super cool of him, as my posting of the match announcements and match reports has never been done with intentions or desires of getting paid to do so. I really enjoy the matches and think others would too, so I'm more than willing to let folks know about them. I also have fun working through the match results, comparing equipment and individual shooter's performances, and also don't mind sharing that in match reports because I know other shooters like to see all that too.
As I tend to do with new guns/scopes etc, I think I'll try to maintain a sort of ongoing string of thoughts on the PARD. @Nofilters told me he expected as much.
So I've been playing with the scope off and on for a few weeks now. It's been on a couple guns and I think for now has found a home on the .177 Taipan Veteran that is mostly shot by my younger (6 years old) son. This past weekend I spent some time setting up the ballistics program within the scope to match actual trajectory. I had to feed it a non-factual scope height for predicted impact points to match actual, but fudging ballistics apps is pretty much par for the course, whether they're built into a scope or not.
The end results is a gun/scope combo that he can use for the Unlimited/Freestyle class of field target at monthly matches here in Arizona, as well as a low power pester that can be safely used by me and both sons for nighttime fun around my extended family's feedlot/barns.
For AAFTA style field target this youngest son will be using a tripod for a few more years anyway, automatically putting him in the Freestyle class. So figured he might as well get the full benefit of that class and use a scope that tells him the yardage and automatically calculates holdover. And to dispel any thoughts of nefarious intent, he will be shooting last in our squads at monthly matches (he won't be feeding me and his older brother the distances).
After getting it set up, youngest and oldest sons (11 years old) had a bunch of fun taking turns with the .177 Veteran. The process is really cool, push the button for the laser rangefinder, distance pops up in scope, push a button again, and the holdover for that distance appears on the vertical stadia within the image. Place that predicted holdover mark on the kill zone, pull the trigger, target falls (with a good trigger pull). They were both knocking down Air Venturi Rat on the run targets from 10-55 yards in the back yard on Saturday evening. The youngest is pretty excited to try it out in a match.
Me and the older son spent about 90 minutes at the extended family feedlots and barns after dark on Saturday. They've got a big grain silo that always has a bit of leakage around the base. They also have silage pits with corn as one of the ingredients. I fully expected some rats or mice to be lurking around but we saw exactly zero of them in the 90 minutes. We took turns scanning likely areas. Other than a bunch of cows, we saw one cottontail, and one barn cat (perhaps why no mice/rats). Here is the oldest on one of his turns scanning.
From a more tech and specs standpoint....
This PARD is pretty feature rich. It is an electronic day and night scope with a built in laser rangefinder, built in IR illuminator (making it night vision capable), and built in wifi (free app on GooglePlay store and I assume Apple whatever). The wifi+app allows what the shooter is seeing to be "cast" to another device (phone or tv or etc). There are 6 different reticle options, two are comparable to reticles we'd find in popular traditional style (glass lenses) scopes used by many of us these days. There are also 4 different color options (not reticle but entire scope view) to play with to see what works best for the each intended use.
The version I have has two magnifications, 5.6x or 11.2x. Which is maybe the biggest downfall I've found so far, after being used to 16x or 24X from traditional scopes for a lot of my target shooting use. The images seen when looking "through" the scope are electronically rendered, somewhat like looking at the screen on a digital camera. My oldest said it looks like VR to him. And the scope itself actually can't be looked "through" like a traditional scope. In fact, the battery goes through what would normally be the horizontal adjustment turret on a traditional scope, physically blocking the "through."
There is a "picture in picture" option in the settings that creates exactly what it sounds like in the upper margins of the scope view. Specs say the PIP option is 2x, and it "seems" like that PIP image is perhaps 22.4x? For some reason the PIP option isn't captured when recording though. Which gets me to the next point, the scope is also capable of recording video. When told to do so, it captures video in 3 minute clips. Dunno why it partitions them that way, but it does. Ie, if recording for 5 minutes straight, it will show up on the memory card as two files, one 3minutes and the other 2 minutes. It uses a TF card (128gb). I bought a two pack of the memory cards on Amazon for $15-20.
Many other features.... tells you which directions you're shooting, the angle of the shot, etc. The symbol for the hold-over indicator can be changed to suit preferences. It can hold a ballistic profile for 5 different set-ups (various pellets/slugs/zero distances/etc). Cycling through all the various settings and figuring out all the capabilities is borderline overwhelming.
It uses one standard button-less 18650 battery. Daytime battery usage is negligible. We used it for a couple hours and still had 85-90% of battery left. It was a bit more power hungry for the night-time usage, but in 90 minutes we still had more than half a battery's worth of power, call it 60%.
There are a couple rudimentary videos on my youtube channel if interested in "seeing" video quality. The live image through the scope is better than what can be seen in those videos. And I'm not an aspiring youtuber and don't have any fancy editing skills. I use YouTube as an easy place to post videos online, nothing more.
Night Vision
PARD advertises the IR illuminator as capable of 350meters. I've gone as far as the heron nests in the tops of the cottonwood trees down the creek from my house. They're at about 250 yards, and I could see them bright as day in the middle of the night. My son and I had no issues scanning for critters at the feedlots on Saturday night. The cottontail and cat were immediately visible b/c of the reflection of their eyes. It is not a thermal scope, but live animals are easily seen, even at night. Here is a photo of a photo of my neighbors horse in the middle of the night @ 97 yards. (no horses were shot).
Wifi
The wifi option was extremely easy to set up and use, and proved useful when I was walking the 6 year old through how to use the scope. I downloaded the PARD app on my phone and could see on my phone what he was seeing through the scope. This helped in teaching him the "keystrokes" to get the scope to do what he needed it to do, but also provided for some instruction when he wasn't holding enough for the wind. It also showed me just how much wobble that poor little 6 year deals with in the scope from his field target position, must be due to the rifle weighing about 1/3 his body weight, lol. As far as wifi goes, we were in the backyard, so could use my home wifi. If out in the field, I think a guy would need to set up a wifi hotspot, using the phone's data plan, for this to be functional. Here is a screengrab off my phone from using the wifi+PARD app.
Opinion
The transfer of files process was relatively easy, this being my first time doing so. It was as simple as popping the memory card out of the PARD and into the TF slot in the little internet browsing computer out in my gunroom. The files and location popped up automatically and could then be uploaded to YouTube or shared in other ways. I imagine somebody wanting to make a career out of YouTube could spend some time with editing software to really polish them up.
At this point I see the PARD as an action scope, much more suited for pesting and general use than for strictly target shooting. I am more impressed with it as a night scope than as a day scope. It is not overly difficult to use nor to become acquainted with. I skimmed through the manual and watched a couple of PARDS promo vids on YouTube and had a pretty good grasp of how to make it do what I wanted it to do. It will not replace a dedicated 100 yard benchrest scope, or a field target scope, but it definitely opens up a new type of shooting that a traditional scope does not allow. Very fun.
Links
PARD recently became a sponsor of AGN: https://www.airgunnation.com/threads/please-welcome-pard-to-our-list-of-fine-sponsors.1308704/
For more information and detailed specs on this particular scope, check here: https://pard.com/ds3-2/
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