Mr. Ball, I'm seeking some advice ..
My Barra H50 is great except the parallax adjustment is out by about 8 yards. i.e. To remove the parallax at 25 yards, the knob reads about 33 yards.
Do you know of any way to correct this?
Thx!
I certain do not have the balls to do fix side focus knob! The side focus wheels cannonball suggested is the only way to go. PM Elis5173 here, in fact I literally just asked him to make some focus wheel for the Barra so if you also PM him that might get him moving a bit quicker. Ask for the wheel to be a bit wider so you can put yardage markers on it.
Another "problem" with the Barra scope is that the eye piece is so large and the reticle is rather large/thick so you might not have your reticle even focused correctly but still appears focused. Also the barra scopes have good depth of field so that makes getting parallax correct harder actually because both the object and the reticle could appear to be sharp especially at lower magnification your parallax still could be off and without a good cheek weld you still could miss. All the attributes that makes precision shooting a bit harder are all most likely by design because it's hunting scope for center fire so slight parallax error is not a big deal but huge field of view and large depth of field are key features for hunting scope for target acquisition and quick shot. Just put the scope at 10x and compare to other scopes at 10 looking at the same object, the barra will surprise you most of the time.
Not certain if you know how to focus the eye piece here is a quick run down:
1. put your parallax to infinity
2. point it to open sky but not the sun, cloud is ok
3. open both your eyes and stare at the cloud/sky or a mountain far away at 15 seconds
4. look into the eye piece to see if the reticle is immediately clear without squinting or your eyes completely relaxed. VERY IMPORTANT: do not look at the reticle for more than 2-3 seconds!
5. adjust 1/8 of a turn while looking at the distance for 15 seconds and repeat the process till the reticle is 100 sharp as soon as you put your eye to the eye piece
6. Adjust parallax to say 20 yards then put your eye to the eye piece and see if BOTH the reticle and the object is IMMEDIATELY clear
7. If both the object and reticle are clear then move your eye back an inch or so until the black ring is clearly visible and precede to move your eye up and down then left and right. If the parallax is correct then the reticle will not move and depends on the scope the adjustment is tiny!
8. repeat the parallax validation for as many yardage markers as you want
In contrast my Crimson Trace scope that are made for precision long distance target shooting so the eye alignment is MUCH harder and the eye box is much tighter. Cheek weld, scope height, eye relief, eye piece focus all have to 100% perfect or things won't look right but that's also by design so the parallax error can be eliminated. I know some people complain about tight eye box but IMHO the good scopes with tight eye box are that way by design, forgiving eye box is also a design feature but you do give up a little bit precision, everything is a compromise. BUT if you have prefect cheek weld because you are like matt dubber who has the same GSR adjustable stock on every gun then parallax is a non-issue.
BTW Barra FT/H50 is made in the same factory(japan optics) as many other Tier 1 scopes including my Crimson Trace.
Ahhh ... I really appreciate that advice, because I would have definitely messed up the scope. The side wheel is the solution for me.
