Air Arms Owners Club

I know scopes are a personal choice but I was wondering what the HFT boys are using. I have a nice collection of Vortex scopes as they are great glass but they don't parallax down enough for the sub 12 air.
I do have a few MTC but I find them very average . What are you using and why do you have that particular scope.

BBF

It's always going to be a personal preference Ray.

Some of the top shooters are using Leups/March at around £800 + mark whilst others are using much cheaper scopes. For HFT they don't have to be "good" glass. Some people use blur as a distance indicator, some want "clear" through all the HFT distances. Once set it can't be altered anyway.

I have a little Leup EFR on one set up and a Clearidge 3-9 X 32 on another set up. One is a duplex ret and the other a mildot. I can't use a fine ret as I lose it quite frequently.

As an example we have two double HFT National Champions at our club. One uses an expensive Leup. The other uses an MTC Connect. Totally different scopes.

ATB
Ray.

When I started with a low budget I went for the Nikko Stirling Mountmaster 3-9x40 AO IR.
I later picked up the Hawke Panorama EV 4-12x40 AO IR.

Just to be different I prefer the 10x mag to the 9x which a lot of people seem to prefer.
Although the reticle on the Hawke is finer than the Nikko, I like the half mildot reticle.
The IR on the Hawke is red/blue as opposed to the usual red/green, the blue works a lot better for me.

Yes I get your point and understand, but due to needing a better scope for my air rifle I thought I would ask what works. I was thinking of a fine ret with ir as I would be using it for hunting as well.

BBF

been looking at sightron scopes. seen loads of vids and reviews. also lots of s&b v sightron. march v sightron. nightforce v sightron. whats so interesting about that you might think. well the sighton cost half as much as the scopes its going up against. now is a scope is that good it can take on a s&b but cost half the price. its worth looking at.

I don't do HFT but I have the Lightstream 4X14X42 on my Rapid and it focusses down to 15 yards. Really clear picture and FFP means no change in POI at any zoom level. For the money I have never seen anything better. However, I looked through a Nikko Sterling recently and was very impressed with the clarity.

Brooksy wrote:I don't do HFT but I have the Lightstream 4X14X42 on my Rapid and it focusses down to 15 yards. Really clear picture and FFP means no change in POI at any zoom level. For the money I have never seen anything better. However, I looked through a Nikko Sterling recently and was very impressed with the clarity.

I been looking at the new sv. people are raving about the fine focus on them. bit on the big side tho.

I like FFP scopes because as you may know the aim points and mil dots/marks stay the same on any magnification so you can use the mil dots whatever mag you need.

I mostly use FFP scopes as I see little point buying SFP scope and only been able to use the mil dots at 10x or 9x as the mil dots are only true at these mag settings on SFP scopes, if you change mag on SFP your mil dots or marks change and are messed up, so your really paying money for a high magnification scope and can only really use it at 10x.

The options are better on first focal plane, as you can still use it for HFT. then wind up the mag and use it for long range plinking, wind it down to 6x for hunting, aim points are always true whatever mag you choose to use.....

If one is shooting FT then SECOND FOCAL PLANE is a better choice as FT,shooters mostly dial in every range with the turrets, FT,shooters mark out all ranges on the scope turrets out to 55,yards so no real need for mil dots or holdover.

To be Honest, most, Hawke, MTC Falcon, nikko are all China made scopes, and are regarded in the real world as cheap'o glass, They are heavy lumps.

I use Falcon Menace 4-14x44 B20 ret,, the Falcons have served me well, however there is far better glass out there though,,, Hawke are cheap scopes with goodish Glass for the money if they made a FFP scope with a decent long range retical may own another.

I also like the Vortex Viper PST 4-16x50 EB-1 mrad FFP scope,,, and will own one shortly.

I do own hawke Panorama 6-18x50 it is a very good scope nice reticle and very surprising good clean glass for the money,,, although it is SFP.

I also own a few MTC scopes and my opinion is they are nothing much to rave about, my MTC Taipan 4-16X50 AMD ret, is okay I guess.
I much prefer my cheaper viper. The MTC scopes are so heavy and add unwanted weight to your rifle.

As said above, scopes are a very personal thing and one needs to look through as many as possible and choose wisely. there is some much really nice glass on the market but how big is you wallet......I mean we all would love to fit a nice Schmidt & Bender or Leupold to our rifles... £££££

I got a Hawke Sidewinder 30 8-32x56 about 2 months ago. I have to be honest I don't like it. my other gun has a bushnell elite 6500 2.5-16x50. and it just blows the hawke out the water. I know it costs more. but the difernce is much bigger than the price gap imo.

air gun wrote:I got a Hawke Sidewinder 30 8-32x56 about 2 months ago. I have to be honest I don't like it. my other gun has a bushnell elite 6500 2.5-16x50. and it just blows the hawke out the water. I know it costs more. but the difernce is much bigger than the price gap imo.

I know mate, I have looked through some nice expensive glass. The Hawke is better than some though, most cheap scopes get white out at the range, and milky at higher mags. We all would love to fit a nice Schmidt & Bender However, Many of us have many air rifles and they all need scopes.....££££