Edited for clarity.
This is my first high-end scope. A few months ago I wanted to get into the long range game and, after doing a lot of research, I recently bought the ATACR F1 5-25, with the Mil-R reticle. So far, it has not disappointed, and I thought I'd share the good and bad based on my first impressions.
Keep in mind that, if you're looking for a meaningful comparison with other high-end glass, I can't speak to that since I'm new to this, but hopefully some of you will find this useful.
Right out of the box, the quality was immediately obvious to me. It looks and feels like it could take a few bumps without a problem. It comes with paper instructions and a CD (e-instructions), Nightforce window and bumper stickers, a cleaning rag, the power throw lever (it comes uninstalled), and a thread protector for the windage in case you want to leave it exposed instead of using the cap. Picture below. Quarter is next to parallax knob for scale.
The glass is really impressive. Everything is crystal clear through the entire magnification range. Later, I was able to clearly see the reflection off of my friend's sunglasses at 100 meters at 25x magnification. I don't know how this compares to other brands, but I was impressed. I will say, however, that at 25x, the eye relief is not very forgiving. If my eye was the slightest bit off, I'd lose the picture. I don't know how that compares to other brands, either. The clicks had a nice feel to them. Not too easy to turn by accident, but not so hard that I overshot how much I was trying to turn, either. Again, I can't compare to comparable Vortex, Steiner, S&B, USO, etc., but it was miles ahead of the budget scopes I'm used to.
The first thing I wanted to do was test the tracking, so I had to take care of a few things. I set the parallax according to the instructions, which took a couple minutes the first time, but doesn't take long once you get the hang of it, which was good for me because I had to reset it a few times. Later, however, I noticed that the focus and the parallax were not quite in the same sweet spot. Fortunately, I found a good article on how to get focus and parallax set together, and I think I have them synched up now.
Anyway, I also needed to set up the tracking test, which I modeled after the Precision Rifle Blog tests here and here, or at least as close as I could. The short version is that, rather than shooting a target, I would mount the scope on something sturdy, and do a non-shooting test. I wanted to check the tracking this way because it removed the human error of my shooting to verification process. For this, I took a plank of wood from the reject bin at Home Depot, some wood screws approximating the size of the screws that came with my base, and mounted the scope on the plank. I also put lag bolts under the board in a triangle pattern so that I could adjust the cant. A picture of this setup is below. 30 MOA seekins base and 4/6 seekins rings (which, I realize, are backwards in this picture).
I also needed a target, so I made one using Google SketchUp, and had it printed out at kinkos for a few bucks. 23 mils tall, 4 mils wide, with thick (5mm) lines every mil, and thin lines (1mm) every 0.1 mil, and cant lines going 5 degrees either way. Shoot me a PM if you want a copy of the PDF to print. For what it's worth, I could clearly see the 1mm lines from 100 meters. The target was about 8 feet tall and 2 feet wide. Pictures of the target are below. The basic idea of the test (a slight variant of the PRB test) is to run through a box test by turning the 50 clicks for 5 mils, and then looking through the scope to see how far the reticle actually moved, and hoping the reticle was centered on the 5 mil mark on the target. I have to give it to Kinko's, the print was very accurate, which is obviously important for this test. I'm going to make one with horizontal 0.1 mils lines and get it printed. My friend and I built a special target stand that was tall enough to accommodate this target. We installed a plumb bob on the front end so that when we set it up we would be able to level the target, and to get the reticle square. The stand disassembles for easier transportation, since I don't have a truck. Pictures of the target and stand are below.
So I had a target, I had the scope mounted on an adjustable plank, and now I just needed to measure 100 meters--exactly. If you're too close to the target, even by a couple of feet, when you track down the target, the reticle will look like it's moved too little, and if you're too far away, the reticle will look like it's moved too far. This could (falsely) indicate that your scope is not tracking well. So it is important to get the right distance when doing the test. The linked articles above used a Leica distance meter to precisely calculate distance to the target, to a fraction of an inch. I must admit that I was not in the mood to spend $300 for that thing, which I have no other foreseeable use for, so I tried taliv's suggestion of measuring out 100 meters of kite string. Maybe I bought the wrong string, but it was stretchy which made it hard to measure correctly. I think we ended up being long by several feet. I also made the mistake that day of bringing a crappy fold up card table to rest my nice new scope on. It was also dusk, so not the best lighting conditions. But I just tried it anyway to see if I'd learn anything.
I think I did. After tracking 5 mils down vertical, my reticle was too far down by exactly 0.1. At 10 mils it was 0.2 and so on to 0.4 mils far at 20 mils. I figured this could mean one of two things: First, it could be that my scope was off by one click every 5 mils vertical. At least it tracked back correctly. The other thing it could mean though, is that my distance was simply off by about 2 meters (long), causing a compounding error of 0.1 mils for every 5 mils worth of travel. I figured 1 click error is 2% of my total number of clicks travelled (50 clicks), meaning the distance error would be 2% of my range, in this case 2 meters. Since the reticle traveled too far, I figured this meant my distance was long rather than short. This explanation would, in theory, mean that the scope was just dead on for the entire 20 mils I tested. I liked that idea better, but as I said, testing conditions were not ideal, so I packed it up and tried again the next day.
That night, as a sanity check, I zoomed in on my test site on Google Earth, and measured the distance of my test using landmarks. This was easy because I was testing on a sidewalk with a brick grid pattern every 6 feet. Unfortunately, the brick pattern wasn't precisely 6 feet, or I would have been able to use the pattern to measure distance (this was my original intent, but unfortunately, it didn't work out like I was hoping. Anyway, according to Google Earth, I was long by a little under 2 meters, just as I had guessed. Obviously, this measurement wasn't exact, and again I wanted to test again anyway because I'd like to repeat it under better conditions.
The next day, I decided to take it to my range, which is advertised as 100 meters. Having no better way to determine how accurately that had been measured, I went back to Google Earth and measured right up to where I'd be putting the target, and then to my desired FFP. 99.90 meters. Obviously, this method has some error, but I was hoping that it'd be less than the kite string.
The range was ideal. Much better light, not another soul was there, and I was able to use a bench made out of solid stone. I did the test again, and this time it was only 1/3 click too far down at 5 mils. 2/3 clicks at 10 mils. 1 full click at 15 mils. At this point I was thinking ok, now I'm leaning more toward believing the scope was tracking correctly, and my distance was a bit long again, but by less this time, more like 2 feet (1/3 of the error from the previous test). What else explains a compounding error that changes proportionally with some unknown factor (which I believe to be distance in this case...not sure what else it might be). But, I should also add that at 20 mils, the scope was off by 1 2/3 clicks, rather than the 1 1/3 clicks that I was expecting using my current theory. Windage tracked great although my target was only 4 total mils wide, and on the vertical, I didn't notice any error until I got to 5 mils anyway. Not enough evidence to verify the tracking. A good start, but I wanted more data. Everything returned to zero, exactly, and I repeated these results numerous times.
It occurred to me later that I could have tried to turn my target sideways, measure 15 to 18 mils on the horizontal (the limit of the scope's windage range), and if the error is the same as it was on the vertical, that would be a lot stronger evidence that my only error is due to distance, rather than a problem with the scope. I figured this because distance easily explains the error being exactly the same for both horizontal and vertical, but if it was a tracking problem with the scope, that would have to mean both the windage and elevation would just happen to be off by the same amount, which seems unlikely. I may try to get horizontal and vertical data measured from the same position.
I'm not 100% sure what to make of all this, but I figured that the scope tracking could be a hair off at 20 mils (1/3 click), but the rest of the error was due to mismeasuring my testing distance. It could also be that the entire error was due to distance, and the scope is tracking dead on for the entire 20 mils. It's also still possible the entire error is actually the scope. I'm not sure yet how to verify for sure, or if I need to, but testing horizontal and vertical tracking at the same position to see if the error is the same seems like a good way to check.
What do you guys think? Anything my test results are trying to tell me that I'm missing, or that I got wrong? Does my test for vertical and horizontal error sound like it's a valid way to "rule in" distance error as the cause?
This is my first high-end scope. A few months ago I wanted to get into the long range game and, after doing a lot of research, I recently bought the ATACR F1 5-25, with the Mil-R reticle. So far, it has not disappointed, and I thought I'd share the good and bad based on my first impressions.
Keep in mind that, if you're looking for a meaningful comparison with other high-end glass, I can't speak to that since I'm new to this, but hopefully some of you will find this useful.
Right out of the box, the quality was immediately obvious to me. It looks and feels like it could take a few bumps without a problem. It comes with paper instructions and a CD (e-instructions), Nightforce window and bumper stickers, a cleaning rag, the power throw lever (it comes uninstalled), and a thread protector for the windage in case you want to leave it exposed instead of using the cap. Picture below. Quarter is next to parallax knob for scale.
The glass is really impressive. Everything is crystal clear through the entire magnification range. Later, I was able to clearly see the reflection off of my friend's sunglasses at 100 meters at 25x magnification. I don't know how this compares to other brands, but I was impressed. I will say, however, that at 25x, the eye relief is not very forgiving. If my eye was the slightest bit off, I'd lose the picture. I don't know how that compares to other brands, either. The clicks had a nice feel to them. Not too easy to turn by accident, but not so hard that I overshot how much I was trying to turn, either. Again, I can't compare to comparable Vortex, Steiner, S&B, USO, etc., but it was miles ahead of the budget scopes I'm used to.
The first thing I wanted to do was test the tracking, so I had to take care of a few things. I set the parallax according to the instructions, which took a couple minutes the first time, but doesn't take long once you get the hang of it, which was good for me because I had to reset it a few times. Later, however, I noticed that the focus and the parallax were not quite in the same sweet spot. Fortunately, I found a good article on how to get focus and parallax set together, and I think I have them synched up now.
Anyway, I also needed to set up the tracking test, which I modeled after the Precision Rifle Blog tests here and here, or at least as close as I could. The short version is that, rather than shooting a target, I would mount the scope on something sturdy, and do a non-shooting test. I wanted to check the tracking this way because it removed the human error of my shooting to verification process. For this, I took a plank of wood from the reject bin at Home Depot, some wood screws approximating the size of the screws that came with my base, and mounted the scope on the plank. I also put lag bolts under the board in a triangle pattern so that I could adjust the cant. A picture of this setup is below. 30 MOA seekins base and 4/6 seekins rings (which, I realize, are backwards in this picture).
I also needed a target, so I made one using Google SketchUp, and had it printed out at kinkos for a few bucks. 23 mils tall, 4 mils wide, with thick (5mm) lines every mil, and thin lines (1mm) every 0.1 mil, and cant lines going 5 degrees either way. Shoot me a PM if you want a copy of the PDF to print. For what it's worth, I could clearly see the 1mm lines from 100 meters. The target was about 8 feet tall and 2 feet wide. Pictures of the target are below. The basic idea of the test (a slight variant of the PRB test) is to run through a box test by turning the 50 clicks for 5 mils, and then looking through the scope to see how far the reticle actually moved, and hoping the reticle was centered on the 5 mil mark on the target. I have to give it to Kinko's, the print was very accurate, which is obviously important for this test. I'm going to make one with horizontal 0.1 mils lines and get it printed. My friend and I built a special target stand that was tall enough to accommodate this target. We installed a plumb bob on the front end so that when we set it up we would be able to level the target, and to get the reticle square. The stand disassembles for easier transportation, since I don't have a truck. Pictures of the target and stand are below.
So I had a target, I had the scope mounted on an adjustable plank, and now I just needed to measure 100 meters--exactly. If you're too close to the target, even by a couple of feet, when you track down the target, the reticle will look like it's moved too little, and if you're too far away, the reticle will look like it's moved too far. This could (falsely) indicate that your scope is not tracking well. So it is important to get the right distance when doing the test. The linked articles above used a Leica distance meter to precisely calculate distance to the target, to a fraction of an inch. I must admit that I was not in the mood to spend $300 for that thing, which I have no other foreseeable use for, so I tried taliv's suggestion of measuring out 100 meters of kite string. Maybe I bought the wrong string, but it was stretchy which made it hard to measure correctly. I think we ended up being long by several feet. I also made the mistake that day of bringing a crappy fold up card table to rest my nice new scope on. It was also dusk, so not the best lighting conditions. But I just tried it anyway to see if I'd learn anything.
I think I did. After tracking 5 mils down vertical, my reticle was too far down by exactly 0.1. At 10 mils it was 0.2 and so on to 0.4 mils far at 20 mils. I figured this could mean one of two things: First, it could be that my scope was off by one click every 5 mils vertical. At least it tracked back correctly. The other thing it could mean though, is that my distance was simply off by about 2 meters (long), causing a compounding error of 0.1 mils for every 5 mils worth of travel. I figured 1 click error is 2% of my total number of clicks travelled (50 clicks), meaning the distance error would be 2% of my range, in this case 2 meters. Since the reticle traveled too far, I figured this meant my distance was long rather than short. This explanation would, in theory, mean that the scope was just dead on for the entire 20 mils I tested. I liked that idea better, but as I said, testing conditions were not ideal, so I packed it up and tried again the next day.
That night, as a sanity check, I zoomed in on my test site on Google Earth, and measured the distance of my test using landmarks. This was easy because I was testing on a sidewalk with a brick grid pattern every 6 feet. Unfortunately, the brick pattern wasn't precisely 6 feet, or I would have been able to use the pattern to measure distance (this was my original intent, but unfortunately, it didn't work out like I was hoping. Anyway, according to Google Earth, I was long by a little under 2 meters, just as I had guessed. Obviously, this measurement wasn't exact, and again I wanted to test again anyway because I'd like to repeat it under better conditions.
The next day, I decided to take it to my range, which is advertised as 100 meters. Having no better way to determine how accurately that had been measured, I went back to Google Earth and measured right up to where I'd be putting the target, and then to my desired FFP. 99.90 meters. Obviously, this method has some error, but I was hoping that it'd be less than the kite string.
The range was ideal. Much better light, not another soul was there, and I was able to use a bench made out of solid stone. I did the test again, and this time it was only 1/3 click too far down at 5 mils. 2/3 clicks at 10 mils. 1 full click at 15 mils. At this point I was thinking ok, now I'm leaning more toward believing the scope was tracking correctly, and my distance was a bit long again, but by less this time, more like 2 feet (1/3 of the error from the previous test). What else explains a compounding error that changes proportionally with some unknown factor (which I believe to be distance in this case...not sure what else it might be). But, I should also add that at 20 mils, the scope was off by 1 2/3 clicks, rather than the 1 1/3 clicks that I was expecting using my current theory. Windage tracked great although my target was only 4 total mils wide, and on the vertical, I didn't notice any error until I got to 5 mils anyway. Not enough evidence to verify the tracking. A good start, but I wanted more data. Everything returned to zero, exactly, and I repeated these results numerous times.
It occurred to me later that I could have tried to turn my target sideways, measure 15 to 18 mils on the horizontal (the limit of the scope's windage range), and if the error is the same as it was on the vertical, that would be a lot stronger evidence that my only error is due to distance, rather than a problem with the scope. I figured this because distance easily explains the error being exactly the same for both horizontal and vertical, but if it was a tracking problem with the scope, that would have to mean both the windage and elevation would just happen to be off by the same amount, which seems unlikely. I may try to get horizontal and vertical data measured from the same position.
I'm not 100% sure what to make of all this, but I figured that the scope tracking could be a hair off at 20 mils (1/3 click), but the rest of the error was due to mismeasuring my testing distance. It could also be that the entire error was due to distance, and the scope is tracking dead on for the entire 20 mils. It's also still possible the entire error is actually the scope. I'm not sure yet how to verify for sure, or if I need to, but testing horizontal and vertical tracking at the same position to see if the error is the same seems like a good way to check.
What do you guys think? Anything my test results are trying to tell me that I'm missing, or that I got wrong? Does my test for vertical and horizontal error sound like it's a valid way to "rule in" distance error as the cause?
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