Classic stalking telescope - Scout Regiment Mk. IIs
This is one of the most frequently found full size draw telescopes, having been in military service for almost 40 years, and fortunately also one of the best. The comments below are based primarily on this model, though there are many more to which they’re equally applicable.
The Scout Regiment Mk.IIs was adopted for service in August 1939, and incorporated much of the experience gained by snipers and scouts in WW1, especially as documented by H. Hesketh Prichard in ‘Sniping in France’. It was a distinct improvement on the Telescope, Signalling, Mks.II – IV (in use during that earlier conflict) in terms of field of view, weight and ease of use, although good examples of the Signaller are still lovely scopes.
It has a 2” objective and a magnification quoted in some military manuals as 20x, and in the ‘Notes on Repairs to Fire Control Instruments’ Part 42 of 1941 as 22x. The field of view is 1 degree 33 minutes.
I suppose it all started for me because I only really have one useful eye. The other is good for peripheral vision and stops me tripping over things, but anything I look at directly with it disappears into a purple-black blotch called a scotoma.
I’ve owned and used quite a few binos, some of them amongst the best there are, but I always had this niggling feeling – why am I carrying around a double-barrelled telescope when a twice-as-big single would weigh the same?
I’d looked for a good multidraw telescope for a long time, but it wasn’t till 2002 that I found my first genuine Scout Regiment, on the internet list of a classic camera shop, and finally decided to put my money on the counter and try one.
I’ve been collecting and using these ever since.
There are two things which will strike you immediately you find a good ‘un.
The first is that the advice of bino gurus about never going for more than about 10x magnification doesn’t apply to full length telescopes. The geometry is all in your favour with long scopes, for pretty much the same reason that you can shoot better with a rifle than with a pistol – each involuntary hand movement subtends a smaller angle over a greater arc. If your hands are reasonably steady – and you likely wouldn’t be a shooting enthusiast if they aren’t – you can support 20x to 25x with little trouble.
Trying to use the same power freehand in a short prismatic spotting scope usually gives a lot of difficulty.
If you’ve got a trekking pole or one of those thumb-sticks the old Scots deerstalkers used to use, you can easily provide very steady support, where these are not so much use with binos.
The second is that the loss of image brightness with that sort of magnification coming through a typical 2” objective is not as bad as you expected, and even when the image is dim, good lenses will provide enough colour-contrast for you still to see a deal of detail even on dull days.
You can count the whiskers on a seal at 60 yards. Once you get skilled with it, you can pick up and follow a bird or aeroplane reasonably easily.
So, what do you get in a good Scout Reggie?
I wouldn’t recommend buying one without a case in good order. It’s difficult to carry without one – it’ll invariably tie up one hand unless you have unusual pockets - and even more difficult to protect. The stitching should be sound and tight, though you can disregard light scratching and scuffing on the case itself. Keep the leather well-fed, and the stitching oiled or waxed to stop moisture getting in. Watch the sling strap for cracking; soak it in neatsfoot oil to reduce the risk.
Don’t buy one with drawtubes that have lots of dents or scoring; it’ll make the draw awkward and uneven and can make precise focussing difficult. And obviously don’t buy one with cracked or missing lenses, although a few light scratches and even some chipping close to the edge can make surprisingly little difference to the image.
The drawtube bushes are usually, but not always, slotted so that you can adjust the fit so the biggest tube has the most friction and the smallest the least – that’s the one you want to use to focus with. The edges of the flanges should be radiused, and the best examples have a crisp, fine knurl that follows the radius.
The bushes are lined with a kind of coarse velvet or stiff felt, which just sits in the bore, retained within a slightly larger-bore recess that ends a sixteenth or so from each end of the bush. This stuff is thinner than any felt I’ve managed to buy, so if it’s damaged or missing, the most successful way I’ve found to replace it is to cut a 4x2 flannelette patch to suit, backed with double-sided carpet tape, carefully fiddle that into the recess and stick it in place by applying pressure with a wooden-spoon handle. Do this properly and it works for years.
The eyecup has a swivel shutter with a neutral-density filter in it – pretty much useless in our normal climate, but no doubt of some value in very bright conditions such as desert or snow. Unscrewing the eyecup gives access to the eyepiece cell, two lenses screwed into the ends of a short brass tube. At the forward end of the small drawtube is another two-lens cell - the inverter or erector – which turns the image right-way-up. The front lens of this is particularly prone to getting dusty, because of dirt sucked in every time the scope is extended, and it’s particularly noticeable when it does because the front face of that lens is very close to the focal plane. You can in fact use the smallest drawtube with all its lenses in place as a moderately-powerful microscope, and you’ll find it comes into focus when the subject’s just a gnat’s away from that lens.
The objective is a 2-element achromatic, a ‘crossed’ bi-convex crown glass front element backed by a plano-concave flint glass corrector. These are not cemented in the Scout Reg, so you can dismantle by unscrewing the objective cell from the front of the barrel, then unscrewing the retaining ring from inside the back of the cell. Be careful to get the bi-convex the right way round when you reassemble – the back and front radii aren’t the same. If uncertain hold the 2 elements under a light. You should see 3 reflections; one off the front, one from the junction, and a larger more diffuse one from the flat back of the corrector. If, by tilting the assembly so that the reflected images move closer to the edge, you notice that one of them starts to split in two, you’ve got the front lens ar$e-about-face. I’ve found this condition on scopes I’ve just bought – anything this old may’ve been taken to bits several times in its life.
As originally issued, the drawtubes were blacked, and occasionally it’s possible to find minty examples. However, if you make much use of the scope the blacking quickly wears away, and it’s not easy to renew it. The Army appears usually to have polished its drawtubes – they’re always shown bright in military manuals - so this is very often the condition in which you get them. There are preparations available to black brass, but I’ve not had much success with them in producing an even, durable finish on items this size.
There were several firms making the Scout Regiment:
Broadhurst Clarkson of Farringdon Rd., London – usually but not always marked as BC & Co
H. C. Ryland and Son
KEC – possibly Kodak Eastman Co.
KCT – no idea who they were
Of these, Broadhurst Clarkson/BC & Co are marginally more common than HCR. The only HCR example I’ve had was very distinctly poorer than BC & Co, which I’ve found to be uniformly excellent. The HCR produced a dimmer image with weaker colour contrast, to the extent that it actually seemed less powerful, though it’s unlikely that this was really the case. Things certainly stood out less and 3d shapes of objects were much harder to assess. A KEC I looked through once seemed fine, but I didn’t have a BC & Co to compare it with.
Because the Scout Reg was effectively just a specific model along with many civilian stalking telescopes produced by companies like BC & Co, there are plenty of scopes around that are similar and equally good. I’d suggest avoiding the very large models – some are so heavy they always need support, but there are some nice ones in the 1 5/8” to 2 ¼” range which are in practical terms pretty much as good as the Scout Reg. Personally, I prefer a full case to end caps and sling, because the scope, once out, is free from stuff hanging off it, which makes is easier to use.
If you decide a Scout Reggie or similar telescope is something you’d like, keep an eye on Fleabay. There are sometimes two or three on there at a time, other times weeks go by with none. You can expect to pay £200 - £250 for a nice one generally if it’s been properly titled and identified, but you get occasional bargains where the competition – and there is some – hasn’t spotted it.
Watch out for Indian-made repros, especially so-called Ross’s – although many known makers (even Carl Zeiss) have their names pirated on these fakes. You can distinguish these by objective lenses that are smaller than they could be, heavy crossed overstitch on the leather rather than parallel understitch, and heavy chunky parallel knurling on the bushes and sometimes the eyepieces. Most of them are optically pretty naff, with non-achromatic objectives that can never be brought to pin-sharp focus.
Regards,
MikB
Last edited by MikB; 11-11-2006 at 11:08 PM.
...history... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. (Edward Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)
Nfn rng w txt spk
Originally Posted by Mod
.
), and I just use ordinary specs cleaning fluid and one of those lens cloths. Obviously don't rub hard or forcefully.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote