Apart from a short stint with airguns in my teen years, I came to the sport relatively late and have now been shooting about 18 months. In that time I have owned 6 or 7 PCP rifles and a similar number of scopes, from real cheapies to Zeiss and Leupold. As long as I was unable to make my mind up what I realy wanted, I wouldn't keep anything very long. What I did find though was that I don't get on with variable mag scopes as my ability to range find is not very good. I've tried variable mag with fixed parallax, fixed mag with fixed parallax and eventually decided that fixed mag with variable parallax was what was required. Side wheel parralax was also desirable.

At least I knew what I wanted, sort of. I had a 10 x 40 (I think) Viper for a short while but found the FOV too narrow to easily aquire targets. I tried a fixed 4.5 x 40 scope and found the mag not high enough for small targets at extreme airgun ranges.

GET TO THE POINT MAN!!!!!

I was unaware of the new Falcon Menace 7.5x50 until last week when I read a post mentioning it so I thought I'd give it a go.

It arrived Friday. First impressions, it's a bit heavy with big nobs, build quality appears top rate. (Hang on, this is turning into a description of me!)

The Menace comes with a screw in sun shade which is around 3" long. the scope itself is around 14" long. Because of the side parallax wheel and big turrets, it is a rather chunky 4" wide at the widest point. From the bottom of the tube to the top of the elevation turret, it is around 2.5". It has a 30mm tube.

It cost me £200

I centred the windage and elevation turrets and checked the scope for optical centre, having read that this would take about two hours, I found that the scope was nearly perfect out of the box. Result.

I then mounted the scope and zeroed it in the garden in good day light. It was easy to zero and was soon ready for action.

The big turrets are in my view a bit too large, but they are functional, easy to adjust with very positive clicks. I would prefer low profile turrets but can't complain at those fitted.

I took the scope out today with a mate and we went to two shoots, each around 500 acres. Didn't see a bunny at less than 200 yards all morning but I shot plenty of clods of earth at all ranges and found the scope to be perfect. It will parallax to below the advertised 10 yards, and out to infinity, but with plenty of adjustment at the low end, ie 10 to 50 yards, airgun ranges. The adjustment is very smooth, if a little stiff but I would expect that to relax after a bit of use.

The big objective means it should be good in low light. In that respect, I've been a little spoilt by some of my previous scopes but in all fairness, there is little to critisise here. We were out before dawn and I found that low light performance is as good if not better than any scope in a similar price range and isn't far short of the top end scopes.

The reticule is milldot. The dots are nice and close together and the reticule itself is very fine, meaning very small targets at all ranges remain visible, and zeroing on your last pellet hole is easy, even at 30+ yards.

It has a reletively long eye relief and a reletively wide FOV, which for me means I can bring the gun up to a shooting position, very quickly aquire the target and shoot, without much fuss.

7.5 mag is perfect. It is about what I would leave my variable mag scopes on. It is enough for the longer shots and not too much for the shorter shots.

Set the parallax to 20 yards and you will be about to see objects 5 yards away, the view becoming quite clear at around 10 yards and remaining quite clear out to 50 yards. I have never shot HFT but would suggest this scope would do the trick.

In summary, if you happen to own an airgun, which you probably do, then I would recommend this scope above all the others I have owned. I think I have finally found a scope I can settle on.