A quick 'out of the box and onto the gun review'

I deliberated for some time over this. I was using a 6-24x56 for field target shooting, guessing ranges and..yes, mostly missing! I needed a scope capable of range finding. I also had some budget limits.

The 'Big Nikko' is just too expensive (£700.00) new and like rocking horse sh*t second hand. The Falcon T50 even rarer. I think I read they did a fairly low production run and sold out. Well done Falcon, so that's the T50 and the T35 (I used to own one), both excellent scopes that we [I]can't[I] have!

I jumped in and ordered a Nikko 10-50x60 Target Master and the 150mm side wheel from BAR who delivered it the very next day. The scope comes nicely packaged and includes a very long screw in shade. Push on flip covers are already fitted at both ends but I have to say these aren't really very good ones. They'll do for now though. Both windage and elevation turrets are 1/8 MOA per click and operate very smoothly. There are 48 clicks per turn. Both are resettable for zero via a coin slot screw at the top of the turret. The finish on the whole scope is nothing less than excellent. I fitted the side wheel, which was fiddly, but once on has no real issues. There is NO play in the turret and NO backlash!

So far then we have:-

Excellent finish.
Superb turret action with clicks audible, light to the touch, resettable turret tubes.
Complete absence of lateral movement in the range finding turret.
Complete absence of backlash when turning the side wheel.
A passable set of flip covers for both ends of the scope. Not Butler Creeks, but not bad.

I centralised the reticle by counting the total number of rotations of each one, adding the few clicks over, halving the total and winding in by that much. Nothing more and mounted the scope to the gun on 'high BKL mounts.

My garden is limited to 15 yards. So gun sitting on the 'site n clean rest', I measured 10 yards from the objective to my target. Set the scope to 50 mag and started to focus on the target. Snap! It was in. I marked the wheel and repeated this three times, coming from clockwise and anti clockwise and it snapped in at the same place every time.

I noticed there was still some considerable 'space' left on the wheel below the 10 yard mark so I measured and set a target at 8 yards! I was gobsmacked when it focussed! 8 yards! Yeah baby!

Then I toddled off to my 22 rim fire 25 yard club. All I was planning to do was get a couple more range marks on the wheel, which I did, the 20 and 25 yard ones. While I was there though I couldn't resist a few shots, just to see where the pellet strike was after my centering efforts earlier.

Bear in mind my top of trajectory is something around 27 yards, and in any case, the pellet is within a fraction of that from about 23 yards to 30 yards. I was shooting at 25 yards and windage was only 8 clicks out with elevation 24 clicks out!

So far I'm amazed and very very happy with what I've bought. Now though, we come to the bit I'd read about and it's the bit that had me doubting my decision. For this, you'll have to bear in mind, I've never looked through a Big Nikko. Come to that, I've never looked through a 50 mag scope until today. So I'm not making a comparison, more an observation.

I had read that the glass used in these scopes isn't as good as the others on the market, and that at 50 mag, the image wasn't as sharp as the Big Nikko. Well it's not 'tack' sharp, If I were reviewing a camera lens, I'd use the word 'soft' to define the image quality. Not out of focus, just soft. It really isn't an issue though, although it's a tad 'soft', there is a distinct 'snapping' into focus.

This scope was £310.00 delivered! I'd be hard pushed to decide to spend a hundred quid to get more sharpness, let alone £400.00!!

So far, bearing in mind all of the above, this is an excellent scope. I'll report more as and when.

Barry