I absolutely appreciate the great feedback from everyone on Part 1 of this article, and I definitely learned quite a bit from everyone who took the time to post. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts.
For those who have been interested, Part 2 is now finished. Once again, I hope you'll share your thoughts and let me know what you think!
Six Ways Your Rifle is Hurting Your Scores, Part 2 (http://www.rimfireessentials.com/Six-Ways-Your-Rifle-is-Hurting-Your-Scores-Part-2_b_5.html)
Interesting stuff. Lots of words! but well written.
At the risk of re-opening the parallax debate... In my opinion the claim that a parallax non-adjustable scope is "unsuitable for target shooting" is just a wee bit hyperbolic. I'd argue that it's more controversial than saying "HV ammunition is unsuitable for target shooting" and a bit less than saying "anything short of an Anschutz rifle is unsuitable for target shooting."
Certainly if all else were equal, a parallax-adjustable scope will perform better than its simpler cousin, but that edge may be negligible. It all depends on the shooter. A well settled shooter with a solid cheek weld is unlikely to see much improvement.
Just to put it in perspective, my "good" rimfire has a Weaver K4 scope -- parallax preset for 200 meters (which is well within the capability of the rifle...). I can clean Stage 4 of an AQT with it. The biggest thing I need to work on with this rifle is getting consistent trigger hand positioning after working the bolt. Making the scope parallax-adjustable would not be detectable for me. Better, sure. "Unsuitable," well, that's not borne out by the results.
Just a nitpick, though. Hope your article gets some interest and gets folks motivated. :---
RocketMan that's great feedback, and I certainly agree with your point. I'll see if I can reword it so its a bit more clear.
QuoteThe scope, though, hasn't fundamentally changed any of our shooting skills.
O0
Magnification is not your enemy. Silhouette shooters show this every week all around the country. But even on the "Across the Course Range" at 300 and 600, there are some excellent scores at high magnification. We saw that this year with the tactical Class shooters at Camp Perry for the NRA nationals. We also regularly see it with ANY/ANY (Any type of rifle, any sight) shooters at midrange matches shot at 600 yards. A side benefit is that if you can learn to shoot a highpower scope and still maintain good trigger control, you can learn alot about your position, NPA and shot process. Some shooters use this as a training tool for iron sights.
I was frustrated with my shooting a couple of years ago, and close to quitting service rifle competition. I decided to put the 6-20 X40 scope onto my Remington 540X and shoot some 100 and 200 yard prone rimfire with the sling. It showed me that my position and npa were good, the end result at 200 was a 1.5 moa group with a 10mph fishtail from 8 to 5. At 100, I could clean the MR-1 reduced target with that rifle.
That said, high magnification can be a distraction for some shooters and can lead to trigger jerking in others.
As for the parallax, it depends on the game and the range. BR-50 shooters or 100 yard prone shooters are shooting for much smaller targets and what one might get away with in other genres will cost one the match. But, I have taken deer with non adjustable scopes out past 300 yards and not felt handicapped.
Good article and I hope that it gets more people shooting.
First, excellent article; thank you for sharing it with us.
Next, I'd like to delve into the following statement a bit, and expound upon it:
QuoteThe closer you can get and still keep a good head position (i.e. upright, comfortable), the smaller aperture you'll be able to use.
The part I am most interested in, as a marksmanship coach, is the good head position. You define 'good' as upright, and comfortable, which is pretty good, but indefinite.
A good head position has the eyes level horizontally; when looking at the face of the shooter, both of the eyes (and by extension, their ears) are level- this helps them achieve a more 'neutral' balance, which, while not a significant issue in prone, becomes ever moreso as the positions become less naturally stable. Secondly, the eye is looking through its natural 'center', rather than through the top. If you draw a line from the center of the ear, to the center of the eye, that line should continue on, through the center of the sight system. Tilting the head forward, looking through the top of the eye socket, for even a short duration, may cause significant eye strain, leading to rapidly deteriorating vision, headaches, and worst of all, misses.
Many shooters suffer from poor head position when achieving their cheek weld, but a vigilant instructor will be able to both diagnose, and help correct this error.
Note- most shooters will be unable to achieve a 'perfect' head position; ergonomics of the rifle, rifle-to-shooter fitment, and shooter flexibility all come into play. That said, the closer any shooter can come to a 'perfect' head position, the better off they will be. Neck stretching exercises have been recommended to many of my students who have been unable to achieve a proper head position behind their rifle, simply due to lack of flexibility.
I seriously LOL'd when I opened this up and the first topic was parallax. ;D This is a good article and well-written so I thank you for sharing it with us but it's obvious this isn't stuff for Appleseed. This is for folks who are going to spend a thousand dollars (or more) on a rimfire so they can eek out a few extra points during a match. Not judging at all it's just making more sense with each installment why this has drawn such a ruckus.
The best rimfire scope I've found is a $7 Tasco fixed 4x. It isn't parallax adjustable but it does the trick and allows a shooter to shoot 3,000+ more rounds for the same price. I'd venture to guess a shooter who'd practice 3,000+ shots as opposed to one with a fancy scope would be better in the long run.
I'm not saying there's no place for gear upgrades. I recently shot a match where my gear helped me immensely. But the couple of dudes beside me with similar (or better) gear didn't fare so well and that's because they'd failed to grasp the basics first. Gear is an upgrade. It's not a substitute.
I like the articles. But I typically come across stuff like this and skim through it since most of the "fixes" are already out of my price range.
Side parallax vortex 6.5~20x50: $469 at optics planet with 3 different reticles. It's not a March but that doesn't mean it won't work. Obviously more power than you would want for a 25m gun.
But as one of those has been apple seeders proved in 2009, men with a weeks training and an m4 with an Acog can make 700 yard first shot hits 69% of the time. Imagine how much better they might see and how their effectiveness might increase with a more adjustable scope designed more for distance than 400 yards and cqb. Standoff is the advantage of the rifleman whether we are discussing Tim Murphy at Saratoga or some unknown rifleman in the future.
By the way that weeks training used less rounds than the typical Appleseed, 300 (as I recall).
Quote from: jmdavis on September 22, 2014, 02:32:39 AM
Side parallax vortex 6.5~20x50: $469 at optics planet with 3 different reticles.
Just FYI, I have the 44mm version of that scope on sale for 325 dollars right now.
I appreciate this series of articles. I disagree that it does not have relevance to Appleseed. In order to prosper, Appleseed must appeal to a wide range of shooters who are biting on the marksmanship hook. The more sophisticated shooters coming to the line should expect AS Instructors to have some knowledge of these topics. In any event, it does not hurt Rifle Instructors to have as much knowledge of the subject matter as possible. This thread is on the forum to share such knowledge. I realize that there are Instructors and students alike that may not be interested in what they perceive as minutia but others are interested. But it is important to realize and accept that others are interested.
^^^ I bought a scope from Alan with side paralax adjustment & will be giving it a try at the Atterbury KD next month. I fear it's one more thing to forget to adjust during an AQT though and it'll be more important at this KD event than a 25 yard event.
You get tired lugging gear around for two days. I've forgotten to dial a turret once maybe twice. Now there's going to be two dials to set.
Since adjustable paralax is used to help with imperfect eye position, I'm guessing an out of adjustment paralax could induce even more poi error. This error even with a low mag setting of say... ~6x should be negligable even at 400 yards correct? Less than ??? MOA?
Quote from: Hop on September 22, 2014, 10:40:07 AM
Less than ??? MOA?
There is no answer to that. If your forum is good then very little to no shift. As your form then it will shift more and more. If you forget to adjust it, it might make a difference, it might not. PA is more of a insurance policy that a requirement, but a guy cant have to much insurance.
Hop,
I would experiment with different magnifications even at 400. Regardless of how you do on the aqt, you want to come from the KD with good, solid zeroes. But truthfully, if you get good solid zeroes and have a dependable rifle and ammo, you will score rifleman at KD.
The scope lets you see the target better. The aid of that to shooting is a precise point of aim.
More than likely if you dial to 20x even in prone you're going to see a heart beat. That's just how it is. Learn how it affects you and realize that it is there whether you have a scope at 20x or irons. The only difference is, you may not see it with the irons.
If you find that you are forgetting your process, you need to work on your process. That's something that you can practice in the living room or back yard. If you don't have a shot process, get one and work it until it becomes subconscious. If you do that, you will greatly lower the possibility of forgetting to adjust your sights etc. If you are changing your elevation at each yardline (as opposed to mildots or holds). Make sure that you know and have marked your zero elevation. If you zeroed at 25m. That distance will be between 225 and 300 (depending on caliber, velocity and sight height).
An example of a shot process for appleseed might be.
Get to yardline, when you enter prep, immediately check your elevation and paralax, immediately means before you sling up. You should know what wind you had on at the previous distance, and should think about counting it off and resetting it.
Then put your sling on, get your position, determine npoa and dryfire several shots.
In other forms of shooting, you can handle the rifle when not in prep (it is called pre-prep), at those times you can do everything but remove the flag and dryfire. In those forms of shooting you use this time to set your sights, get into your sling and start setting up your position. When you get in prep you then have that time to fine tune your NPA and dryfire.
Go to the VA forums and find the links to the Ken Roxburgh videos of the Remington Advanced Highpower clinic. They have a great deal of excellent information and can help you if you let them.
I've recently been working with aperture sights and found one that allows you to adjust the size of your opening in the field, which is helpful for those of us who are on the range long enough for the lighting to change. http://www.skinnersights.com/apertures_8.html (http://www.skinnersights.com/apertures_8.html)
Following up to Mike's post, there are a few other ways to get a better depth of field with an aperture sight:
1. The Skinner adjustable uses a Merit iris. Merit also makes an iris that fits on Williams, Redfield and Lyman rear sights. One model has a rubber hood to shield your eye from ambient light. I have one on my Williams FP sight and it works great. Aperture sizes from .022" to .122".
2. Tech-Sights has an accessory for the TS200 model that replaces the rear aperture post with one that takes rubber inserts. The inserts have sizes from .042 to .086. We have the .042 on another rifle and it really has shrunk our groups. A neat thing is that you can remove the insert and have a ghost ring for fast target acquisition suitable for Rimfire Steel Challenge shooting.
3. Gehmann makes an adjustable iris that goes from .5 to 3mm in size. This is even tighter than the Merit iris. Available from Champion's Choice.
As far as parallax discussion, we had one student this week who was shooting with a scoped AK. He shot very well except on the 400 yd. stage. His scope magnification was on max; once he dialed back the power, his shots found the silhouettes.
Quote from: Hop on September 22, 2014, 10:40:07 AM
^^^ I bought a scope from Alan with side paralax adjustment & will be giving it a try at the Atterbury KD next month. I fear it's one more thing to forget to adjust during an AQT though and it'll be more important at this KD event than a 25 yard event.
You get tired lugging gear around for two days. I've forgotten to dial a turret once maybe twice. Now there's going to be two dials to set.
Since adjustable paralax is used to help with imperfect eye position, I'm guessing an out of adjustment paralax could induce even more poi error. This error even with a low mag setting of say... ~6x should be negligable even at 400 yards correct? Less than ??? MOA?
Actually, Hop, using a scope with adjustable parallax is quite simple, and once you know what to do it's easy. I didn't really go over HOW to use it in this article, but I can hit the highlights.
First, keep in the back of your mind that parallax errors don't amount to much at longer distances. That may seem counterintuitive, but parallax errors are really only an issue at short distances. As we get out to 100 yards and more, they don't really matter much. So you could easily set your scope parallax for 100 yards and forget about it and do just fine.
To set it up correctly will help, though, and while the exact knobs may be different on various scopes, the principles are the same for every scope.
First, you want to adjust the scope so the reticle is in clear, sharp focus. When using a riflescope, the reticle is the equivalent of your front sight, and it should be crisp and clear. This is where many shooters make errors, so here's how to do it correctly.
Point your scope at something indistinct. A blank wall, the sky, whatever. Doesn't matter what it is or how far away it is, as we're focusing on the reticle at this point. Every scope should have some sort of focus ring at the back of the scope, right in front of your eye. It's variously called the eyepiece lens, ocular lens, something like that. With the scope pointed at the sky (or something else indistinct like a blank wall), adjust the eyepiece focus ring so the reticle looks sharp and crystal clear. At this point you don't care what anything looks like through the scope other than the reticle. Ideally you want to do this while taking short looks (almost glances) through the scope so your eyes don't have to strain to see the reticle clearly, but personally I think that's a minor thing, and not worth sweating over too much. Make sure the reticle is in clear focus, and from that point on don't touch that ring again. That ring on the back of the scope is ONLY for focusing your eye on the reticle, so unless the reticle is out of focus down the road, you don't ever touch that ring again.
Once that's done, the hard part is finished. Next, look at your target, and turn the parallax dial until the target is in clear focus. It's really as simple as that. Don't pay much attention to the distance markings on the parallax knob, as they won't likely be accurate. If you want to get ticky, some manufacturers recommend you always start at the longest or the shortest parallax setting and turn the knob from there until the target is in focus. This is to avoid lash in the screws the scopes use to adjust the objective, and personally I never found it to amount to much.
Once it's adjusted properly, the reticle should ALWAYS be in clear focus at every distance, all the time. If the target is not clearly focused, then simply adjust the parallax knob until it is. That's really all there is to it.
To summarize, just remember these two principles:
- The eyepiece lens or ocular lens (the one closest to your eye) is ONLY for focusing on the reticle.
- The objective or parallax adjustment is ONLY for focusing on the target.
If you're using a scope with fixed parallax at full distance, you may notice the targets get a little bit fuzzier as you move away from the fixed focus distance of the scope. That's okay, as parallax errors don't amount to much at longer distances. With fixed parallax scopes the eyepiece lens (ocular lens) is used exactly the same, to make sure the reticle is in clear focus. Since you can't adjust the target focus, don't sweat it. Resist the temptation to adjust the eyepiece lens to bring the target into clearer focus, as you'll be moving your focal point away from the reticle, which you don't want to do.
Good article(s). It is something I can refer people to who want to know more about what they are doing, not necessarily those involved in AS.