As referenced in another thread here, Rudolph Optics has sent us a 6-24 Tactical for our consideration. We just got hit with a blizzard today, and it doesn't look like I'll be able to get some tracking tests done for a few days, so I figured I'd just start the thread and begin talking about this thing.
I assume because this is a demo scope, it shipped in a very nice wood box. Classy no doubt. Inside, the scope was wrapped in a padded scope cover, sunshade, and a lens pen was included. No manual, spec sheet, or anything else was found.
The scope is sized and weighted similarly to other 6-24's in it's approximate price range such as the Vortex Viper PST and Bushnell ERS. The finish on the scope was right along with what you'd see on most scopes in this price range. It has a european-style diopter for fast adjustments. I dislike this "feature" but I will not take any points away because this is how a great many scopes are setup these days. Why in the hell someone want's to have their diopter loose and able to be easily changed is beyond my understanding. Though as I said, the Rudolph is no different from a great many others in this regard. The magnification ring is easy to adjust, but not too easy. It's serrated design lets a guy get a hold of it pretty well. There is a tiny bit of play in the ring when you go from increasing magnification to decreasing, but it is basically undetectable. As long as quality control is kept on their toes, this shouldn't be an issue. At about 12x, I can feel a "bump" when manipulating the magnification ring. Some little nub or something is rubbing right there at about 12x. It's not too distracting, but when doing an eval, I certainly noticed it.
The scope shipped with no specs, and is not listed anywhere on their website that I could find, so I have very little information about it. Most of the specs I'm going to report are through discovery. It has a 30mm tube and what appears to be a 50mm objective. The side parallax adjustment goes from 25yds to infinity. It has a fine reticle of some kind. I'll need to get it out in the field to measure it to see if it is delineated in mils or MOA. I must say, for a company to send out a scope for review without any information regarding it's specifications, is quite frustrating.
The turrets bear a close resemblance to those found on the Bushnell 6-24 ERS, and a great many other designs. The screw in the top can be loosened, and the turret lifted to allow the turret cap to move independent of the turret. This allows you to zero the turrets out at your rifles defined zero. You'll notice in the above image, that the indicator line does not match up with the markings on the turret cap. This is very annoying, as it can be difficult to see exactly what adjustment you are on as you run the turret. The good news is that it gets no worse, through the entire adjustment range. It doesn't get any better either. The turret cap position is locked in place by teeth which are cut into the turret which then engage opposing teeth in the turret cap. Once the cap has been slipped on the turret, there is no way to get it lined up if it is not already there. The lines on the elevation knob are off, but close enough that you should be able to operate. Through running the turret, I discovered it has 66MOA of total elevation travel. You can see that the turret clicks are achieved by the serrated ring which the detents engage as the brass-colored turret rotates. The clicks in this scope are not great. They are not horrible either. I'd place them ever so slightly better than a Leupold MK4, about dead equal with a Bushnell elite tactical, and decidedly worse than a Vortex PST. All of the scopes mentioned there have translating turrets just as this one does, meaning that the turret physically moves up and down as you adjust it. This is expected in the price range we're dealing with here.
Then we move on to the windage knob. Now we're talking about horrifying misalignment of the turret cap markings with the indicator. It settles pretty near right between the two markings. This type of thing is frustrating to deal with, as you have to make some kind of mental note as to which side of your intended adjustment the indicator is suppose to be on. It will frequently cause incorrect adjustments, causing you to come one click either direction to get on. This introduces a HUGE opportunity for the scope to fail tracking if a .25MOA click down is required to get on. Even expensive scopes such as S&B can have difficulty with one or two clicks down, and maintain tracking. This is a supremely annoying aspect of this scope. The single screw through the top of the turret is an extremely quick and easy way to re-zero your turret, and no doubt manufacture, but it does not afford the ability to precisely line up your indicator with the cap markings as you find on a Vortex PST or Leupy MK4. If Rudolph is going to keep this turret design, they need to implement some kind of quality control in regard to the turret markings.
The reticle is one of the high points of the scope. It's a very clean and fine reticle. It's a little shy on hold points down the vertical stadia beneath the crosshair, but that can be overlooked as I predominately dial my elevation anyway. As I said, I need to measure it to see if it's setup in mils or MOA. I hope to sweet baby Jesus that it's in MOA to match the turrets, or else this big "+1" just got turned into a big resounding "-2" on my scale of happiness. It has a thicker outer region, while the segments closest to the center are thinner, just as you'd find on a Bushnell G2 reticle. In the center is a target dot which is floating by itself. The reticle was very clean with no noticeable flaws. I'd put the reticles appearance right up there with Nightforce and Premier. Very concise and precise. The eyebox on this scope is not very forgiving at all, so she's a bit cranky to get behind. Though no better or worse than the Bushnell 6-24 ERS either. Eye relief seems very close to the Bushnell as well. The big down side for me is that it is second focal plane. I'm a huge fan of FFP optics, yet I don't detract anything from this scope as a result of that. It's purely a preference thing.
Looking through the scope is nice. Obviously it doesn't have the glass I'm used to with Premier or Kahles, but it is very good for the price range. Optically I can find no faults with it. It is right there with the Bushnell and maybe just a touch better than what you get in a Vortex PST. Though this is so very hard to quantify, as each person likes something a little different. Bottom line is that the optics in this scope will not inhibit you from engaging any target that I could imagine. It's a fine specimen of good japanese glass. Another high point for the scope!
Upon taking the sunshade off, I noticed the objective bell had been dented. I PM'd Dolph about this. He knew about it and he said it was because someone had dropped it. The lenses were very dirty on the ocular and objective side. These two items show me very clearly that they did not seem to care much about the condition this unit would be received in.
That is all I have for now. Once I have an opportunity to get it on a rifle and test I'll edit this post with an update. My first impressions are not good, and here's why:
This scope carries a retail price of $1350. In my opinion, the fit, finish, and overall function of this scope belongs in a product with a sub-$500 price tag... not $1350. Thus far, nothing about my experiences with this scope, or the company behind it, would want me to have one of these on my rifle instead of a Bushnell 6-24 ERS for $300-$400 less, and that's for a first focal plane scope! If you compare this to a Vortex PST in second focal plane, it's a $500 difference at retail, with the Vortex having an illuminated reticle! That's if all other things are equal, which they are not. The vortex scopes I've sampled (dozens) all have better clicks than this scope does. I think the price is a major deal-breaker on this scope. There are lots of companies that have moa/moa/sfp scopes in the $500 range that I believe are every bit as good as this scope seems to be, provided each tracks correctly. I'm not sure if they are just giving this a try and seeing what the market can bear or what, but anyone with any experience with other big brands we are used to seeing on rifles on websites such as this, I think would be very disappointed and hateful after paying $1350 for this scope.
I'll give Rudolph Optics some credit; they have generated a lot of marketing hype around their products! I received a pile of PM's from people anxious to hear what I had to say about this scope. They are sponsors on several different shooting forums, and seem to really be making a run at the USA market. I applaud them for this. Though I would caution them about taking the tone they initially took with me when I revealed the design similarities their products had with products of other brands. If Rudolph expects to succeed among tactical shooters, they need to have their product be representative of the price they are charging. If they are looking to compete with the "elmer fudd" brands you see cluttering up the shelves at Cabelas, bass pro, and other mass retailers... then this write-up has no bearing, because those customers do not demand of their scopes what we demand of our scopes. Rudolph will likely sell the heck out of these scopes among those types of customers, because optically they are quite nice.
There is but one final thing to know about this scope: Whether or not it tracks. If it does, this won't have been a complete waste of my time, so I'm very much hoping that it does.
UPDATE - 04/19/2014
I got out and got some tracking tests done. The rifle used was one of my 40X smallbore benchrest rifles. At 25yds, this rifle produces groups that measure in the .0's to .1's consistently. A .2 group at that distance is about as bad as it gets. At 50yds, it will shoot in the .2's -.4's consistently. The 6oz jewel and 1-piece rest removes as much "human" from the scenario as I can. Here it is:
Testing was done at 25yds.
Course of fire:
My aim point was at the center, I then came up 12moa, fired a shot, up another 12moa, fired a shot. I then went down in 12moa increments and fired a shot until I was 2 revs below my zero for a total of 48moa of adjustment. I did this until I had 5 shots in each group. Then I came right 24moa, fired a shot, up 48moa fired a shot, left 48moa fired, down 48moa fired, and right 48moa. I continued around the outer perimeter until each group had 5 shots.
Lets look at some measurements.
Top left to top right: 12.25" / .26" = 47.11 MOA
Bottom left to bottom right: 12.25" / .26" = 47.11 MOA
Top left to bottom left: 12.50" / .26" = 48.07 MOA
Top middle to bottom middle: 12.50" / .26" = 48.07 MOA
Top right to bottom right: 12.60" / .26" = 48.46 MOA
(I excluded the shot outside the group. Could have been the scope, could have been a flyer... unlikely, but I'll give the benefit to the scope)
Remember, the testing was done at 25yds, so we must do some math to get our true adjustment in moa. 0.26" at 25yds x4 gives us 1.04" which is as close to 1moa as we're going to get. Obviously this falls well within measurement error. Forgetting that for a moment, we have a .25" variance in the windage adjustments as compared to the elevation adjustments. That's well outside of any measurement error. It appears that the elevation turret is tracking pretty much dead on across 48MOA, but the windage turret is almost 1moa short. Academically, we have measured a variance, and this is noteworthy, but does it affect us in the real world? A quick calc for a 1000yd shot with a 308 in a 10mph wind @ 9:00 calls for L2.9 mils windage adjustment. That's 10.15 MOA. Given the 0.9" variance across 48moa, and 10moa is 20.83% of 48moa. So, 20.83% of .9 is 0.187moa... and .250moa equals a click. My brain hurts after being out in the sun all day, but if I'm correct, that means the error would be a little over half a click on a 10moa wind correction. At twice that, it would be about about 1.5 clicks. I don't see this affecting you much.
There is however, something concerning me in regard to the groups. Take a look at the groups in the above picture. They are all 5 shot groups. Notice a pattern? The groups on the perimeter, are tiny little bug holes, while the groups toward the center are opened up. I replicated this with another string to verify. As the scope is toward the center, it seems to wander a bit. So while it tracks correctly when group center is measured, it doesn't seem to hold its zero precisely when the erector is toward the middle of its range when moved for each shot in the group. I don't really have an explanation for it, but the groups don't lie. I've tested several other scopes with this same rifle, same rest, same everything... and I have not seen this before. If it's not the scope, I don't know what it is. While the scope tracked across 48moa when measuring the center of the group, it is very clear that it may not always go back to where you intend it to go as it relates to each individual shot. Averaging a group center, only tells part of the story. Each individual round presents more of a indicator of the scopes performance than the overall adjustment variance based only on center to center measurements.
The center string of groups that go horizontal from the middle were some other groups I shot. I wanted to see if POI shifted across the magnification range, and it did not. I also wanted some more groups to see if I could get the scope to settle down if I left it's turrets alone. I shot the groups from left to right. As you can see, it seemed to settle in. I shot a few more groups, and as long as I left the turrets alone, it would produce one little tiny hole centered over the POA. If I moved the turrets, then came back... it would seem to take a few shots to settle back in before I could get a respectable group out of it again. Once there, it would stay there.
As this scope is not available for destructive testing, I didn't want to risk damaging it by thumping on it with something to see if it would hold its POI. Obviously there is much more that could be done to test it's repeatability and ability to hold zero. Frankly, I'm tired of thinking about and working with this scope. At this point I'm going to conclude the testing, and get it sent back to Rudolph.
UPDATE - 1/23/15
As promised, I stopped by the Rudolph Optics booth at SHOT show this year. I met with Dolph and their new sales director in the USA, Todd Neice. Dolph was very easy to talk to, and he was legitimately very eager to hear what kind of optics we like to shoot. I gave them some ideas, and he listened very intently to what I had to say. He's a very nice guy and is very passionate about what they are doing. I'm going to be watching close to see what they come up with.
They had an updated tactical scope there that was a much more polished and finished product than the prototype model which was originally sent for review. The turrets are far better. The clicks are much more positive. They still have a little bit of wiggle, but are better than what you find on the competing scopes from bushnell. The turret scale lines up much more precisely with the indicator so there is no longer a question of what click you are on. It's not perfect mind you, but it is as good or better than any other scope in the price range. They changed the min parallax from 25yds to 50yds which I felt was a step backward, but they are still very good optically. They also worked in some price reductions from their predicted retail price from almost $1400 down to around $1100. Rudolph Optics has proven that they can take constructive criticism and implement changes without getting bitter about it. That's always nice to see!
I assume because this is a demo scope, it shipped in a very nice wood box. Classy no doubt. Inside, the scope was wrapped in a padded scope cover, sunshade, and a lens pen was included. No manual, spec sheet, or anything else was found.
The scope is sized and weighted similarly to other 6-24's in it's approximate price range such as the Vortex Viper PST and Bushnell ERS. The finish on the scope was right along with what you'd see on most scopes in this price range. It has a european-style diopter for fast adjustments. I dislike this "feature" but I will not take any points away because this is how a great many scopes are setup these days. Why in the hell someone want's to have their diopter loose and able to be easily changed is beyond my understanding. Though as I said, the Rudolph is no different from a great many others in this regard. The magnification ring is easy to adjust, but not too easy. It's serrated design lets a guy get a hold of it pretty well. There is a tiny bit of play in the ring when you go from increasing magnification to decreasing, but it is basically undetectable. As long as quality control is kept on their toes, this shouldn't be an issue. At about 12x, I can feel a "bump" when manipulating the magnification ring. Some little nub or something is rubbing right there at about 12x. It's not too distracting, but when doing an eval, I certainly noticed it.
The scope shipped with no specs, and is not listed anywhere on their website that I could find, so I have very little information about it. Most of the specs I'm going to report are through discovery. It has a 30mm tube and what appears to be a 50mm objective. The side parallax adjustment goes from 25yds to infinity. It has a fine reticle of some kind. I'll need to get it out in the field to measure it to see if it is delineated in mils or MOA. I must say, for a company to send out a scope for review without any information regarding it's specifications, is quite frustrating.
The turrets bear a close resemblance to those found on the Bushnell 6-24 ERS, and a great many other designs. The screw in the top can be loosened, and the turret lifted to allow the turret cap to move independent of the turret. This allows you to zero the turrets out at your rifles defined zero. You'll notice in the above image, that the indicator line does not match up with the markings on the turret cap. This is very annoying, as it can be difficult to see exactly what adjustment you are on as you run the turret. The good news is that it gets no worse, through the entire adjustment range. It doesn't get any better either. The turret cap position is locked in place by teeth which are cut into the turret which then engage opposing teeth in the turret cap. Once the cap has been slipped on the turret, there is no way to get it lined up if it is not already there. The lines on the elevation knob are off, but close enough that you should be able to operate. Through running the turret, I discovered it has 66MOA of total elevation travel. You can see that the turret clicks are achieved by the serrated ring which the detents engage as the brass-colored turret rotates. The clicks in this scope are not great. They are not horrible either. I'd place them ever so slightly better than a Leupold MK4, about dead equal with a Bushnell elite tactical, and decidedly worse than a Vortex PST. All of the scopes mentioned there have translating turrets just as this one does, meaning that the turret physically moves up and down as you adjust it. This is expected in the price range we're dealing with here.
Then we move on to the windage knob. Now we're talking about horrifying misalignment of the turret cap markings with the indicator. It settles pretty near right between the two markings. This type of thing is frustrating to deal with, as you have to make some kind of mental note as to which side of your intended adjustment the indicator is suppose to be on. It will frequently cause incorrect adjustments, causing you to come one click either direction to get on. This introduces a HUGE opportunity for the scope to fail tracking if a .25MOA click down is required to get on. Even expensive scopes such as S&B can have difficulty with one or two clicks down, and maintain tracking. This is a supremely annoying aspect of this scope. The single screw through the top of the turret is an extremely quick and easy way to re-zero your turret, and no doubt manufacture, but it does not afford the ability to precisely line up your indicator with the cap markings as you find on a Vortex PST or Leupy MK4. If Rudolph is going to keep this turret design, they need to implement some kind of quality control in regard to the turret markings.
The reticle is one of the high points of the scope. It's a very clean and fine reticle. It's a little shy on hold points down the vertical stadia beneath the crosshair, but that can be overlooked as I predominately dial my elevation anyway. As I said, I need to measure it to see if it's setup in mils or MOA. I hope to sweet baby Jesus that it's in MOA to match the turrets, or else this big "+1" just got turned into a big resounding "-2" on my scale of happiness. It has a thicker outer region, while the segments closest to the center are thinner, just as you'd find on a Bushnell G2 reticle. In the center is a target dot which is floating by itself. The reticle was very clean with no noticeable flaws. I'd put the reticles appearance right up there with Nightforce and Premier. Very concise and precise. The eyebox on this scope is not very forgiving at all, so she's a bit cranky to get behind. Though no better or worse than the Bushnell 6-24 ERS either. Eye relief seems very close to the Bushnell as well. The big down side for me is that it is second focal plane. I'm a huge fan of FFP optics, yet I don't detract anything from this scope as a result of that. It's purely a preference thing.
Looking through the scope is nice. Obviously it doesn't have the glass I'm used to with Premier or Kahles, but it is very good for the price range. Optically I can find no faults with it. It is right there with the Bushnell and maybe just a touch better than what you get in a Vortex PST. Though this is so very hard to quantify, as each person likes something a little different. Bottom line is that the optics in this scope will not inhibit you from engaging any target that I could imagine. It's a fine specimen of good japanese glass. Another high point for the scope!
Upon taking the sunshade off, I noticed the objective bell had been dented. I PM'd Dolph about this. He knew about it and he said it was because someone had dropped it. The lenses were very dirty on the ocular and objective side. These two items show me very clearly that they did not seem to care much about the condition this unit would be received in.
That is all I have for now. Once I have an opportunity to get it on a rifle and test I'll edit this post with an update. My first impressions are not good, and here's why:
This scope carries a retail price of $1350. In my opinion, the fit, finish, and overall function of this scope belongs in a product with a sub-$500 price tag... not $1350. Thus far, nothing about my experiences with this scope, or the company behind it, would want me to have one of these on my rifle instead of a Bushnell 6-24 ERS for $300-$400 less, and that's for a first focal plane scope! If you compare this to a Vortex PST in second focal plane, it's a $500 difference at retail, with the Vortex having an illuminated reticle! That's if all other things are equal, which they are not. The vortex scopes I've sampled (dozens) all have better clicks than this scope does. I think the price is a major deal-breaker on this scope. There are lots of companies that have moa/moa/sfp scopes in the $500 range that I believe are every bit as good as this scope seems to be, provided each tracks correctly. I'm not sure if they are just giving this a try and seeing what the market can bear or what, but anyone with any experience with other big brands we are used to seeing on rifles on websites such as this, I think would be very disappointed and hateful after paying $1350 for this scope.
I'll give Rudolph Optics some credit; they have generated a lot of marketing hype around their products! I received a pile of PM's from people anxious to hear what I had to say about this scope. They are sponsors on several different shooting forums, and seem to really be making a run at the USA market. I applaud them for this. Though I would caution them about taking the tone they initially took with me when I revealed the design similarities their products had with products of other brands. If Rudolph expects to succeed among tactical shooters, they need to have their product be representative of the price they are charging. If they are looking to compete with the "elmer fudd" brands you see cluttering up the shelves at Cabelas, bass pro, and other mass retailers... then this write-up has no bearing, because those customers do not demand of their scopes what we demand of our scopes. Rudolph will likely sell the heck out of these scopes among those types of customers, because optically they are quite nice.
There is but one final thing to know about this scope: Whether or not it tracks. If it does, this won't have been a complete waste of my time, so I'm very much hoping that it does.
UPDATE - 04/19/2014
I got out and got some tracking tests done. The rifle used was one of my 40X smallbore benchrest rifles. At 25yds, this rifle produces groups that measure in the .0's to .1's consistently. A .2 group at that distance is about as bad as it gets. At 50yds, it will shoot in the .2's -.4's consistently. The 6oz jewel and 1-piece rest removes as much "human" from the scenario as I can. Here it is:
Testing was done at 25yds.
Course of fire:
My aim point was at the center, I then came up 12moa, fired a shot, up another 12moa, fired a shot. I then went down in 12moa increments and fired a shot until I was 2 revs below my zero for a total of 48moa of adjustment. I did this until I had 5 shots in each group. Then I came right 24moa, fired a shot, up 48moa fired a shot, left 48moa fired, down 48moa fired, and right 48moa. I continued around the outer perimeter until each group had 5 shots.
Lets look at some measurements.
Top left to top right: 12.25" / .26" = 47.11 MOA
Bottom left to bottom right: 12.25" / .26" = 47.11 MOA
Top left to bottom left: 12.50" / .26" = 48.07 MOA
Top middle to bottom middle: 12.50" / .26" = 48.07 MOA
Top right to bottom right: 12.60" / .26" = 48.46 MOA
(I excluded the shot outside the group. Could have been the scope, could have been a flyer... unlikely, but I'll give the benefit to the scope)
Remember, the testing was done at 25yds, so we must do some math to get our true adjustment in moa. 0.26" at 25yds x4 gives us 1.04" which is as close to 1moa as we're going to get. Obviously this falls well within measurement error. Forgetting that for a moment, we have a .25" variance in the windage adjustments as compared to the elevation adjustments. That's well outside of any measurement error. It appears that the elevation turret is tracking pretty much dead on across 48MOA, but the windage turret is almost 1moa short. Academically, we have measured a variance, and this is noteworthy, but does it affect us in the real world? A quick calc for a 1000yd shot with a 308 in a 10mph wind @ 9:00 calls for L2.9 mils windage adjustment. That's 10.15 MOA. Given the 0.9" variance across 48moa, and 10moa is 20.83% of 48moa. So, 20.83% of .9 is 0.187moa... and .250moa equals a click. My brain hurts after being out in the sun all day, but if I'm correct, that means the error would be a little over half a click on a 10moa wind correction. At twice that, it would be about about 1.5 clicks. I don't see this affecting you much.
There is however, something concerning me in regard to the groups. Take a look at the groups in the above picture. They are all 5 shot groups. Notice a pattern? The groups on the perimeter, are tiny little bug holes, while the groups toward the center are opened up. I replicated this with another string to verify. As the scope is toward the center, it seems to wander a bit. So while it tracks correctly when group center is measured, it doesn't seem to hold its zero precisely when the erector is toward the middle of its range when moved for each shot in the group. I don't really have an explanation for it, but the groups don't lie. I've tested several other scopes with this same rifle, same rest, same everything... and I have not seen this before. If it's not the scope, I don't know what it is. While the scope tracked across 48moa when measuring the center of the group, it is very clear that it may not always go back to where you intend it to go as it relates to each individual shot. Averaging a group center, only tells part of the story. Each individual round presents more of a indicator of the scopes performance than the overall adjustment variance based only on center to center measurements.
The center string of groups that go horizontal from the middle were some other groups I shot. I wanted to see if POI shifted across the magnification range, and it did not. I also wanted some more groups to see if I could get the scope to settle down if I left it's turrets alone. I shot the groups from left to right. As you can see, it seemed to settle in. I shot a few more groups, and as long as I left the turrets alone, it would produce one little tiny hole centered over the POA. If I moved the turrets, then came back... it would seem to take a few shots to settle back in before I could get a respectable group out of it again. Once there, it would stay there.
As this scope is not available for destructive testing, I didn't want to risk damaging it by thumping on it with something to see if it would hold its POI. Obviously there is much more that could be done to test it's repeatability and ability to hold zero. Frankly, I'm tired of thinking about and working with this scope. At this point I'm going to conclude the testing, and get it sent back to Rudolph.
UPDATE - 1/23/15
As promised, I stopped by the Rudolph Optics booth at SHOT show this year. I met with Dolph and their new sales director in the USA, Todd Neice. Dolph was very easy to talk to, and he was legitimately very eager to hear what kind of optics we like to shoot. I gave them some ideas, and he listened very intently to what I had to say. He's a very nice guy and is very passionate about what they are doing. I'm going to be watching close to see what they come up with.
They had an updated tactical scope there that was a much more polished and finished product than the prototype model which was originally sent for review. The turrets are far better. The clicks are much more positive. They still have a little bit of wiggle, but are better than what you find on the competing scopes from bushnell. The turret scale lines up much more precisely with the indicator so there is no longer a question of what click you are on. It's not perfect mind you, but it is as good or better than any other scope in the price range. They changed the min parallax from 25yds to 50yds which I felt was a step backward, but they are still very good optically. They also worked in some price reductions from their predicted retail price from almost $1400 down to around $1100. Rudolph Optics has proven that they can take constructive criticism and implement changes without getting bitter about it. That's always nice to see!