A surprisingly decent $100 long eye relief scope

I've never really found a scope I like for break action pistols. To me the ideal scope would have a moderately long eye relief (like many scout scopes), decent optics, exposed turrets, and a simple MOA or mil reticle. There's some nice to haves like illumination, but that's my short list of must haves. I've used Burris, Leupold, Vortex, and Crimson Trace scopes, all of which fell short in at least one of the areas I listed above. I decided to see what was available from Chinese OEMs, thinking I may be able to find something with a low MOQ that could be customized to match my wish list. I wound up finding something that checked all my boxes without any customization and ordered a sample. I didn't have particularly high hopes but figured with the amount of time and money I've spent trying other scopes it was worth a try.

Below is a picture of it mounted on my Freedom Arms 2008 in 6.5 Creedmoor. To me this is a great 300 or 400yd gun, and needs a scope to match.
It's a 1-8x long eye relief scope. It has a 30mm tube, exposed mil turrets, and illumination. This one has a BDC reticle, but it's available with a mil dot reticle. I ordered the wrong one when I got my sample. The turrets are mushy. The power adjustment feels decent but isn't as smooth as a nice rifle scope. I'd put the optical quality on par with a Diamondback Tactical. Not amazing, but miles ahead of Vortex's Scout scope. The FOV is excellent for a handgun scope. One of my favorite things about Burris's 2-7 is the wide FOV compared to a Leupy 2.5-8, and this has a noticable wider FOV than the Burris.

It showed up about a week before I left for HHC. I made up a scope rail for my 08 with an mlok pic rail, and mounted it to my 6mm TCU barrel with some 30mm rings of dubious quality. I had enough time to zero and do a severely abridged tracking test. Everything checked out so I decided to run it at the match.

Throughout the two days the scope tracked well and I didn't have any issues I can say with certainty were caused by the scope. I did find I was shooting consistently high on the last stage of day 1, but on day 2 it was back to being dead on. I struggled to see some targets on stage 1 of day 2. We were shooting almost directly into the morning sun, and the glare made it very difficult for me to see some of the targets. I think any scope would have struggled in that situation.

On Saturday I swapped to a 221 Fireball barrel and took it prairie dog hunting along with the Trifecta rest I got off the prize table. I had to rezero on the fly, but once I had it dialed in I once again found it tracked well. Most of the dogs I shot were in the 250-300yd range, with a handful that popped up closer. My longest kill was 322yd. I wasn't cranking the scope up and down through a large chunk of its travel many times, so I can't say whether or not it will drift over time.

After HHC I made up a 30mm Lovell style mount and used it to mount the scope to my 6.5 Creedmoor barrel. That's the setup I took to ABMS at Thunder Valley Precision in Ohio. The gun and optic's limitations really started to show through here. The longer ranges and smaller targets compared to HHC caused the scope's optical shortcomings to be more obvious. In the morning when we shot hunter class many of the targets were backlit, and I struggled to see some of the targets in the 500+yd range.

After we finished up Saturday night we had about an hour to shoot for fun. I shot my last handful of rounds on a full size IPSC at 707yd, which was the farthest target in the course of fire. I was able to make some hits, but not consistently. The fixed parallax on the scope was a clear issue. Moving my head left to right moved the reticle from off one edge to off the other before I saw a shadow in the scope. I'm undecided on whether or not these will be problems for the gun's intended use. They definitely are in the 500yd+ range, but might not be inside of 400yd where I am interested in using this gun.

There's some things that are definitely not good, like the squishy turrets. I think I can live with the shortcomings if it proves to be durable and consistent. I still have quite a bit of testing I plan to do, including a more thorough tracking test and a recoil test with some hot 338 Federal. I'll post updates in this thread as I do more tests.

Here's some specs from the product listing:

Magnification: 1X-8X

Objective Lens (mm): 32

Net Weight(g/oz): 490/17.29

Length(mm/inch): 280/11.02

Eye Relief(mm/inch): 184-206/7.24-8.11

Tube Diameter(mm/inch): 30/1.18

Field of View (ft@100yds): [email protected]@8x

Click Value: 1/10

Diopter Range: +/-2

Travel Range: 80

Parallax Setting: 100yds

I went trijicon credo…1-6. Good moa reticle in first focal. Decent eye relief. Great glass.

ChrisRhodes said:

I went trijicon credo…1-6. Good moa reticle in first focal. Decent eye relief. Great glass.

Click to expand...

I have a Credo on one of my ARs. It's definitely a great scope, but personally I like a bit more eye relief. I find something in the 9-10" range is most comfortable for positional shooting, at least with my 08.

I neglected to include links in the original post, so here they are. This is the scope I bought:


The reticle doesn't match the product listing. Below is what I received.



This is the mil dot version I meant to order:


Both have an MOQ of 5, but you can order individual samples.

The manufacturer told me they'll do custom reticles and knobs with an MOQ of 20.

I got a chance to do a more thorough tracking test today. It's not enough for me to definitively say the scope tracks well or not, but it's a start.

There's several limitations in my test I'd like to identify up front:

- Travel. I was only able to do +/-2 mil. The range I was on only has paper stands at 100yd, and they're 24" tall. 4 mil is 14.4" at 100yd, and I wanted a couple inches on either side to make sure I didn't lose any shots.
- Group size. I only shot 5 rounds per group. That's not enough to overcome noise in the system, so there's more inherent error than I'd like.
- Ammo/shooter/platform. I was shooting CCI SV, did it all more or less back to back, and shot it with my 08 in 22lr. Mediocre ammo, fatigue, and a less stable platform all increase absolute error (but maybe not relative error).

It was a calm day (mostly still, occasional 3-5mph gusts). I was shooting from a bench with a Caldwell Rock and homemade rear bag. I shot 22lr because a different cartridge won't provide more information, it's cheap, it's less fatiguing than my center fire options, and barrel heating isn't a problem.

I did 2 tests. First was a tracking accuracy test. I shot 9x 5 groups at each combination of -2, 0, and +2 mil for windage and elevation. The second was a drift test. I shot a 5 shot group, dialed from 0 to +6 and back 20 times, dialed from 0 to -6 and back 20 times, then shot a second 5 shot group. For this test I stacked 2 targets and replaced the top target before the second group. This gave me two 5 shot groups on separate targets before and after dialing up and down and one target with a 10 shot aggregate. In all I shot 11x 5 shot groups.

I began my analysis by measuring each group with Range Buddy and doing some basic statistical analysis. The goal here is to ensure the gun behaves as expected. If it behaves substantially differently than a typical rifle there's probably something wrong that needs to be addressed before proceeding. Below is a chart of each group's statistics and a chart of the aggregate's statistics.


My main interest is the group size SD and whether or not the group sizes fall within the expected dispersion. Litz and others have experimentally determined the SD in group size for many 5 shot groups is around 30% of the average group size. I expect most groups to fall within 2 SDs of average, with some outliers possible. I found the SD to be 26% of the average group size and all groups fell within 2.05 standard deviations of the average.

From there I started analyzing the tracking results. The goal of this test is to measure the accuracy of the tracking. In other words, when I dial 1 mil does it move 1 mil. I used Range Buddy to find the center of each group, marked it on the paper, and measured the distance from the center group. I should see 7.2" from each group on the edges to the center and 10.2" from each corner to the center. The chart below has the actual values and the error.



I then used Range Buddy to measure the distance from POA to the center of the two 5 shot groups from the drift test and the 10 shot group size. This test is to determine whether or not the scope returns to zero after many elevation changes. I expect the distance to center (both X and Y components) to be the same for the 5 shot groups.

For the first target the group was 2.33" across and centered .9" right and 1.53" low. For the second target the group was 2.54" across and centered .55" right and 1.35" low. The aggregate was 2.54" and centered .86" low and 1.38" right. The first group was .35" left and .18" lower than the second group.



I'm not really sure what to think of the results from the first test. Obviously the results are bad. There is some expected deviation due to the randomness of 5 shot groups. This is much more error than I expected, and it's almost always positive which doesn't jive with random error. It's like getting heads on 7 of 8 coin flips- not impossible, but pretty unlikely. The average deviation is almost 20%. I feel like I would have noticed major issues at the matches and prairie dog hunting I did with this if it was off that much. It's consistently off by enough I think I would have seen it with the brief tracking test I did before HHC too. I may redo the test with better ammo and give myself some time between the groups. It's not a huge problem if a scope doesn't track accurately as it can easily be accounted for, but with something this far off I don't think I'd bother dealing with it.

I'm much happier with the results of the second test. The second group landed within 1 click on both windage and elevation of the first group, which is less than I expected.

While shooting this I did notice I could generally see the bullet holes from the bench, which I can't do with 10x Diamondback HD binos. I didn't have my Furys with me to compare.

Below are some pictures from the test.

This is the target from the tracking test with my notes on it. The red paster was my POA.



These are the 3 targets from the drift test. The purple paster on the aggregate target is covering a bullet hole that was in the target before I started the test.




This is the gun I used. It's a Freedom Arms 2008 with a 22lr barrel I made.