Hi All,
Got the Gold Crown 4.5-14x50AO back from the importers who said that there is nothing wrong with it
Hmmm well decided to do a little comparison test using a rifle of known performance and the scope it usually wears so brought another set of the mounts for it. The rifle is a Brno ZKK 601 in 308 Win and the rings are Hilvers which of course are no longer in production as they were. These new rings are late production one and the box is marked B-Square. Sadly the quality is not what is was on the originals and the front ring took some "Fitting".
Next problem was the scopes objective fouled the rear sight so the fixed blade was drifted out then I noticed that the Nikko's scope tube did not sit in the rings properly
so another ecope was tried and this went in nicely. So I measured the Nikko Sterlings tube and found it to be 1.005"-1.007" whilst the ASI 4x32 I sued to check the rings measures 0.998" along it's length, Hmmmm chalk one up for Japanese quality
, after considering it the decision was taken to fit the new scope anyway even though it would obviously mark the tube so this was done. It took about 2 1/2 hours to get it right as this scope is critical in eye relief and position of the view white outs like fog
. Once it was finally positioned and the reticle focussed for my eye a collimeter was used to adjust the reticle to the position already noted from the 6x42 scope that was on the rifle. A target was stapled to abox put out on the field at 50 paces and the rifle shot to check it was hitting the target.
Now fast forward to Sunday and the trip to the range
the 6x42 Deutch scope was re-fitted and the first shots for the test taken and the shots were off a little which was expected as this was using a different load to normal. I loaded some Sierra 150 Grn FMJ's over Reloader 15 instead of the Speer 165 grn soft Points I usually use. Once I got a group I switched scopes again fitting the new Nikko Sterling Gold Crown and the troubles began
....
I did adjust this one to bring the shots towards the middle of the target but failed to get a proper group. So a new target was put up and 8 shots fired with each one plotted to see what was going one. It seems that the reticle is jumping about mainly up and down as each pair of shots fired were at least 1.300" inches apart and up to 2 1/4" apart with a total spread of 2 3/4". Only shot #5 went slightly different as that went wide, all the others were vertically dispersed
for the last three shots I switched scopes back again and fired on a new target. I will have to repeat the test using my normal hunting load to check the sights and zero of the 6x42 jst to be sure but the first shot after re-fitting the scope seems to settle in fully on the dovetails as shots #2 & 3 are nearly touching but are 1.069" away from the first one. This is something I didn't expect so need to check it out again as I often remove the scope for cleaning so need to be sure it returns to zero
.
Oh the test was fired prone using a sandbag rest and at a distance of 75 meters (82 Yards).
