Leofoto STO-362-CX - First Impressions - new inverted

Joined
Mar 25, 2013
Messages
1,274
Location
Alberta
$930 Canadian on Amazon.
40/36mm baseball bats
Integrated inverted ball head
5 lb 1 oz on scale
The giant rubber feet are 9.5 oz of that. It has screw in spike feet also, much lighter.
Twists are normal lefty loosy righty righty.
Has leg lock as part of a stout hook under head that spins 360 with weak detents between lock and unlock. Didn’t know about leg locks until I somehow engaged it and took a minute to figure out what the...
The head is arca and picatinny.
The arca lever has a lock and finger adjustable tension dial.
The leg bolts came tight af, they give a bunch of tools including two big Allen wrenches, one fir each hand, just for relaxing those bolts.
Bubble level in head.

First clamp in noticed a bit of left right so checked main screw going down through clamp to ball and degreased it all, paint pen and farmered it back on, don’t anticipate it will move. The post off ball has raised bar that goes up into machined recess under clamp side so it can’t go far either way but just something to address when you get one. Nothing wiggles any which way now using rifle as lever, but I’m clamped in tripod rookie so can’t give you anything to compare to, will see what it’s like to shoot like that but looking through scope on lockup it barely settles upward on lock up. Using 8 lb tikka with Srs balance to play for now so still tail heavy unless hang bipod out front.

I see 40mm rubber chair legs on Amazon if wanted to drop close to half pound but I’ll leave it for what I’m doing, pretty sure I want the weight down there. Did order the chair feet anyway.

Decent padded soft case with a zip section on end that lets it extend to absorb a pan head as I think they have that optional combo you can order.

Can’t seem to find anyone talking about em yet so they must be newer release?

Holler if you have any questions. Just watching tripod threads and see the questions and likes and looks like majority of them all encompassed and included in this model.

My initial thought opening it up was I went way overkill, and shoulda maybe looked at the 322 model which I think starts around 4.4 lb and with lighter chair feet you could land under 4 and it was about $250 Canadian less than the 362.

I have a 284 and man that thing is tiny af compared to this beast. Need table and sap run n gun to set binos on that for standing glassing and prolly pinch legs up a bit lol. Put 7/8” chair legs on that one and it’s just over 3 lb. Forget which head some letter h-30. Two totally different animals.

It goes very tall. At full extension to first leg angle stops I can clip a bino with aziak arca clamp on barrel right into it and glass standing straight up with boots on and I’m 6’ tall no shoes. Taller guys could likely do same pinching leg angles in a bit and gain another inch or so but any glassing off other mounts or tables or spotters only move taller than bino barrel clamped right into the head and handle the giraffes.
 
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Bought one 2 years ago. Too tall stowed to shoot kneeling, at least for me. Good solid tripod though.
 
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