Leupold Drop Tests

[WRO]

Yep I'm with you on this, that site is 1000% biased towards NF.
Nothing wrong with that, but it is annoying when people don't consider that angle before piling on having no clue what they're talking about.
I'm 100% not a leupold fan boy but I'll give them credit where its due with the mk5

And Swarovski (also a sponsor) kifaru and lots of other brands. I think there's 20+ sponsors.

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[WRO]

He’s literally said that he gets NF scopes for free, LOL.

If he wasn't honest I'd be much more concerned. He's raved about several non nightforce scopes.

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[BRTreedogs]

Have I said any of that?

My most recent scope purchase was ANOTHER ATACR. I’ll treat it like every other scope I buy - skeptical until it earns trust through use.


Yeah, like the 3-9 super snipers….and the 6x super snipers….and the 3-15 super snipers…

You discredited the LRO review based on NF is a sponsor.
How is that different then calling them a liar?

 

[FURMAN]

No amount of money is going to dictate what brand of anything I take on a once in a lifetime hunt. The leupold broke. If you want to run one go for it it doesn’t make any difference to me. You’re not gonna be seeing me use one. And for the record one of our very good sponsors uses leupold and would really love it if we use leupold. We don’t get paid to use any specific equipment. You can think what you want your feelings are not going to refute facts. Two of my favorite scopes are the Vortx AMG and the Mark five HD. The only problem is neither one of them will stay together internally.

 

[WRO]

Have I said any of that?

My most recent scope purchase was ANOTHER ATACR. I’ll treat it like every other scope I buy - skeptical until it earns trust through use.


Yeah, like the 3-9 super snipers….and the 6x super snipers….and the 3-15 super snipers…

And the optika 6, trigicon, and a couple others.

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[roosiebull]

i have had several VX series leupolds, that's primarily what i owned for years, i don't think i have ever had one hold zero.... i couldn't count how many times i have went to shoot and having to re-zero after the first 3 shots.... it was just something i always accepted thinking that's how it was.... i would say more often than not i was making an adjustment to any given scope.

my last one i pulled off the talleys a couple times, re mounted and re-torqued because it was so bad i figured it had to be the mounting system.... it now lives on my CZ 17hmr, and is the same story on that rifle.... not as big of a deal on a sage rat gun, but may send it back just to see if i can get it to be a little more reliable... i would bet money that it's 1-2" off as we speak, because the last time i shot it was up a gravel mountain road, and it had to ride back down the mountain to get home.

never had one way off with normal use, but 1-3" off zero @ 100yds is pretty standard between shooting sessions.... i have literally never owned a scope that held zero for it's life, my swfa has been flawless so far, but i haven't even had it a year, way early to tell of course.

a friend of mine has a vx-6 he's had good luck with the past couple years, but i will ask if it's lost zero at all, he does a lot of 500yd-1k yd shooting, so it would be obvious, and i haven't asked, i just know he likes it.... he certainly isn't hard on that rifle though

i will never buy another leupold anything, because they have never been confidence inspiring for me. i could be easier on my gear, but i'm just not....

 

[Mountainrancher]

Finally got around to listening to the podcast episode and I had 2 real head scratching moments with stuff the leupold guy said.
1. He mentions they do drop tests with the scope mounted to the rifle at set heights onto a solid surface. That sounds an awful lot like something a couple wkr have been doing on here. Wonder if forms tests have influenced this stuff from leupold at all or if they’ve done it all along. Either way I would be interested to hear what they are trying to determine with these tests and what the results actually are.

2. At the very end he makes a comment that a lighter scope will be more reliable than a heavier scope due to the lighter scope taking less abuse from recoil. Uh what?? That makes very little sense when you think about it for more than about 3 seconds. If that’s true why can you pound a nail or have it take an ak round with a 30oz nightforce but the 13oz leupy loses zero from a drive down a county road. That has to be one of the most reaching marketing ploys I’ve heard in a long time.

Despite all the ass kissing from the host Joseph von Benedikt(whose podcast and information I generally enjoy) about the only thing this podcast did for me is affirm that I won’t be purchasing any leupold scopes. Between the shoddy reputation for product quality/warranty and the arrogance of the company and it’s sponsored shooters I am completely turned off to the idea of their products.

 

[Bubblehide]

He’s literally said that he gets NF scopes for free, LOL.

I have gotten Trijicon optics for free. Like Form, that does not mean I'm filling people full of bull about them, or other products. That I am sure we agree on.

 

[Macintosh]

Somewhere in the whole mess around leupold scopes and reliability--have to be several hundred posts on the subject on this forum alone--I read that leupold does some drop testing, but that the "test" they use allows for the zero to change point of impact after the drops. I may have conflated that with something else so dont at all take this as gospel, but that's my recollection. If that's true then leupold would be perfectly honest in saying they "do extensive drop testing" or something like this, it's the fact that the test might not actually show what you are looking for that is the problem.
like any test the devil is in the details--some tests are designed to mimic real life, some are designed to mimic catastrophic events, and others are designed to be destructive 100% of the time only to provide better visibility on relative performance or durability between different models. But if the pass/fail result allows for stuff that is not acceptable (losing zero), to pass without a ding against it, then the test itself is flawed, and the "testing" is just hot air in that case. There are plenty of examples of this one could point to, and in my experience they are not even usually "nefarious" where the company is trying to actively fool customers, so it would not at all surprise me if something like this were the case with leupold or a lot of other companies out there.

I think it would be great to have a few drop tests of the popular leupold models here simply because they form kind of the baseline for performance for so many people and they get bashed so much--would be good to have some data to put everything in context.

 

[EdP]

Much of this discussion is pointless without knowing how the scope mfgs do their testing and what their acceptance criteria is. Also, it may be different for different scopes.

Checking zero after travel has been a standard practice for decades. I have read many times that changes in humidity and temperature will change zero due to the effects on a rifle stock. It seems now that any time a rifle/scope combination changes zero it is blamed on the scope, especially if it is a Leupold. With the new synthetic stocks and if the barrel is floated full length, perhaps that's valid. I'd like to see results from testing using a shaker table (used for seismic qualification of equipment) to see how similar products from different scope mfgs compare.

 

[Formidilosus]

Much of this discussion is pointless without knowing how the scope mfgs do their testing and what their acceptance criteria is. Also, it may be different for different scopes.

Only one scope company checks every scope they sell for POI shift due to impacts. And one company lot checks scopes for POI shift and zero retention.

Checking zero after travel has been a standard practice for decades. I have read many times that changes in humidity and temperature will change zero due to the effects on a rifle stock. It seems now that any time a rifle/scope combination changes zero it is blamed on the scope, especially if it is a Leupold. With the new synthetic stocks and if the barrel is floated full length, perhaps that's valid.

On the exact same rifles rezeroing happens frequently with some scopes, and absolutely never with others. The rifle used for the drop evals here had went thousands of rounds without a single click adjustment, yet had to be rezeroed at 65 rounds with the last Leupold, and then 4 more times in less than 200 rounds.

I'd like to see results from testing using a shaker table (used for seismic qualification of equipment) to see how similar products from different scope mfgs compare.

What is the shaker telling you? How does a shaker table correlate to anything useful?

 

[PredatorSlayer]

Only one scope company checks every scope they sell for POI shift due to impacts. And one company lot checks scopes for POI shift and zero retention.

What company is this?

 

[svivian]

What is the shaker telling you? How does a shaker table correlate to anything useful?

Bouncing down a dirt road perhaps?

 

[bsnedeker]

What company is this?

Tasco.

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[BjornF16]

Bouncing down a dirt road perhaps?

Except they don't check for maintaining zero.

Perhaps if they mounted it to a rifle, shook it, then checked zero there might be some significance.

Otherwise barring pieces shaking loose, it is meaningless

 

[ResearchinStuff]

What company is this?

probably the one that makes videos of their QA guys smacking solid objects and checking internal alignment prior to boxing the scope.

it's around the 1:15 mark in this video, but there are others.

 

[Macintosh]

Form, I dont recall if you've said this before, when you (and I assume others) were trying to figure out what test you could use to predict the failures you were seeing, did you try other types of tests to simulate vibration, temp changes, recoil, mounting, etc in order to try to arrive at what was causing the problems? What was the process of settling on the specific test you are using now?

In your "history" post it seemed like you realized impacts were "the culprit". Was that through testing and simulating other things like vibration, or was it simply making a very educated guess and testing some impacts and finding it predictive? And, do you feel there are other additional or different tests that could make sense in the future or for a scope manufacturer at some point to refine this process (i.e. for vibration-caused shifts or some other mode of damage)?

 

[Formidilosus]

Form, I dont recall if you've said this before, when you (and I assume others) were trying to figure out what test you could use to predict the failures you were seeing, did you try other types of tests to simulate vibration, temp changes, recoil, mounting, etc in order to try to arrive at what was causing the problems? What was the process of settling on the specific test you are using now?

We tried lots of things. Impacts and vibration seemed to be the leading causes.

In your "history" post it seemed like you realized impacts were "the culprit". Was that through testing and simulating other things like vibration, or was it simply making a very educated guess and testing some impacts and finding it predictive? And, do you feel there are other additional or different tests that could make sense in the future or for a scope manufacturer at some point to refine this process (i.e. for vibration-caused shifts or some other mode of damage)?

Both. Speaking with some companies about what was happening and their thoughts, everything pretty much lead to drops, holding zero over time, as well as vibration (wash board roads for instance) generally covered most issues.
The real thing is you just have to shoot enough rounds through enough scopes of the same model and track what happens to have a good idea of overall reliability. Seeing “one” scope that works doesn’t tell you much, however one scope failing does say something.

 

[Macintosh]

makes sense, thanks. Do you feel that your current battery of drops is encompassing-enough that you capture any failures that might happen through vibration? I guess what I'm ultimately asking is, short of simply having more data, more time and more $ to do testing, if you think the current tests are as good as they are going to be in predicting whether a scope will realistically fail in use or not? Or do you see a opportunity to add to or evolve the test in order to refine the results?

The post above suggested a shaking test, I assume to capture vibration, which intuitively makes sense to me although I wondered whether even if you could calibrate it to get a result if it would show anything different than the current tests or simply achieve the same result from a different direction. I used to work with a manufacturer of life safety equipment and have done some QC work, standardized testing as well as diagnostic testing on product safety and troubleshooting some field failures, expert witness stuff, etc so just applying that approach to this topic is interesting and I was curious to hear your thoughts on the subject in a general sense.

 

[EdP]

Form, thanks for the additional info. To answer your question about a shake table test, the table can be set to different magnitudes and frequencies of vibration. Scopes could be tested independent of a rifle and associated mounting, each tested in exactly the same way. It would "normalize" some aspects of testing, although it would not be capable of reproducing some real world effects such as impact to the objective bell or other specific location on a scope that could be significant relative to causing failure.

Shake table tests could be used to establish industry standard ratings for robustness similar to water porosity (IP) ratings for electronic gear. It would push mfgs to publish their ratings and allow consumers to make better informed decisions.