Leupold RDS Questions/Issues

[BrentH]

Ordered a Leupold RDS (Muzzleloader version) from Sportsman’s Warehouse, received it last week, and sent it back because I believe it was defective.

Ordered a second one from Midway, received it today, and it seems to have the same “issues”, so now I’m wondering if I’m batting 100% on defective scopes, or if this is just how they are?

First issue: the objective lens seems to not be installed square to the housing/tube. This is seen by simply looking at it, and it looking like it is at an angle in the housing. Additionally, if I run my finger around the edge of the lens inside the tube, the gap between the lens and the edge of the housing is uneven. The tilted lens can even be seen in the photo (red gap is much smaller than the green gap.



Second issue: not sure if this would be impacted by the way the lens looks tilted or not, but the red dot is not a crisp dot. Even on the lowest setting, it is almost a star shape (distortion), or even a vertices oval when I crank up the brightness.

I tried, but I can’t really capture this with a photo.

 

[Formidilosus]

Ordered a Leupold RDS (Muzzleloader version) from Sportsman’s Warehouse, received it last week, and sent it back because I believe it was defective.

Ordered a second one from Midway, received it today, and it seems to have the same “issues”, so now I’m wondering if I’m batting 100% on defective scopes, or if this is just how they are?

First issue: the objective lens seems to not be installed square to the housing/tube. This is seen by simply looking at it, and it looking like it is at an angle in the housing. Additionally, if I run my finger around the edge of the lens inside the tube, the gap between the lens and the edge of the housing is uneven. The tilted lens can even be seen in the photo (red gap is much smaller than the green gap.

View attachment 1031352

Yes. Some models have angled lenses.

Second issue: not sure if this would be impacted by the way the lens looks tilted or not, but the red dot is not a crisp dot. Even on the lowest setting, it is almost a star shape (distortion), or even a vertices oval when I crank up the brightness.

I tried, but I can’t really capture this with a photo.

You have an astigmatism- it’s not an optic issue, it’s your eyes.

 

[Dave Thomas]

Form is right. I have a trijicon green dot and the lens is angled. The dot is not crisp at all to my eyes, I got the green because I read that the green was not as bad as the red. If that's true I would hate to see the red dot. It's hard to get a good zero because you have to pick a spot to aim with since it's not a nice round dot. It sucks but can't blame the optic.

 

[BrentH]

Great, thanks for confirming it’s not an optic defect. I’ll mount it up and see how I do shooting with it.