I'd like to know more about the issue of ring placement.
Scopes are tube in a tube. There are several scopes that are very sensitive to where the rings are placed and how tight they are. In order to make weight, companies make the tube wall thickness very thin, making pressure on the tube effect the erector (it seems). Parallax locking up or not working is common. Also, the consumer is screaming for higher erector ratios and smaller scopes. All of that contributes to issues.
For instance, one well known scope works much better with 12 in-lbs on standard pic rings for correct functioning (still won’t pass a drop eval). The problem is that 12 in-lbs is a joke and will slip. Maybe not noticed on 6 BR 28lb PRS rifles, but in even normal weight 6.5 CM level recoil it will. That same scope at 18 in-lbs, if the rings are spaced as far apart as possible (ring spacing helps zero retention from impacts), will have pretty consistent parallax issues and intermittent shifts. To that, most scopes will not slip at 18 in-lbs torque (again standard pic rings), 16 in-lbs sees slippage, and 20-25 in-lbs is way better. But if you put most scopes at 20+ in-lbs they start having issues left and right.
Also, didn't you see issues with Ryan's scope before you began the drop testing on your 10lb rifle?
I did. Which lead me to suspect differences in placement of rings. It exhibited the same issues as others.
I understand that Ryan's drop testing may have affected your testing; but sndmn11's testing seem to mimic your results (as you mentioned).
Correct. Which is why standardization is important. The eval I do has directly correlated to failures or not that we see in the field. The purpose is instead of finding out over two years of hunting and use that this scope loses zero, it does it in a couple of hours. That the results are consistent with known entities shows that. NF work, the high end Bushnells tend to work with some issues, S&B’s tend to work; SWFA’s generally work with only sporadic issues with the turrets bending, etc, etc.
There is no surprise to a lot of people that some of the scopes have issues, as it is common to find multiple people that have had multiple issues on multiple scopes with those same models. The surprise for some and the real anger that starts is when these “super” scopes have issues. The elephant in the room is that the super scopes aren’t used heavily by most. They’re mostly going on a reputation not built on use to prove ruggedness, but a belief that a $3,000 plus scope has been tested throughly by the manufacturer. For instance, I have never stated that the TT’s all exhibit the problems that the one I saw does. However it wasn’t surprising to me, as the prior Premier scope that the TT is built off of had the same “awesome reputation”, and yet when looked deeper, issues were kind of common. I have seen multiple Premiers have issues, and I haven’t seen all that many of them relative to others.
The baseline is lots of people are going to be upset when the scopes are actually checked, but from that it will be found that there are some scopes that are near bombproof with extremely low rates of failure. Some scopes won’t be quite bombproof, but will be durable and work as they should with low rates of failure. Some scopes will seem to work ok, but will show severe issues with any real use. And lots and lots of scopes will be shown to be total garbage as aiming devices.
I think most people expect legit brands and models to be like number two above- very durable with good reliability, with a very low chance of failure, but maybe not quite totally bombproof.
