Maven RS.5 4-24x50mm SFP mil/mil Field Evaluation

[Formidilosus]

Maven RS.5 4-24x5mm, field eval. This scope was handed to me from Ryan Avery for an evaluation. The baseline 30 round group with this lot of ammunition was 1.37” at 100 yards.


The scope and weight-





Turrets:


Elevation turret is exposed, revolution indicated, 10 mils per rev, zero stopped, and tool less reset. Zero stop requires a tool. Windage is capped, revolution indicated, and tool less reset.


Elevation-



The top of the turrets unscrew from the rest to allow reset-



Zero stop is simple pin on pin-



Windage also features same tool less reset-





SHR-Mil reticle:






Illuminated-




The reticle is good from a visibility perspective- of course being SFP it should be. The heavy stadia are 3 mils from center, with .25 mils spacing between increments.





Zero Targets and Return To Zero-


Second dot from top. Low right round is from 25m boresight. Adjusted and fired the remaining nine into the dot. Middle dot was to confirm taking the camera off and on maintained zero.






Then the RTZ check. Bottom dot, 10 rounds, 200 mils dialed between each shot, 2,000+ mils total. All went fine except the one (this will come into play shortly).










Cont….

 

[Formidilosus]

“Tracking”

Next was the live fire “tracking” target. Target is at exactly 100 yards. I measured using the reticle and a spotter to be 7 mils between dots.

Fired the first round-
View attachment 373013





No drop, no impacts, nothing happened between the RTZ check and this shot.


Went to separate target to confirm.




Group on the bottom right of dot is straight from the last. Dialed left .3 and fired the two on left edge. Up .1 mil and the center hit.


Back to the “tracking target”.



Center to center is less than 2% error, however the shift in zero is again apparent. Went to another target and checked zero, top is check, bottom is one with camera one without-




Rezeroed for drop evaluation-




Drop evaluation:

For an explanation see- Scope Field Eval Explanation and Standards


The “test” consists of three 18” drops on a mat- one left/right/top with a shot to check zero after each drop. Then the exact same thing repeated from 36”. Then three drops on all three sides for nine drops on the last part- 15 drops total. This is not “abuse”. The 18” drops are a joke really. The 36” start showing something. And when a scope make/model consistently goes through the whole thing without losing zero, failures in actual use are almost unheard of.

This one was conducted on packed, semi crusted snow.

First drop from 18 inches (left side) resulted in a significant shift to the left- on the other target. A second shot was taken to confirm. The first 18” drop resulted in a 21.5 inch shift.

The second drop (right side) shift back onto the original target, but significantly left of POA. This continued for the rest of the eval-





Disassembled, remounted, and rezeroed. Zero stop was not set for these next.





Started at 6 inches for drops and worked up. 6, 12, 18, 36. 6 and 8 produced no shits, 12 inch shifted, 18 shifted, 36 shifted- I believe one of the 36” shots was totally off paper (need to review video).



Almost every drop from both evals resulted in shifts from the 30 drops. All drops and shots were filmed with the Tactacam through the scope. It’s downloading now, and when complete will go to Ryan to be loaded and posted.




Results:

Before making it to the drop eval, the scope had to be rezeroed three times. None were large shifts, however .2-.3 mils. It consistently shifts zero through any impact at 12” or higher. The drop eval was a complete failure. I will conduct a side by side drop eval next range trip with a proof scope.



Even though it failed, I will give my subjective views as far as eyebox, image quality, and overall use and feel in the next posts.

 

[Formidilosus]

Reticle:

The reticle is visible, and would be a decent design for a FFP too. However, the .25 mil increments whether SFP or FFP, while being used by a couple newer scopes, it isn’t ideal. It’s commonly stated the .25 mils instead of .2 mil increments makes the reticle “less busy”. It does reduce the lines by one per mil, however it reduces the clean flow while shooting and making calls. Mils work well because of working in tenths. Using .25 mil increments brings in the silliness of MOA quarters and causes thinking and confusion that shouldn’t, and needn’t be there. There are better ways to make a reticle “less busy” than adding another variable in. The turrets and the reticle no longer match- there is no .25 mil increment on the turret.

This seems small, however under time and stress it causes issues. As well just critical thinking reveals that it doesn’t make sense to add quarters to a system that uses tenths.




Second Focal Plane:

SFP on a 24x scope where the reticle reads correctly at 24x is a poor way to go. There is no advantage to a scope that features corrections on the reticle to be SFP, and then to be SFP and then needing to be on 24x…. This is not a good idea for field shooting.

There is nothing intuitive about using half power and then the increments doubling- who thinks that under stress of a big bull or buck moving, that they’re going to remember that the hashes are now .5 mil instead of .25 mil, and that the numbers on the reticle aren’t correct?.. Every single time.



Power Ring:

The power ring rotates separately from the eyepiece. It includes a relatively small throw lever.




Eyebox and Eye Relief:

This scope exhibits a decent eyebox from 4x to around 16x. From 4-16x where I naturally wanted to use the scope, the eyebox is unnoticed really. That is good. Eye relief- other than the specs there’s not much to tell. It’s good.


Image Quality (glass):

Resolution is average from 4-16x . Color rendition is acceptable. However, image quality suffers quite a bit above 16x. At 24x it is not good. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good either.
The biggest issue is that at no point have I been able to get the reticle and image clarity to match. No amount of adjusting the diopter or parallax allows the reticle/target/parallax to be correct together. In the end I chose reticle clarity and parallax correction. At 24x the clarity was such that the black diamonds in the center of the orange dots were not discernible. The dots themselves were blurry with fussy edges.

Due to the reticle and image issues, parallax is more critical than average- there is a narrow window that is usable.





Thoughts:

It doesn’t function correctly. So that’s first and the only real thing that matters. It being a sample of one, I can not say whether this is common or not. However a first failing isn’t a good sign. After that the design is… subpar. Objectively, it is a high magnification scope with a SFP reticle that is correct at 24x, the parallax/focus issue is not acceptable, the .25 mil reticle does not fit a mil system.
The turrets, zero stop, and tool less reset are very well designed, at least in use. Unfortunately nothing removes the function issues.

 

[Formidilosus]

The scope rode in the backseat for a few hundred miles. It was checked today. It held zero from the truck ride (orange dot). Then a single 18” drop shifted as shown-




Some more shooting was done with it, then was pulled off, and the proof scope was remounted. Two shot to confirm zero, then fifteen (15) 36” drops-





The scope has been remounted 3 times, with 16, 18, and 22 in-lbs on the ring caps. Same results with each. It will go back to Ryan now.

 

[Formidilosus]

The last check or opportunity today on the Maven. The NF that was mounted last time was zero checked, turrets slipped, a ten round group fired (might have been 9) which is the bottom “large” hole, then a drop on each side from 36” with a shot after each drop. Two of those three went into the hole created by the initial zeroing group, the third is the shot just high and right of the center diamond.




The rifle holds zero. Then the Maven was immediately mounted, zeroed, and dropped from 18” inches on the left side, which resulted in about a .4 mil shift (closer to .5), the right side drop from 18” brought it back to center, and the top drop from 18” shifted back left by the first round.

The target is the one with the NF rounds. The two off the dot to the left are the 18” left side and top drop, the right drop is the round that is just high left of the center diamond. Again, the NF was three 36” drops, Maven three 18” drops.




And Ryan filmed the entire process….