BEST spotting scope?

[Fred Bohl]

To those of you that are struggling with aiming of big high power spotting scopes and particularly the Celestron C130MAK.

During some testing I found myself out of tripods for all the scopes we were testing and having trouble getting and staying on target. I found purchased and am now using the Celestron - Heavy-Duty Alt-Azimuth Tripod [CE-93607],$90 at OPT). It could be a bit more beefy but at $190 less than the Vixen - Icarus-D Alt-Azimuth Mount with Wood Tripod [VX-MTAZ7311W],$280 at OPT) it is just fine with me and works great with the big C130MAK.

Those slow motion azimuth and elevation controls via the flex cables make it a lot easier to get on target and greatly reduce the shake time compared to photo tripod pan and tilt controls.

 

[Fred Bohl]

The two threads on Spotting Scopes and Rifle Scopes have both at times used visibility of bullet holes at different ranges as a measure of desired performance. I have therefore put together a simple calculator Click Here to help identify needed performance specifications.

You enter your bullet diameter in inches and range in yards, click on the update button and it will calculate the angular size of the bullet hole in MOA, minimum required magnification for a normal,or corrected to normal) eye to resolve that bullet hole and the minimum size of objective in millimeters for the Dawes Limit of Resolution to be smaller than that bullet hole size.