The March FX 5-42X56 HM is now in production. We have a one at the booth at SHOT and it's been picked up, looked at anf fondled by hundreds of people since Tuesday. The marketing literature is being produced and you will be able to read about all the neat features in glowing terms shortly, so I'll just give me takeaways from what I've seen of it so far.
It's an FFP with a zoom ratio of 8.4X, going from 5X to 42X. It measures14.1 inches (358mm for our metric readers) and weighs 33.5 ounces (950g). The tube diameter is 34mm due to its 4mm thick tube walls. This is double the thickness of other scopes. It is currently only available in MIL, not in MOA. The clicks on the knobs are 0.1MIL, with 10MIL per turn for a total of 40MIL of elevation adjustment and 14 of windage. The objective lens diameter is 56mm. It is available in 3 reticles currently, with perhaps more on the way. Before you ask, I do not know if an MOA version is planned.
Now for some of the advanced or unique features.
The HM in the name stands for High Master. This scope uses the High Master lens system which is essentially Super-ED with the use of material that is temperature tolerant to prevent focus drift. Let me explain that a little more. The Super-ED material used to virtually eliminate chromatic aberration has a high fluorite crystal content. As we all know, fluorite crystals are sensitive to temperature. This material is designed to eliminate that problem so that this HM lens systems provides the best IQ possible and is not affected by temperature.
The next innovative feature is the Wide Angle eyepiece. This eyepiece is 26 degrees as opposed to the usual 20 or 21 degree eyepiece and also has a lockable fast diopter adjustment. The benefit of a wide angle eyepiece is that it provides for a greater field of view (FOV) to the eye. In this case, the FOV is 25% larger than regular eyepiece. In essence this means that at 10X on the scope, you have the field of view as large as the one provided by a regular scope set at 8X. I refer to it as the IMAX of scopes. It's an analogy, don't get lost in it.
Needless to say that between the HM lens system and the WA eyepiece, the picture is breathtaking; it's awesome.
The controls are a new design for March and all three knobs are lockable. The elevation and windage knobs have a little tab on top that you slide with your finger and when you're rewarded with a click, the knob is locked. Slide the other way and the knob is free to turn. The tab is designed to be out of the way and protected from accidental activation, but still very easy to manipulate consciously. In other words, it only slides when you want it to slide. The zero stop is easy to set right there on the top of the knob also.
The focus knob locks differently; you control the locking by virtue of pulling the whole knob away from the body or pushing it back in. Pull to lock, push to release. The travel is very short and again, it's designed to be activated as you want, and not by accident. You lock the focus knob so that you can change the intensity setting in the 6 position illumination switch or to change the battery.
HM lens system, WA eyepiece, 8.4X zoom ratio, huge adjustment range in a solid tube; it's a March.
