SWFA Replacement

[Jammer Six]

I have a SWFA fixed 10, and I want to replace it with something larger. Up to twenty.

I prefer fixed. What's essential is that the glass and turrets be the best money can buy. Price is not as important as it was when I bought the SWFA.

Suggestions?

 

[Dgd6mm]

Oh, the very best... mil-mil There are plenty to choose from. I do not own any, the best I have is the SWFA 5-20 HD it is the middle of the road. I hope you get some good responses.

I will be shooting a small PRS match in a couple of weeks. Most guys will let you touch their equipment, so I just may ask to turn a few turrets on some of those upper end scopes.

 

[Dgd6mm]

Well your in luck, I just seen euro optics has the Schmidt and Bender on sale.

 

[CharlieNC]

Jammer what style shooting will you do to prefer a fixed 20X?

 

[Jammer Six]

No style. The 100 and 200 yard line at Renton Fish & Game.

I was dismayed to find that I couldn't even find a .223 hole with ten power at 100 yards.

 

[Dgd6mm]

I did see where you want a fixed and I skipped right over it, sorry about that and getting carried away with the other. I have owned the Weaver 24 and 36, they are decent glass and the turrets could have a more positive feel to them, so I know this doesn't help. I have handled an IOR 36 power nicer glass then the Weaver's and better turrets. I would like to check out the straight power Leupold, I hear they are very nice.

 

[Jammer Six]

There are two things about Leupold I don't care for.

One, their website is atrocious. It's awful. I can't find a decent description of their turrets anywhere, and I want mil turrets and a mil dot reticle. When you click on "more info" for reticles, you get the first page of their reticles, which is fine, but no more than that. I want to know about the mil dot reticles, which don't happen to be on the first page. And if I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars with a company, I want to be able to get the information I want easily. I'm spoiled. Feed the information to me gently with a spoon, please, or I'll take my money to a company that specializes in the care and feeding of newbies.

Two, they seem to be MOA-centric. No criticism of that system, (I don't know enough to criticize intelligently) but my training is mil-dot, and I want a mil dot system.

I wish I could go to Cabella's and gaze through scopes, but it seems to me that Cabella's wants me to buy their house brands, and I have yet to run into anyone behind the counter at Cabella's that seemed to know what the hell they were talking about. I'm quite new to rifles, so if I know more about shooting rifles than your counter person, you need a new counter person.

That said the Cabella's store here is physically huge, and if I found a Cabella's house brand scope that I could pick up and look all the way across the store and it had good enough glass that I could see through it, if I could get it with mil dot reticle and mil turrets, I'd be sorely tempted to buy it, just as an experiment, if nothing else.

I want a fixed scope just because it's nice and simple, and with a variable scope, the chances are excellent that I'd just cram it over the max and leave it there. So why pay for a feature I'm not going to use?

 

[Topstrap]

Fixed power SWFA 20x.

A step up is the SWFA 5-20 HD, all SWFA models have excellent mechanics that track perfect.

A step even higher, Vortex Razor gen II. Can't get much better than that.

Topstrap

 

[Jammer Six]

Fixed power SWFA 20x.

A step up is the SWFA 5-20 HD, all SWFA models have excellent mechanics that track perfect.

A step even higher, Vortex Razor gen II. Can't get much better than that.

Topstrap

I'm looking hard at the SWFA and the Vortex Razor gen II.

Does the Vortex have comparable or better glass?

 

[Dgd6mm]

Vortex Razor Gen II's glass is better.

 

[redrockranger]

I'm looking hard at the SWFA and the Vortex Razor gen II.

Does the Vortex have comparable or better glass?

Check out the SWFA 20X fixed with the mil-quad reticle. You can click on the reticle and see all the sub tensions. The reticle at the corner of the spec s sheet. I think the reticle is also available in MOA __MOA

 

[flatlander]

It's been almost 10yrs ago that I put a 6 Dasher bbl on my insurance agent's Savage, but I still recall being pretty disappointed when I looked through the SS20x42 scope he'd mounted on it. I'd been doing most of my LR prone HP shooting with a SS16x42 at 1000yds, and never really felt under-equipped. But his 20X SS was way dark compared to my two 16s, so unless they've made considerable improvements to those scopes over the past 10yrs, I'd stay away from the SS20.

Since that point in time, I've gotten more into the PRS-style side of rifle shooting, and worked my way up from a Vortex Viper 6-24x50 PST to several different 34mm scopes, including Bushnell 3.5-21x50 ERS, Weaver 4-30x56, Kahles K624i AMR, and most recently, a couple of Athlon Cronus 4.5-29x56. Along the way, I've had opportunities to fondle high-end scopes from S&B, Vortex Razor Gen I&II, Leupold Mk8, NF Beast, & Premier. My favorites are the Kahles - great glass, excellent tracking, very good turrets, and I've really learned to like & use the AMR reticle. However, these scopes retail for around $3k.

Like I mentioned, I've had a couple of Athlon's top-of-the-line Cronus scopes for several months now, and have had opportunities to compare them side-by-side to my Kahles scopes while shooting at 600yds. I've been very pleased with the optical quality of these new scopes, as well as the tracking and the reticle. All the 34mm tube scopes I've seen & used are mil/mil versions, and based on how well .2 mil dots or hash marks work, I'd never go back to a plain old mil dot reticle. Athlon's MAP for the Cronus 4.5-29x56 is around $1700, which - when you consider the optical quality, reticle, zero stop, and tracking - is a very good value. I went away from fixed power scopes long ago, simply because there were so many advantages to a good variable. If the mirage gets too fugly, you can always dial them down to a lower power. But having that extra magnification available when you can take advantage of it is great. Only downside to getting into one of these really good scopes is that they'll spoil you for anything less...lol

 

[Topstrap]

My Son's Vortex razor gen II glass is lot clearer and brighter than our SWFA 5-20 HD and the SWFA has pretty good glass. Mechanics are similar which rate as some of the best.

The newer 20x SWFA are quite a bit better than the older model which I found a bit darker than the 16x models. There is a but though. All of our newer mil-quad 16x models at certain light angles will have a slight milky look thru the tube, the sun angle changes slightly and it goes away. Its not a big deal but some scope snobs may find this a reason to not keep one. Our older moa/mil models did not have that problem. I haven't seen this happen with our 20x models.

I plan on getting a 20x SWFA mil-quad reticle but in moa/moa for one of my 22 rimfires on the Black Friday sale. Slightly finer adjustments over the mil model.

Hard to beat any of the SWFA models for the money.

Topstrap

 

[Jammer Six]

When I bought the SWFA 10X that I have, I called SWFA and noted that there is a fixed 10 in the "Classic" line and a fixed 10 in the "HD" line, with about a $300 difference in price. So I asked him what that difference is. He gave a one word answer: "glass".

I bought the HD, and that is the scope I want to replace.

I note that the only fixed 20 SWFA has for sale is in Classic line. That discourages me, because I want more and better glass, not less.

 

[flatlander]

There are also some pretty good 30mm ffp scopes available on today's market - for instance, Bushnell's ET62450G, which is a 6-24x50 with the company's G2DMR reticle. I've owned two of these scopes (still have one), and they're pretty darned good, optically, and that reticle is very good. Retail pricing on this scope is a bit over $900 IIRC - main downsides are no zero stop, and only 5 mils per revolution on the knobs (which makes the lack of zero stop more important).

Athlon will be bringing a new line of ffp 30mm scopes to the market, but probably not until SHOT Show. As good as their other lines are, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on one of these new Aries scopes.

 

[slm9s]

The best fixed mid-power optic? I haven't personally used one, but I'd be looking into Schmidt and Bender. They make a fixed 10x that some VERY good shooters use on their LR hunting rigs.

 

[Jammer Six]

I'm looking at this S&B: http://swfa.com/Schmidt-Bender-10x42-Police-Marksman-II-30mm-Riflescope-P661.aspx

If anyone in the greater Puget Sound area, say, Olympia to Marysville, and up to the pass, has one that they would be kind enough to let me gaze through, I'd buy both lunch and beer.