A month or two ago I snagged one of these for $1900 from cheaper than dirt. After some research on said company, I'm a little ashamed for giving them money. Oh well.
On to the scope. Overall impressions is that it's a really nice scope. It's shorter and lighter than everything in a similar zoom range that I'm aware of. The clarity is great, on par with my NF NXS 3.5-15x50, if not a touch better. Honestly I can't see anything with one that I can't with the other, but there's a ton of mirage here around Vegas. I need to print out some increasingly smaller numbers/letters and see how far away I can read them with each. I ran it through a 2 mil box drill and it performed perfectly, after taking the target back home and measuring, all groups are 7.1-7.4" from each other. I also ran it up 5 mils and back down to zero firing a shot every 1 mil and it passed that as well. I ran it from zero to max elevation and back and it returns to zero. The only problems I have are relatively minor, and are with the elevation turret, and the reticle. I'll get to those later.
Out of the box, the scope comes with and allen wrench, butler creek front and back flip up caps, a user manual, and a Horus "reticle supplement". My scope has the TMR reticle, and I didn't see anything for it anywhere in either manual (not that I need it, it would just be nice). It's a short & fat scope-- the 34mm tube is definitely beefy compared to 30mm and 1" tubes. I mounted it onto an old .308 I built in highschool with Warne 34mm low rings. It's a mauser 98 action with an $89 Adams & Bennett barrel, glass beded into it's stock. No blueprinting, I finished the chamber by hand, and it's a 1-1.25 MOA shooter. It was the only bolt action that I was willing to remove the scope from to put this Mk6 on to test it. Once my .260 build gets back from Chad Dixon, this scope is going onto that rifle. I also put a Vortex 34mm level on it. Both the Warne Rings and Vortex level installed just fine, no issues there.
Looking through the scope at a white wall, and going through the magnification zoom, you can see the image get significantly darker past ~10x. It's not so easy to notice while looking at open terrain and hasn't caused any issues while actually shooting yet. Being FFP, the mil-scale zooms in and out with the picture, and is accurate at all magnification levels. The scope is very clear across all magnifications. At 18x, the reticle is a bit thick for my liking, and at 3x it's way too thin. I think most of my work with this scope will be done between 6x and 12x. The hole in the middle of the cross is not that great for aiming. Unless there is really good contrast between the target point and it's background, the target point gets lost very easily. I was aiming at a 1/2" black dot on brown cardboard with some light mirage @100yd and had some real trouble finding it. I would much prefer a .5mil gap and a small .05 mil dot in the center, or perhaps the inner most .5 mil cross be super-thin, .05 mils or so. Nothing I can do about it, though
The fit/finish is great on this scope. Although I suspect it's not quite as tough as my NXS's, it's still rugged enough. I don't have any proof to support this, but my guess is that it's body is made from a softer aluminum than what NF uses. Anyway, if someone was going to bang them against each other I'd bet on the NF. Probably a result of it being several oz. lighter.
The turrets do leave something to be desired. The windage turret is just fine. Tactile, audible clicks, tracks well etc.. No problems. It's numbered every 0.5 mils left and right for 5 mils either way. The elevation turret, however, has some issues. It has the squeeze-button lock system, so you have to press the two sides of the turret together to spin it. That works fine, and I get 20 mils of elevation (2 revs). The problem is that when you don't push those buttons in, you can still spin the turret (no clicks or reticle movement) a full .1 mil hash mark on the indicating ring. Essentially, I can have the scope set at 1.0 mils up from zero, but can move the turret to indicate either "1.0", or "0.9". To combat this, I've started turning past my desired mark when going down, then coming back up to where I want it. (for example, going from 2.1 mils to 1.7 mils I will first go to "1.5" then back up to 1.7. If I go straight down from 2.1 to 1.7, I'll end up at 1.8 with .1 mil backlash saying I'm on 1.7, if that makes sense). Similar to how you adjust for backlash on machinery indicator dials. The indicating ring also pivots on the two spring-loaded pins that hold it in place. The indicator ring does not freely rotate at all, just pivots side to side. Here's a video showing what I mean.
318x44mk6 Elevation turret twist and tilt - YouTube
The parallax turret is fine, easy to adjust, not stiff, not loose. (edit) Also, the zero-stop is easy to set up following the instructions in the owner's manual and works very well.
Here are a few pictures I took today out in the desert doing my box test.
These next few are not representative of the clarity actually seen through the scope. I wish I had a better camera. That said, you can sort of see the box drill on the cardboard.
edit to add: the bloom at the top of the view through the scope is from looking towards the sun. It's not usually there.
On to the scope. Overall impressions is that it's a really nice scope. It's shorter and lighter than everything in a similar zoom range that I'm aware of. The clarity is great, on par with my NF NXS 3.5-15x50, if not a touch better. Honestly I can't see anything with one that I can't with the other, but there's a ton of mirage here around Vegas. I need to print out some increasingly smaller numbers/letters and see how far away I can read them with each. I ran it through a 2 mil box drill and it performed perfectly, after taking the target back home and measuring, all groups are 7.1-7.4" from each other. I also ran it up 5 mils and back down to zero firing a shot every 1 mil and it passed that as well. I ran it from zero to max elevation and back and it returns to zero. The only problems I have are relatively minor, and are with the elevation turret, and the reticle. I'll get to those later.
Out of the box, the scope comes with and allen wrench, butler creek front and back flip up caps, a user manual, and a Horus "reticle supplement". My scope has the TMR reticle, and I didn't see anything for it anywhere in either manual (not that I need it, it would just be nice). It's a short & fat scope-- the 34mm tube is definitely beefy compared to 30mm and 1" tubes. I mounted it onto an old .308 I built in highschool with Warne 34mm low rings. It's a mauser 98 action with an $89 Adams & Bennett barrel, glass beded into it's stock. No blueprinting, I finished the chamber by hand, and it's a 1-1.25 MOA shooter. It was the only bolt action that I was willing to remove the scope from to put this Mk6 on to test it. Once my .260 build gets back from Chad Dixon, this scope is going onto that rifle. I also put a Vortex 34mm level on it. Both the Warne Rings and Vortex level installed just fine, no issues there.
Looking through the scope at a white wall, and going through the magnification zoom, you can see the image get significantly darker past ~10x. It's not so easy to notice while looking at open terrain and hasn't caused any issues while actually shooting yet. Being FFP, the mil-scale zooms in and out with the picture, and is accurate at all magnification levels. The scope is very clear across all magnifications. At 18x, the reticle is a bit thick for my liking, and at 3x it's way too thin. I think most of my work with this scope will be done between 6x and 12x. The hole in the middle of the cross is not that great for aiming. Unless there is really good contrast between the target point and it's background, the target point gets lost very easily. I was aiming at a 1/2" black dot on brown cardboard with some light mirage @100yd and had some real trouble finding it. I would much prefer a .5mil gap and a small .05 mil dot in the center, or perhaps the inner most .5 mil cross be super-thin, .05 mils or so. Nothing I can do about it, though
The fit/finish is great on this scope. Although I suspect it's not quite as tough as my NXS's, it's still rugged enough. I don't have any proof to support this, but my guess is that it's body is made from a softer aluminum than what NF uses. Anyway, if someone was going to bang them against each other I'd bet on the NF. Probably a result of it being several oz. lighter.
The turrets do leave something to be desired. The windage turret is just fine. Tactile, audible clicks, tracks well etc.. No problems. It's numbered every 0.5 mils left and right for 5 mils either way. The elevation turret, however, has some issues. It has the squeeze-button lock system, so you have to press the two sides of the turret together to spin it. That works fine, and I get 20 mils of elevation (2 revs). The problem is that when you don't push those buttons in, you can still spin the turret (no clicks or reticle movement) a full .1 mil hash mark on the indicating ring. Essentially, I can have the scope set at 1.0 mils up from zero, but can move the turret to indicate either "1.0", or "0.9". To combat this, I've started turning past my desired mark when going down, then coming back up to where I want it. (for example, going from 2.1 mils to 1.7 mils I will first go to "1.5" then back up to 1.7. If I go straight down from 2.1 to 1.7, I'll end up at 1.8 with .1 mil backlash saying I'm on 1.7, if that makes sense). Similar to how you adjust for backlash on machinery indicator dials. The indicating ring also pivots on the two spring-loaded pins that hold it in place. The indicator ring does not freely rotate at all, just pivots side to side. Here's a video showing what I mean.
318x44mk6 Elevation turret twist and tilt - YouTube
The parallax turret is fine, easy to adjust, not stiff, not loose. (edit) Also, the zero-stop is easy to set up following the instructions in the owner's manual and works very well.
Here are a few pictures I took today out in the desert doing my box test.
These next few are not representative of the clarity actually seen through the scope. I wish I had a better camera. That said, you can sort of see the box drill on the cardboard.
edit to add: the bloom at the top of the view through the scope is from looking towards the sun. It's not usually there.
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