Re: Spotting Scope
Opinions vary, as always, based on usage.
For Greg's application where they shoot primarily what is referred to as 'walk-n-paste' (correct me if I'm wrong on that Greg), being able to see individual shot holes in the target is valuable as they don't pull and mark the target for each shot - if you can't see where your last shot went, tough luck.
Generally speaking though, you don't see matches without pits beyond 300yds very often. Even @ 300yds, the standard is to have targets on sliding carriers with pit service, and the targets are pulled and marked every shot with a scoring plug of a contrasting color - usually fitted with a disc that is big enough to be easily visible through almost any optic.
That said, high *magnification* is not necessarily necessary - you don't need to zoom in on the target center to see the shot. Actually, most of the zoom eye pieces for most brands give up two things that *are* important: field of view, and eye relief.
Field of view allows you to see the *whole* target, and more importantly, a couple targets to either side of yours. Don't care how your neighbors are shooting? You should. If your shot was a wide 9 @ 2 o'clock, was it just you, or the wind? If most of your compatriot's targets show similar scores, it probably wasn't you, and you now have halved the number of things to worry about. If the conditions switched, and you aren't sure about what to dial on, hold up and watch nearby targets for a bit - if someone you know is a good shooter and wind caller biffs one out the side, then there is probably more going on down range than you initially thought - add a little more, and send it. Being able to do all this without having to break position and fiddle with the spotting scope is invaluable.
Most variable power eye-pieces have eye-relief between 17-19mm - a little under, to just about 3/4". Kowa Long Eye Relief eye pieces are more in the realm of 31mm - about 1.25". Think about it this way - the lens of your shooting glasses (you *are* wearing shooting glasses, right?!?) is about 3/4 from your eyeball to start with, so its just about physically impossible to get a full field of view from a variable eye piece without removing your glasses (not recommended), whereas a LER eyepiece lets you see everything without continually bumping up against the lenses.
So at the end of the day, something with a fixed magnification around 25-30x and with wide-angle and/or long-eye-relief features is what you want. I have a Kowa TSN-661 w/ 25x WA/LER lens, and a Kowa 821M w/ 27x LER lens. The current model numbers may be slightly different of course as those models are several years old - I actually bought the 821M on closeout for about what I'd paid for the 661 new several years before.
The fancy fluorite lens coatings i.e. ED, HD, whatever... are very nice to have, as they add considerable definition to the mirage you are watching for (the main reason I bring a spotting scope to the line during a string), especially under less than optimal conditions when its hard to see. The huge price increase associated with them puts such features in the 'luxury' category for me - if you have the money to spare, get 'em. If not... I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
YMMV,
Monte
