Falcon optical systems
endura s10I 1-10x24
Falcon optical systems
"We want to provide an unbiased review of equipment from a mostly HFT discipline orientated lens"
- TEAM WHFTA review team objective
How do we kick this off? Well, let’s get some of the whys, the how and the what out of the way straight out of the gate.
What is our aim? We want to provide an unbiased review of equipment from a mostly HFT discipline orientated lens. Why do we want to do this? There is a plethora of great resources that review products for shooting enthusiasts but there are very few that look at them from an experienced HFT competitor’s view and some of the nuances specific to HFT are sometimes overlooked in the more ‘all encompassing’ reviews. We feel that as we organise some of the largest HFT events that we can help plug this very niche gap by utilising some of the resources we have at our disposal. How are we going to do this? The short answer is that we are going to put these products in the hands of very capable HFT Competitors, both past and present, for long durations, collate their thoughts, bolt them together and chuck them on here for you guys to peruse over.
Time for disclosure (not the alien thing…)
We have on review a little optic from Falcon Optical Systems, the 1-10x 24 Endura s10i. This optic has been loaned to us by the guys at Falcon, there has been no exchange of money for this review and the agreement between ourselves and Falcon is that we can be completely honest with our findings, warts and all. This is something that is sometimes missing in the world of reviews. However, to be completely transparent Falcon Optical Systems did sponsor our 2024 event with 3 rifle scopes all of which went to Junior competitors. The provision of those sponsorship items does not impact our review.
What is our aim? We want to provide an unbiased review of equipment from a mostly HFT discipline orientated lens. Why do we want to do this? There is a plethora of great resources that review products for shooting enthusiasts but there are very few that look at them from an experienced HFT competitor’s view and some of the nuances specific to HFT are sometimes overlooked in the more ‘all encompassing’ reviews. We feel that as we organise some of the largest HFT events that we can help plug this very niche gap by utilising some of the resources we have at our disposal. How are we going to do this? The short answer is that we are going to put these products in the hands of very capable HFT Competitors, both past and present, for long durations, collate their thoughts, bolt them together and chuck them on here for you guys to peruse over.
Time for disclosure (not the alien thing…)
We have on review a little optic from Falcon Optical Systems, the 1-10x 24 Endura s10i. This optic has been loaned to us by the guys at Falcon, there has been no exchange of money for this review and the agreement between ourselves and Falcon is that we can be completely honest with our findings, warts and all. This is something that is sometimes missing in the world of reviews. However, to be completely transparent Falcon Optical Systems did sponsor our 2024 event with 3 rifle scopes all of which went to Junior competitors. The provision of those sponsorship items does not impact our review.
Hopefully we have done a semi decent job of simply explaining the relationship between ourselves and Falcon Optical Systems. To be totally clear both parties are completely aligned on what the end objective is, and, in all honesty, it is totally beneficial to all parties. Falcon Optical Systems get legit feedback, we get to do a deep dive on a product we may not of had the opportunity to do before and you guys get to read our ramblings. Everyone wins, in theory...
So, on paper the specifications of the little Endura does seem to tick a lot of boxes in what makes a good HFT scope along with a few other potential bonuses. A MIL based reticle system, a small objective lens, good glass, an illuminated reticle, competitively priced, plus a smattering of “nice to haves” which include a sunshade and flip up lens covers that come as part of this optical package. Without getting really into the minutia of the specifications here follow this LINK to have a look at the full specifications. Let’s see if the Falcon managed to translate this promising outlook into something physically effective...
Our scope arrived in the very smart and business like Falcon branded packaging. Something that stood out to us was the slogan below the Falcon Optical systems Logo, “understated, honest, accomplished”. We were curious to see whether this little scope would live up to those words and these words were something we constantly referred back to during our review period. Not that many folks will care too much about packaging or presentation, but it is totally worth noting that the packaging and presentation of this scope is really sleek and would not be out of place on something far outside of its price range. For us if a company is paying attention to this and executing it correctly it bodes well for the actual product.
Taking the scope out of it’s very well padded and manufactured nest for a closer look revealed a very neat, unassuming and well finished optic. All nomenclature and markings are incredibly well done and are very reminiscent of some very notable American optical companies, undoubtedly the guys at Falcon have taken note of this and to their credit the finish and presentation is way more than we’d expect from a scope of this price bracket. I would describe the overall scope finish as a sort of semi matte, it’s not quite fully matte and does offer some minor reflection under certain conditions but again, it is very well done and from what we would find from later testing, pretty hard wearing. Included with the scope is, a lens cloth, a battery for the illuminated reticle, a sunshade and Falcon branded lens caps plus the user guide.
“You can put a dress on a pig but at the end of the day it’s still a pig!” Wise words from my dad and I have no idea why I decided to apply those words to this review at this stage, but it did slightly ground me again after the very optimistic first impressions. I think somewhere in there the translation is, just because something appears to present itself well doesn’t mean it can follow through and you know what, for a lot of things in this modern world this is true. So, it’s time to take this dress off and see if we have a pig...
So, on paper the specifications of the little Endura does seem to tick a lot of boxes in what makes a good HFT scope along with a few other potential bonuses. A MIL based reticle system, a small objective lens, good glass, an illuminated reticle, competitively priced, plus a smattering of “nice to haves” which include a sunshade and flip up lens covers that come as part of this optical package. Without getting really into the minutia of the specifications here follow this LINK to have a look at the full specifications. Let’s see if the Falcon managed to translate this promising outlook into something physically effective...
Our scope arrived in the very smart and business like Falcon branded packaging. Something that stood out to us was the slogan below the Falcon Optical systems Logo, “understated, honest, accomplished”. We were curious to see whether this little scope would live up to those words and these words were something we constantly referred back to during our review period. Not that many folks will care too much about packaging or presentation, but it is totally worth noting that the packaging and presentation of this scope is really sleek and would not be out of place on something far outside of its price range. For us if a company is paying attention to this and executing it correctly it bodes well for the actual product.
Taking the scope out of it’s very well padded and manufactured nest for a closer look revealed a very neat, unassuming and well finished optic. All nomenclature and markings are incredibly well done and are very reminiscent of some very notable American optical companies, undoubtedly the guys at Falcon have taken note of this and to their credit the finish and presentation is way more than we’d expect from a scope of this price bracket. I would describe the overall scope finish as a sort of semi matte, it’s not quite fully matte and does offer some minor reflection under certain conditions but again, it is very well done and from what we would find from later testing, pretty hard wearing. Included with the scope is, a lens cloth, a battery for the illuminated reticle, a sunshade and Falcon branded lens caps plus the user guide.
“You can put a dress on a pig but at the end of the day it’s still a pig!” Wise words from my dad and I have no idea why I decided to apply those words to this review at this stage, but it did slightly ground me again after the very optimistic first impressions. I think somewhere in there the translation is, just because something appears to present itself well doesn’t mean it can follow through and you know what, for a lot of things in this modern world this is true. So, it’s time to take this dress off and see if we have a pig...
We had a very cursory familiarisation with the scope controls prior to mounting on one of our test rifles and actually for what we need as HFT competitors everything was pretty optimal. Elevation and windage turret adjustments were incredibly sharp, the illuminated reticle adjustment dial snapped between locations without any notable play, both the magnification and ocular adjustment worked smoothly, and the locking turrets offered zero movement when in the depressed locked position. What I will say is that if you were to really delve deeper and draw comparison against some really top end optics, you will notice a difference for sure. However, those optics are in most cases are up to ten times the price of this little Falcon so in the overall scheme of things, a very understated and honest start and we were optimistic for the real nuts and bolts elements of our testing.
Time for a caveat. Looking at scopes and assessing their suitability and effectiveness for HFT is a very subjective endeavour. True there are some points that won’t be opinion based and will be solid facts, but a great deal of our assessment will be based on our own opinion. We are completely aware that opinions can be subject to certain predispositions but when we have been reviewing this scope, we have tried to ensure that we have been looking at things from as many relevant angles as possible but then utilising our own experience to produce our final opinion which will hopefully be useful to you guys.
We’ll not bore you with taking you through us zeroing the scope as there is nothing really to report apart from that we zeroed it with no issues. We also took the time to verify that the scope ‘tracked’ correctly, although this isn’t relevant to HFT competitors as we don’t adjust our scopes once they are zeroed it is in our experience a worthwhile exercise as in our experience if your scope tracks satisfactory it is representative of the build quality of the optic. We are pleased to report that the little Falcon tracked superbly. It is worth noting that we conducted this test both at the beginning and end of the review period and the results were the same. But by the same token we weren’t hammering the adjustment throughout the testing period.
The thing we were most excited about reviewing and using was the Falcon P22 reticle. On paper this MIL based reticle looked incredibly useable for HFT with the additional marks in the horizontal plane below the cross hair appearing to be incredibly useful for precision wind holds instead of holding in ‘fresh air’ for them. We’ll cover this particular element in more detail later in the review. During the zeroing process, I honestly did not like the centre dot of the reticle. I found that when shooting on paper the dot dimensions were not small enough for me to precisely and clinically aim at pellet holes. However, going back to what we mentioned earlier about opinions, it is definitely my preference to be able to do that. In all honesty, on reflection the genesis of my personal requirement to do this is bore out of ensuring that I can extract the maximum amount of accuracy out of a shooting system during the set up and verification process, in particular when pellet testing. It is achievable with the P22 reticle but I just had to adjust my methods and start using correctly sized circles on paper as opposed to pellet marks to achieve what I needed. For what it is worth, outside of the set-up process I came to learn that the centre dot size had zero impact on real word use, i.e when used on a HFT course. In summary, a small adjustment from my usual protocol still yielded the same results and as such achieved what was needed. But moving into the next stages I was still subconsciously wary of the reticle centre dot being an issue. Sometimes, we just need to stop being precious as we’ll find out shortly.
Time for a caveat. Looking at scopes and assessing their suitability and effectiveness for HFT is a very subjective endeavour. True there are some points that won’t be opinion based and will be solid facts, but a great deal of our assessment will be based on our own opinion. We are completely aware that opinions can be subject to certain predispositions but when we have been reviewing this scope, we have tried to ensure that we have been looking at things from as many relevant angles as possible but then utilising our own experience to produce our final opinion which will hopefully be useful to you guys.
We’ll not bore you with taking you through us zeroing the scope as there is nothing really to report apart from that we zeroed it with no issues. We also took the time to verify that the scope ‘tracked’ correctly, although this isn’t relevant to HFT competitors as we don’t adjust our scopes once they are zeroed it is in our experience a worthwhile exercise as in our experience if your scope tracks satisfactory it is representative of the build quality of the optic. We are pleased to report that the little Falcon tracked superbly. It is worth noting that we conducted this test both at the beginning and end of the review period and the results were the same. But by the same token we weren’t hammering the adjustment throughout the testing period.
The thing we were most excited about reviewing and using was the Falcon P22 reticle. On paper this MIL based reticle looked incredibly useable for HFT with the additional marks in the horizontal plane below the cross hair appearing to be incredibly useful for precision wind holds instead of holding in ‘fresh air’ for them. We’ll cover this particular element in more detail later in the review. During the zeroing process, I honestly did not like the centre dot of the reticle. I found that when shooting on paper the dot dimensions were not small enough for me to precisely and clinically aim at pellet holes. However, going back to what we mentioned earlier about opinions, it is definitely my preference to be able to do that. In all honesty, on reflection the genesis of my personal requirement to do this is bore out of ensuring that I can extract the maximum amount of accuracy out of a shooting system during the set up and verification process, in particular when pellet testing. It is achievable with the P22 reticle but I just had to adjust my methods and start using correctly sized circles on paper as opposed to pellet marks to achieve what I needed. For what it is worth, outside of the set-up process I came to learn that the centre dot size had zero impact on real word use, i.e when used on a HFT course. In summary, a small adjustment from my usual protocol still yielded the same results and as such achieved what was needed. But moving into the next stages I was still subconsciously wary of the reticle centre dot being an issue. Sometimes, we just need to stop being precious as we’ll find out shortly.
During our initial set up period I personally found the fixed parallax distance of 25m to be what I would consider to be the most optimal parallax distance for my style of HFT shooting. My personal preference is that I can make out clear pellet marks on metal targets at the longer distances whereas at shorter distances some of this is sacrificed. The logic behind this methodology is that there is more margin for error at the closer distances (<15y) so you can “get away” with more at these ranges. Whereas at longer distances more factors come into play which reduce one’s ability to successfully knock over targets. The ability to clearly identify individual marks on a target at the longer distances is hugely beneficial not only for when you knock a target over but also for when you miss. If you can identify where your pellet struck you can use this information later. For example, if you miss to one side of the hit zone and you can clearly identify that you’ll be able to use this information on successive targets. However, this is purely my own preference and those that have a different style may prefer the opposite and as such the fixed 25m parallax distance may pose them an issue. Note that I say MAY as we’ll explain next.
Something us HFT’ers search for in a rifle scope is a good depth of field (DOF). I’ll leave a link to the real science of what this is HERE but the “chimpyfied” version of DOF for us is, how much of a distance “band” can a useable target image be observed. Remember in HFT we don’t adjust our scope settings. To be very clear, there is no scope on the planet that will do this perfectly at a HFT useable magnification range (>x7 magnification) however, there are some scopes that do it better than others which is due to witchcraft way beyond my comprehension, but a general rule of thumb is that the smaller the objective lens the better the DOF. We found the DOF of the Endura to be very good when compared to other comparable scope models and what it offered is absolutely more than adequate for any HFT application. The good DOF does mitigate somewhat the lack of adjustable parallax and I dare say if the DOF wasn’t as good as it is then the requirement for adjustable parallax would be a necessity.
The more astute folk will have noticed we have skipped optical quality in the sequence of how we have written this. Well, let’s get that covered as it does require a little bit of nuance and a slight confession. The confession being that optically I am a scope snob and definitely prefer the “higher end” scopes for their optical clarity so my initial and first comparison against the little Endura was against a scope that retails at around £2000, which is pretty unfair. Let’s also be realistic, we cannot expect the same optical quality of a scope of the Falcon’s price bracket to be directly comparable against the real high end optical systems, it’s an unreasonable comparison to draw. It’s reasonable to reference it but do draw direct comparisons is frankly both unjust and a waste of time as optically the Falcon will always lose out. But what we did do was directly compare it against similar scopes that are typically used for HFT from the same price bracket which I’m sure you’ll agree is the most pragmatic thing to do. So, how do we think it stacked up?
Something us HFT’ers search for in a rifle scope is a good depth of field (DOF). I’ll leave a link to the real science of what this is HERE but the “chimpyfied” version of DOF for us is, how much of a distance “band” can a useable target image be observed. Remember in HFT we don’t adjust our scope settings. To be very clear, there is no scope on the planet that will do this perfectly at a HFT useable magnification range (>x7 magnification) however, there are some scopes that do it better than others which is due to witchcraft way beyond my comprehension, but a general rule of thumb is that the smaller the objective lens the better the DOF. We found the DOF of the Endura to be very good when compared to other comparable scope models and what it offered is absolutely more than adequate for any HFT application. The good DOF does mitigate somewhat the lack of adjustable parallax and I dare say if the DOF wasn’t as good as it is then the requirement for adjustable parallax would be a necessity.
The more astute folk will have noticed we have skipped optical quality in the sequence of how we have written this. Well, let’s get that covered as it does require a little bit of nuance and a slight confession. The confession being that optically I am a scope snob and definitely prefer the “higher end” scopes for their optical clarity so my initial and first comparison against the little Endura was against a scope that retails at around £2000, which is pretty unfair. Let’s also be realistic, we cannot expect the same optical quality of a scope of the Falcon’s price bracket to be directly comparable against the real high end optical systems, it’s an unreasonable comparison to draw. It’s reasonable to reference it but do draw direct comparisons is frankly both unjust and a waste of time as optically the Falcon will always lose out. But what we did do was directly compare it against similar scopes that are typically used for HFT from the same price bracket which I’m sure you’ll agree is the most pragmatic thing to do. So, how do we think it stacked up?
This little optic is definitely on par with its competitors. Optically is it better? To be totally transparent, it’s actually really hard to tell. It is absolutely adequate and completely more than useable for our HFT needs but to draw a clear-cut line that it is significantly better or worse than its competitors is not clear to us. For context we had a good number of people spend some time with the scopes and it was an even split as to which were optically best. For reference, we did compare these scopes with scopes from the next price jump up (>£450) and there was a notable but not significant optical difference with the more expensive scopes being better. Given our findings this was as far as we took our optical comparisons and from here on out the Falcon was judged optically on its own merit.
During the review period we used the Falcon extensively both in competitions and simulated scenarios to test its performance and make the best use of our time. By this we mean that we set up mock ups of certain types of HFT shots as opposed to encountering them on a HFT course. So, what have we found? Which is what I’m sure you guys want to know. Well, let’s first cover off some points that weren’t identified in our initial set up phase of the review both good and bad.
Let’s discuss the illuminated reticle. In our opinion this is not a pre-requisite on a HFT scope, it’s a nice to have when done correctly but by no means a fundamental requirement. On the Endura it’s only the centre dot that illuminates which for HFT isn’t that useful as we use the remainder of the reticle as aim points. Further to this we did find at higher illumination settings there was some flare observed at the out extremities of the sight picture. Now, for scopes of this price point this is par for course. Even some higher end scopes suffer with this, and it is pretty apparent that a great deal of precision engineering goes into to producing the more refined IR reticles. Along with that comes a significant additional cost which is then passed on to the consumer. Do we think this impacts how useable it is for HFT, honestly not really. It would be more desirable to have it illuminating the whole reticle but for us it doesn’t gain anything tangible in normal applications.
Keeping with the illumination for a second something we stumbled upon was that for positional shots where one is typically more unstable than in the standard HFT prone position. Having the illumination on increased our hit to miss ratio quite a bit. When we thought about this in more detail, we could only ascertain that the illuminated centre dot was being perceived by our brains as something akin to a red dot optical sight. For reference, our zero distance allowed us to aim pretty central for most positional shots so aiming above and below the target hit zone wasn’t a necessity. It is worth noting that this was observed by a few of us, this isn’t obviously something conclusive but there is something going on with positional shots and the IR being on.
During the review period we used the Falcon extensively both in competitions and simulated scenarios to test its performance and make the best use of our time. By this we mean that we set up mock ups of certain types of HFT shots as opposed to encountering them on a HFT course. So, what have we found? Which is what I’m sure you guys want to know. Well, let’s first cover off some points that weren’t identified in our initial set up phase of the review both good and bad.
Let’s discuss the illuminated reticle. In our opinion this is not a pre-requisite on a HFT scope, it’s a nice to have when done correctly but by no means a fundamental requirement. On the Endura it’s only the centre dot that illuminates which for HFT isn’t that useful as we use the remainder of the reticle as aim points. Further to this we did find at higher illumination settings there was some flare observed at the out extremities of the sight picture. Now, for scopes of this price point this is par for course. Even some higher end scopes suffer with this, and it is pretty apparent that a great deal of precision engineering goes into to producing the more refined IR reticles. Along with that comes a significant additional cost which is then passed on to the consumer. Do we think this impacts how useable it is for HFT, honestly not really. It would be more desirable to have it illuminating the whole reticle but for us it doesn’t gain anything tangible in normal applications.
Keeping with the illumination for a second something we stumbled upon was that for positional shots where one is typically more unstable than in the standard HFT prone position. Having the illumination on increased our hit to miss ratio quite a bit. When we thought about this in more detail, we could only ascertain that the illuminated centre dot was being perceived by our brains as something akin to a red dot optical sight. For reference, our zero distance allowed us to aim pretty central for most positional shots so aiming above and below the target hit zone wasn’t a necessity. It is worth noting that this was observed by a few of us, this isn’t obviously something conclusive but there is something going on with positional shots and the IR being on.
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In real world use we found that at x10 magnification which is what the majority of us HFT’ers will use this scope on the eye box is really unforgiving. By this we mean that if your head isn’t in the correct position, you either start to lose or lose the sight picture which indicates your head is in the incorrect position. This for HFT is a really good thing. Incorrect head position is one of the key contributors to those mystery inexplicably wayward misses and having an attribute that helps avoid those is a real positive. Throughout our testing we found this a really useful feature and it definitely gained us some points during the review period.
One of the other major contributors to mystery misses is parallax error. Now I’m not even going to begin to explain the minutia of what this is as if you are a certain character type you will go down a rabbit hole and you’ll not return! If you want to find out a little more without descending fully into a burrow follow the link HERE. The HFT layman explanation is that parallax error occurs when the reticle and the target are not on the same focal plane, causing the point of aim to be different from the point of impact. For most shots in HFT the reticle and the target will not be in the same focal plane as we can’t adjust our scopes during HFT competitions, which means that parallax error will occur. Some scopes suffer more from parallax error meaning that the movement and point of impact is greater and less predictable than others. In real world use we did observe some parallax error with the Falcon, but it was slight and totally manageable. Throughout our testing we didn’t have anything “laree” that we would attribute to parallax error and any error we observed was at the shorter distances (<16y). We are confident that the unforgiving eye box and small objective lens also contributed positively to this. Parallax error in HFT is something that will always exist with conventional scope designs and thankfully the little Falcon does very well in that although the error exists it is very small.
Let’s circle back around to the P22 reticle and see whether in real world use it is as good as we had hoped. I’ll be clear here, my subconscious bias against the centre dot of the reticle being too large got blown well out of the water when it was used in the wild. The centre dot dimensions did not negatively impact on the use of the scope, in fact, the opposite is probably true. For whatever reason it appeared the solid and robust centre dot allowed me to maintain focus on the reticle even at closer distances (>11y), this is something that generally I don’t find happens and I find myself shifting between the reticle and the image to get a picture of what the reticle looks like. So, a positive quirk that I didn’t expect.
One of the other major contributors to mystery misses is parallax error. Now I’m not even going to begin to explain the minutia of what this is as if you are a certain character type you will go down a rabbit hole and you’ll not return! If you want to find out a little more without descending fully into a burrow follow the link HERE. The HFT layman explanation is that parallax error occurs when the reticle and the target are not on the same focal plane, causing the point of aim to be different from the point of impact. For most shots in HFT the reticle and the target will not be in the same focal plane as we can’t adjust our scopes during HFT competitions, which means that parallax error will occur. Some scopes suffer more from parallax error meaning that the movement and point of impact is greater and less predictable than others. In real world use we did observe some parallax error with the Falcon, but it was slight and totally manageable. Throughout our testing we didn’t have anything “laree” that we would attribute to parallax error and any error we observed was at the shorter distances (<16y). We are confident that the unforgiving eye box and small objective lens also contributed positively to this. Parallax error in HFT is something that will always exist with conventional scope designs and thankfully the little Falcon does very well in that although the error exists it is very small.
Let’s circle back around to the P22 reticle and see whether in real world use it is as good as we had hoped. I’ll be clear here, my subconscious bias against the centre dot of the reticle being too large got blown well out of the water when it was used in the wild. The centre dot dimensions did not negatively impact on the use of the scope, in fact, the opposite is probably true. For whatever reason it appeared the solid and robust centre dot allowed me to maintain focus on the reticle even at closer distances (>11y), this is something that generally I don’t find happens and I find myself shifting between the reticle and the image to get a picture of what the reticle looks like. So, a positive quirk that I didn’t expect.
The P22 reticle is especially beneficial in windier conditions, the 0.5MIL and 1MIL horizontal markings below the cross hair were incredibly useful in making precise shots at longer targets in the wind and we did use it in some rather strong winds on multiple occasions. What the addition of these marks does is it assists you in levelling across the horizontal plane when making shots at distance where you require to use an aimpoint below the cross hair. It’s almost like a grid system, and this does prevent you from making slight errors when imagining the “grid lines” with a conventional MIL based reticle where you essentially aim in “thin air”. With the P22 reticle you have precise reference points. This isn’t something that is essential but what I will say is that when I started using a conventional MIL based reticle after this, I did find myself wanting the horizontal reference points. The only criticism I could level at the reticle really is that the markings are very fine and for some these can be lost on darker background targets, for me I didn’t find this an issue but I do know for others in some circumstances they lost the reticle markers.
We used the Falcon in a lot of different lighting conditions. From gloomy overcast days to incredibly bright summer afternoons and in all reasonable scenarios we had no issues optically with the scope. We were able to clearly make out targets in all those conditions and even if in a lot of cases we didn’t knock them over, we are adamant it wasn’t because we couldn’t see the target, we were just lacking talent. However, we did find in very niche lighting conditions which were typically found at dusk the ability to maintain continuity in the image quality diminishes very quickly as the ambient light noticeably starts to disappear. Is this a game changer? Absolutely not, the fact of matter is as soon as you start significantly reducing the ambient light going into the small 24mm objective lens the overall image quality is going to descend pretty quickly irrespective of the glass and coating quality. And let’s be truthful how often do we find ourselves shooting HFT competitions in these sort of lighting conditions? I’m going to say almost never. The other part of the equation that is often overlooked is our own individual eyesight. No matter how good a scope is optically it can never overcome deficiencies with our own vision especially in low light conditions.
After 7 months of pretty extensive testing where do we sit with this scope? Well, it’s definitely not a pig wearing a dress! Is it the prefect HFT scope? It is not. Would I personally swap my top end scope for this scope? Would any of our test team swap their top end optics for this scope? No, we wouldn’t. Did the scope miss a single beat? No, it didn’t. Did it perform effectively? Yes, it did. Did it perform well when compared against similar scopes of a similar price range? Absolutely! Can this scope be trusted to not let you down in high end HFT competitions? Yes, it can! If I only had £300 to spend on a HFT scope, would I buy this scope? Yes, I would and in fact I did buy one of these scopes for one of my set ups based on the findings from my time with the little Endura. Are we going to say you must go and buy this scope if you are a serious HFT’er? No, we are not!
What we will say is this.
Scopes have come on immensely in recent years and we are truly spoilt with the quality and choice in scopes available today across all price ranges. The quality of all scopes has increased exponentially. The strides forward made by the leading manufacturers have finally filtered down into the lower price brackets and we as consumers are reaping the benefits of this. Even with all this development there is no perfect HFT scope, there is no holy grail and there never will be. As we mentioned at the start of this article looking at scopes is very subjective and as such there are certain elements that are down to our physical limitations and personal preferences. But that being said, we would say that if you are in the market for a new HFT scope with a budget of around £300 put this scope on your list of scopes to seriously look at. From our experience it will do the business for you in the world of HFT so long as you play your part and adapt to it too. With this in mind we do 100 percent endorse this product.
We used the Falcon in a lot of different lighting conditions. From gloomy overcast days to incredibly bright summer afternoons and in all reasonable scenarios we had no issues optically with the scope. We were able to clearly make out targets in all those conditions and even if in a lot of cases we didn’t knock them over, we are adamant it wasn’t because we couldn’t see the target, we were just lacking talent. However, we did find in very niche lighting conditions which were typically found at dusk the ability to maintain continuity in the image quality diminishes very quickly as the ambient light noticeably starts to disappear. Is this a game changer? Absolutely not, the fact of matter is as soon as you start significantly reducing the ambient light going into the small 24mm objective lens the overall image quality is going to descend pretty quickly irrespective of the glass and coating quality. And let’s be truthful how often do we find ourselves shooting HFT competitions in these sort of lighting conditions? I’m going to say almost never. The other part of the equation that is often overlooked is our own individual eyesight. No matter how good a scope is optically it can never overcome deficiencies with our own vision especially in low light conditions.
After 7 months of pretty extensive testing where do we sit with this scope? Well, it’s definitely not a pig wearing a dress! Is it the prefect HFT scope? It is not. Would I personally swap my top end scope for this scope? Would any of our test team swap their top end optics for this scope? No, we wouldn’t. Did the scope miss a single beat? No, it didn’t. Did it perform effectively? Yes, it did. Did it perform well when compared against similar scopes of a similar price range? Absolutely! Can this scope be trusted to not let you down in high end HFT competitions? Yes, it can! If I only had £300 to spend on a HFT scope, would I buy this scope? Yes, I would and in fact I did buy one of these scopes for one of my set ups based on the findings from my time with the little Endura. Are we going to say you must go and buy this scope if you are a serious HFT’er? No, we are not!
What we will say is this.
Scopes have come on immensely in recent years and we are truly spoilt with the quality and choice in scopes available today across all price ranges. The quality of all scopes has increased exponentially. The strides forward made by the leading manufacturers have finally filtered down into the lower price brackets and we as consumers are reaping the benefits of this. Even with all this development there is no perfect HFT scope, there is no holy grail and there never will be. As we mentioned at the start of this article looking at scopes is very subjective and as such there are certain elements that are down to our physical limitations and personal preferences. But that being said, we would say that if you are in the market for a new HFT scope with a budget of around £300 put this scope on your list of scopes to seriously look at. From our experience it will do the business for you in the world of HFT so long as you play your part and adapt to it too. With this in mind we do 100 percent endorse this product.
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