So I finally got to the range with the Zeus today and there is good and bad to report. First off I was using this on a bolt action .22 using subsonic ammo that will host a Sparrow in the near future. I intend on using the Zeus on both 5.56 and my ruger 22. The Zeus was engineered to handle 308 recoil but I don't own one. Anyway, I used hand warmers stapled to cardboard at 50 and 100 yards. Interestingly the heat spread through the cardboard and actually made a nice target that looked about 5 inches around, more than needed. I was set at 2x and it was more than enough. A simple boresight was all that was needed to get on paper, then about 10 more shots to walk in to the center of the hand warmer. The good thing which I didn't expect is that you could actually see the bullet impacts on the cardboard, even at 100. I guess the bullet heats up the cardboard and wood backing enough to be seen by the scope, It only lasted about 4 seconds as it faded, but it was enough to move the reticle closer to the POI. The bad, and I mean awful, was the battery life. I have gone through 2 sets of batteries since owning this and wonder if there is an internal electronics issue with this. Run time is supposed to be 6 hours...I got maybe 1.5 hours. It doesn't go totally dead. Instead, the reticle disappears and menu access is non existent. The thermal still works, but there is no reticle, and the unit refreshes FFC every 5 seconds. Both times the batteries failed, I checked the batts with a voltage meter. They tested at 2.75 volts! Totally unacceptable! The battery indicator is useless in this unit. It said there was almost a full charge when it basically stopped functioning. I bought rechargeables and plan to run those to see how they perform. I will post again when more data is available. All in all, the scope was a good performer and the magnification was more than enough to get things done. I can see if it were mounted to a better rifle that 300-400 yard hits would not be that difficult to achieve as long as you could actually get it sighted in.
Battle Creek
Molon Labe
Battle Creek
Molon Labe
