Rifle Scopes Leupold HD 7-35×56

[Rick7353]

I just bought a demo from Optics Planet and unpacked it. The elevation dial only turned to 15.5 mils and hit a hard stop. Leupold said that is normal and once mounted in a 20 moa rail I will be able to set zero and that he dial it up. Is that right?

 

[Afkirby]

Sounds about right, it’s probably set in the middle of its adjustment from the factory.

 

[Glassaholic]

What Afkirby said is accurate for many scopes from the mfr, they set the elevation at center with the expectation that you will re-zero once you get it mounted. Think of it this way, if the mfr spec's a scope with 30mil total elevation that means 30 mils from the bottom to the top; however, if you mount with 0 cant you will most likely only get 15 mil of adjustment from zero, put the scope on a 20moa rail or mount and now you have to re-zero to adjust for the almost 6 mils of cant, once you do that you now add the 6 to the 15 and should have about 21 mils of adjustment. This is based on perfect world but in the real world your actual adjustment may fluctuate a bit, but as long as your close to what the math says you're good. I had a situation last year where I had a 20 moa rail but was only getting about 14 mils of adjustment when I mounted my AMG on it, I thought maybe I had a bum scope at first until I realized that my 20 moa rail was actually a 0 moa rail (that's what I get for buying a cheap rail), once I put a Nightforce 20moa rail on the action my AMG suddenly had 20 mil of elevation.

 

[JFR]

I was under the impression they had about 30 mils elevation. I'm thinking you will get close to that once zeroed and zero-stop reset???

JFR

 

[theLBC]

What Afkirby said is accurate for many scopes from the mfr, they set the elevation at center with the expectation that you will re-zero once you get it mounted. Think of it this way, if the mfr spec's a scope with 30mil total elevation that means 30 mils from the bottom to the top; however, if you mount with 0 cant you will most likely only get 15 mil of adjustment from zero, put the scope on a 20moa rail or mount and now you have to re-zero to adjust for the almost 6 mils of cant, once you do that you now add the 6 to the 15 and should have about 21 mils of adjustment. This is based on perfect world but in the real world your actual adjustment may fluctuate a bit, but as long as your close to what the math says you're good. I had a situation last year where I had a 20 moa rail but was only getting about 14 mils of adjustment when I mounted my AMG on it, I thought maybe I had a bum scope at first until I realized that my 20 moa rail was actually a 0 moa rail (that's what I get for buying a cheap rail), once I put a Nightforce 20moa rail on the action my AMG suddenly had 20 mil of elevation.

maybe what catches some folks off guard is that even some manufacturers aren't consistent in this.
for example, my Mark 5HD 3.6-18x44 has a large tube for extra turret travel, and they have this scope setup with almost all the adjustment up, and very little down. This makes more sense to me since i would rarely be adjusting down.

 

[beetroot]

Why don't you loosen the turret and find out how much total elevation it has?