Just wanted to throw up a quick review for those looking at more budge friendly scopes. There are a lot on the market and it can be a daunting task to sort through them all. I was in search for something to run on my rifle until my higher end glass shows up. I scouted around for a while and found a great deal on a never mounted Strike Eagle 5-25 here in the PX. It arrived yesterday and so I mounted it up in a 1.26” ARC M-Brace mount and headed to the indoor range to sight in. For those wondering, the 1.26” mount makes the bell easily clear a Proof comp contour barrel on a 20 moa rail with room to spare. Nothing major to report from the indoor range, sighted in easy enough with no weird occurrences, seemed to track well. The range is in the basement of the facility and is not super bright but I had no problems seeing the reticle dot on the target at 100 yards. I have had this issue in the past with lesser quality scopes and had to kick on the illumination to a low level. This morning I headed to the outdoor 1000 yard range to true my dope and see how the scope would perform. It was an almost perfect morning for shooting at around 45 degrees, slight overcast, and an 11 o’clock wind at 3 mph. The 1000 yard range at the facility starts at 400 yards and has multiple size and shaped targets every 100 yards out to 1000. The 400 yard targets were white so I dialed in the correct elevation and went to work. I will say the parallax adjustment was slightly more stiff than I would like and it may loosen up with use but not overly hard by any stretch. The marked parallax ranges were close but not exact as common with most scopes. The magnification adjustment was surprisingly excellent, smooth and easy to move. Both the elevation and windage turrets were smooth, had decent tactile clicks to them, and were spaced well. It was easy to move .1 mil without worrying about overrunning the intended stopping place, all lines aligned properly. The turret locking feature is nice if you are looking for that, I kept the windage locked almost all day. The impact on the 400 yard white target was right where it was expected, 500 yard yellow targets were the same, holding wind on both. The 600 yard is where I started to see the loss of contrast and clarity show up. These particular targets were a medium red color so picking out the black impact on them was a little difficult. When shooting a target with previous hits on it, I could not tell exactly which one was mine. At this range I could start to pick up bullet trace for a brief moment. The color pattern repeated with white 700, yellow 800, and red 900. Impacts were easily spotted again on white and yellow but a little harder on red. The 900 yard red targets had little to no impacts on the smaller ones so I chose to shoot those. They were easier to spot on clean plates but still did not greatly stand out. The elevation was .1 low at 800 yards from the ballistic calculator output but I account that to the colder temps from when I chronographed the rounds. After adjustment, it was spot on again. At 1000, I decided to dial the wind, a whole .3 mil, and see how it acted. With the adjusted velocity, it was a first round center punch on a 10” square and the subsequent rounds were right with it. Impacts were easily spotted on the white plate. At the extended ranges, the bullet trace was more prominent but still not as clear as higher end glass. This could partly be accounted to atmospheric conditions possibly. After that I did some positional practice on the closer targets, dialing back and forth with everything tracking as it should. Before packing up, I sent the last few round at the 1000 yard square again with expected results. There was some light mirage starting to show up but nothing that would distort the target. To sum up my experience with the Strike Eagle, I can say I am happy with the performance of the scope and will probably hold on to it for a while. It will more than likely find a home on my rimfire for practicing. As mentioned above, I find the contrast lacking on darker colored targets and you will notice the image is less crisp if you are use to higher end glass. I decided to not use the included throw lever since the magnification rings is so smooth and I find the lever is large enough to block the view of the turrets causing you to come off the rifle. I will be running it next weekend under comp use so I will update if I find anything troublesome. As long as it holds up mechanically, I would recommend it if you are looking in the $500-$700 price range.
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