IOR Scopes

[Matt]

UK dealer is optics warehouse, great bunch of guys with great service and now I believe offering interest free option on stuff too....

[WelshShooter]

So I finally got around to buying the 3-18x42, I found a good deal from a member on here who was parting with his along with the rings for a price lower than the scope alone. It had not been used (as far as I could tell) and the warranty was valid from November/December 2015 so I have 29 years and 10 months in effect!

Initial impressions are good. I had previously been using Vortex 6-24x50 on my 6.5x47 Lapua and my .308 and I thought they were excellent scopes for the money. When using the same magnification for both scopes I find that the IOR scope has better clarity, as evident when viewing on a muggy day. The Vortex will start to haze out around 500m but the IOR looked clearer, in my opinion anyway. I'm looking forward to trying this out at Sennybridge F range out to ~1,400m just to see if the clarity is visibly better. I've gained an extra 2 mrad of elevation plus the reticle holdover is more forgiving as there are windage holdovers included on the elevation holdovers.

One downside to this scope was the very small amount of mounting options. The scope is a 35mm tube so finding rings isn't easy at the best of times, plus the rear part of the scope doesn't allow much adjustment. If your rings are as far back as possible, you cannot slide the scope any further back. This was an issue as I was shy of 1-2" for eye relief when maintaining a solid cheek weld. I had to order a 3" offset ring & base from the US (courtesy of Samson mfg) which just arrived today. This base has solved the problem but the scope now sits a bit higher and I predict I will lose around 1.5mrad once this is zero'd in (based on "bore sighting" while mounting in my back yard).

Pictures below show the before and after mounting, and also some pictures of the reticle at different magnifications (x6, x12 and x18 respectively although they won't be 100% correct as I had to change the camera zoom to focus correctly) for both the IOR SHX65 reticle and the Vortex Viper EBR-1 MRAD reticle. One thing you'll note is that the reticle markings are thicker on the IOR scope compared to Vortex. I do like the floating dot which should be great for field shooting but maybe not so great for precision shooting as the dot is larger than the bullet holes at 100m (1cm dot hovering over 0.65cm bullet holes, in my circumstance).

The parallax knob is very fine, as in it doesn't require much adjusting to change. It was quite fidgety to focus at the 100m range but I imagine this isn't as much as a problem once you get out to longer ranges. The other turrets felt great, plus the fact that the elevation turret has 10mrad adjustment in a single turn whereas most over milrad scopes are fixed at 5mrad per turn. You can "zero" the turret by unscrewing the turret and returning to zero mrad and there is also a secondary zero position if you should find that useful in anyway.

It's probably not wise to judge optical clarity of either scope from the images, the purpose was to showcase the differences in the reticles at magnifications possible by both scopes.






IOR 3-18x42 SHX-65 (x6 and x18 mag respectively. Could not get camera to focus at x12 mag due to trees for some reason).








Vortex Viper PST 6-24x50 MRAD FFP (x12 and x18 mag respectively, could not get a focus at x6 magnification, I'm not good at this!)

[Christel]

WelshShooter, you can't go wrong with a scope that uses Schott glass. IMO there is not another scope on the market that matches it's glass quality in the same price bracket.

Having said that, what works for me does not necessarily work for someone else.
Our eyes are all different.

A bit confused...if the scope came with rings, why did you have to order rings from the US?
Also I thought opticswarehouse did the rings as they sell the scope?

[ovenpaa]

Great choice of 'scope. I used one on an AI for a short while and it went straight on to the Picatinny rail using standard IOR rings. I have always had the impression that the IOR 'scopes are incredibly robust as well as having superb glass and you could probably take one off the rifle and club things to death with it at a push!

[WelshShooter]

WelshShooter, you can't go wrong with a scope that uses Schott glass. IMO there is not another scope on the market that matches it's glass quality in the same price bracket.

Having said that, what works for me does not necessarily work for someone else.
Our eyes are all different.

A bit confused...if the scope came with rings, why did you have to order rings from the US?
Also I thought opticswarehouse did the rings as they sell the scope?

The first pic shows the mounts that came with the scope. The issue was that I could not move the scope any further to the rear for correct eye relief. If I had forced myself to get proper eye relief then my cheek would not be an the cheek rest. Therefore the only option was to buy mounts to move the scope rearwards by 2" or so.