David,

Did you get any satisfaction from Sightron?

funny you should mention this Ernie, I heard the box was happening today, we shall see if he got time. I am particularly interested to hear.

Hi Ernie,

No time today. I'm going to put it on my air rifle and test it's tracking tomorrow. Apparently the mushiness of the adjustment knobs was not a mistake. Designed that way. I'll post the tracking results as soon as I'm done.
cheers

Weird... the Sightron SII 24X scope that I had had almost too crisp clicks. It took more force than I'm accustomed to, even on my T24, and they were loud when it clicked. Maybe Sightron decided to soften up the clicks when they upgraded the glass for the Big Sky series.

Good Morning, David.

It would be interesting to hear why Sightron would consider 'mushy' controls a design feature.

That said, Don Burris once told me, when I asked why his scopes had so much play in the power-shift rings, that it was to allow them to 'self-center' and prevent internal stress and binding. I was shooting, at the time, Leupold, Zeiss, Hensoldt and Kahles scopes that were tight and had no problems with power shift; but his explanation 'sounded' reasonable, at least from a theoretical standpoint...

Looking forward to your report...

when I spoke to Sightron they told me that the reason it is like that is their customers were making noise for MORE elevation per turn so the newest big sky II's like the one I had at the conard cup have 80 clicks per turn instead of 40 like the older models. I have had the scope on several different rifles and have really cranked on the elevation and windage and it seemed to be very repeatable in my tests. I botched the box test....

Welllllllllll,

I'm still puzzling over the advantage of 'soft' clicks on the Sightron -- and why it would have been made that way.
So, I phoned the Sightron factory this morning, asked to speak with a tech and questioned him about it.
His answer was VERY clear and concise:
"It is what it is and that's the reason!"

When I mentioned that that wasn't much of a technical 'reason', there was a LOT of quiet on the line. (I thought we had disconnected!)
I couldn't get ANYTHING more specific out of him -- and finally just gave up!

I'll look forward to David's report but I think I'll stick with other brands. (Or, at least, with manufacturers willing [able?] to explain why they do things!)

Is this why I keep buying Leupold's?

he explained it to me without hesitation, we may have spoken with different people or the fact that I already spent 500 dollars on their product so he felt more inclined to explain himself to the customer? I am not sure. I know that he said THEY (sightron) thought this was what everyone wanted but at the same time he told me that I was not the first person to whine about the mushy clicks. They also do not have the tooling to make then old style anymore...

I can't argue that a current customer, like yourself, might well generate more response than a casual caller.

However, I recently took pity on another one of Uncle Dieter's orphans and allowed it to follow me home. So, I've got a spare bbld action sitting in the safe, and a Pharr stock on order for it to nest in, that's about to need some new glass.

I was curious about the new Sightron mostly because of that situation, but I think that phone call resolved my dilemma. lol

When they decided to bring out a silhouette scope, I wonder if the folks at Sightron talked with anyone in the silhouette community?

Ernie,
A great number of moons ago one of the mnagers at Sightron was working for Tasco (when they were in Miami) and he used to shoot smallbore silhouette with myself and a few others at Port Malabar.
Nassau Royal lover, you going to pipe up for this one? I still have a bottle of the and Barcardi Gold.

Innocent Mary

Mary,

Whoever I talked with was NOT forthcoming. (And, let's face it, whether the feel of the adjustments is soft/sloppy or hard/crisp, it's almost certainly not a breakthrough in scope technology. If anything, it's probably indicative of nothing more than manufacturing tolerances.)

And edgerat's post, where he mentioned that the Sightron rep with whom he spoke told him that customers were 'whining' about the clicks, was astounding. That's like an oil company rep saying that Alaskans living around Prince William Sound were 'whining' about the way the crew navigated the Exxon Valdez!

Anyway, David knows optics. I'm sure that he'll tell us what he sees -- and that will be far more definitive than my speculation.

I'd also guess that there'll be examples of the new Big Sky scope in shooters' hands in Winnsboro. That'll give us a chance to look at other production units.

See you there in a few days!

as Mr. Kuney pointed out, I too wait to hear what Mr. Imas opines about the click-factor on the sightron big sky II. If the clicks are soft or hard I don't care as long as it tracks like it is supposed to and is repeatable. That is all I am after a scope that you can crank up to its max elevation and then back to your zero and shoot where you expect it to.
isaac
P.S. I fear all the scopes at Winnie will be the same as mine as Sightron informed me that it was their "new" design....