What are the parts of a Scope? Our expert Jerimiah Alexander, breaks down all the parts and some common terms you will use on this episode of Riton University.
Transcript:
Hey guys, Jerimiah Alexander again with Riton University.
Today we’re going to talk about the anatomy of a scope and some basic terms that you might hear and what they mean.
So to start with, we’ll start on the ocular side of, of the scope, I’m gonna actually remove the lens caps, so that we can get a closer look. It’s nice, all your Riton optics will have lens caps included, we have the ocular side of our scope, we have the main tube of the scope, which will usually be one inch, 30 millimeter or 34 millimeter. This is good to know for mounting, we have our objective end of the scope windage turret will always be here on the side, elevation turret on the top, if I flip it around, we have a parallax adjustment, you can see here and this particular scope has an illumination knob, as well as with our battery cap here on the side. Now let’s talk a little bit about what all that means. Our ocular focus here or it’s often referred to as a fast focus eyepiece is very important, it is designed to focus the reticle to your particular eye, everyone’s eyes are different.
So you will need to mount your scope up which there’s a video for that we can look at later. Once you have it mounted, we’ll adjust this fast focus eyepiece until our reticle is just perfectly focused where we want it. And that’s the idea of the ocular focus, we have our magnification ring.
Each of our Riton optics are going to have an integrated throw lever, what is integrated mean? means if you don’t want it, you can take it off. And there’s a little cap that goes in there. So that’s nice. I like a throw lever so I’m going to put it back.
What are the numbers mean? 3 power here all the way to 18. So this is a 3-18 power scope, meaning that on 3 power, whatever I’m seeing through the scope is 3 times bigger than it is with my naked eye.
And then our tubes we talked about why is that important? Again, if you don’t have the right rings matched for your tube, you will run into problems. So you need to know the main tube body.
So here we have our windage and our elevation turrets. What does that mean? That means when I’m out on the the range, my windage is going to be my left to right. So if I’m shooting to the right, then on the I’ll come to my windage turret and I will dial it to the left to bring that point of impact over to the right. Same thing applies with our elevation turret if I’m shooting low. And you can see it’s very clearly marked which direction that I need to turn my turret for my reticle for my point of impact to move up. Again, we’ll go over zero stops and zero resettable turrets in a different video. So refer back to that.
On the flip side. What’s our illumination for this illumination knob. Well, the reticle inside of this particular 7 Conquer 3-18×50 is an illuminated reticle. So it is black with no illumination. Or we have six levels of brightness or intensity. what’s the what’s the plus side of having an illuminated reticle I’ll tell you, it’s funny you ask. We have a situation where there say you’re hunting and in the shadow of a tree or a bush there there is an animal now that animal is going to be dark underneath the bush is going to be dark enough my radical is also dark, it could be lost in that image. So having an illuminated reticle gives me an advantage when I’m shooting so here’s our illumination knob for that parallax adjustment.
We have an in depth video on parallax, but this basically is a knob that brings your your reticle and your target onto the same focal plane which is important. Again, we’ll follow up with a parallax adjustment video later.
Some of the things that you’re going to hear commonly some commonly used terms are HD. So what is HD refer to there are a number of pieces of glass running through this optic. All of Riton Optics glass is HD which is considered high density, not high definition but high density. As the glass is created. It’s more densely compacted. the plus side of this is there’s less refraction and reflection. So you have a clearer image so HD you want you want HD, ED glass, what does he mean? All of the X7 line of Riton Optics are equipped with ED glass, as well as HD glass ED means extra low dispersion. If you’ve ever seen a prism or light pass through a window, you’ll notice the light comes in. And then you see the full spectrum of the rainbow is portrayed out, well, that happens a number of times through an optic, the light comes in, and it diverges off into different light groups. The the less of that by the time we get to our ocular focus, the better. So the ED glasses extra low dispersion, which is going to be crisper, clearer, sharper colors. So you’re going to want that any Riton Optics that you get will be either argon or nitrogen purged and filled. And we’ll go in depth as to what that means and which one you would want to pick later. But if you hear that, that just means that a gas has been used to purge and fill the scope, ocular focus. This number is an important number depending on what you want to do. The larger the magnification, the larger the objective Bell here. So this is a 3-18×50. So our powers 3-18. Our objective is 50. And that’s how all scopes are going to be delineated out.
There are a few things to take into account with your objective. One of them is mounting, you want to have an objective that isn’t so large, that you can’t mount it on your scope without it running into your your barrel or you have a hard time with your cheek weld. So you want to make sure that it’s the adequate size for your purpose. The other thing is though, the nice, the bigger objective we have the bigger main tube we have, the more light and things can be let in which is nice for almost every situation.
So another terms that you might hear are low power variable. A low power variable scope is a scope that starts low, so a 1-6 a 1-8. These are tactical scopes, usually. But if you hear low power variable, you can expect that it is going to start at a lower number magnification at the beginning.
Field of view is something that you’re going to hear about what is field of view, field of view means on any given power, how many feet or meters depending on how you work, can I see within my field of view. So say at three power at 100 yards, I have 50 feet, I can see right or left up or down. So field of view is another important aspect when you’re looking at your scope.
Other than field of views and things you might hear are first or second focal plane. Good videos on that Riton University if you check out basically what first or focal second focal plane means is where the reticle is located in the scope, and how the reticle is associated with the target.
Something else you’re going to hear about his MOA or MRAD. They’re both just adjustments, they’re both just numbers. No one is inherently better or worse than the other both have some interesting aspects that we go over in a later video. But what it refers to is the reticle inside of my scope is going to either be an MRAD version or an MOA version basically like standard or metric are the kind of things that you’re looking at when you hear MOA or MRAD. Alright guys, so that is the basic anatomy and some commonly used terms in the optics business.
I hope this helps. If you have a question about any one of the particular things that was mentioned here. You can look back at Riton University and you will find a video just about MOA or MRAD or first or second focal plane. So all your needs can be met if you just look through there. Thanks, guys.
