Scope Test - S-TAC1-7X24IRMH scope

Sightron have a firm and broad foothold in the UK target and hunting scope market, their scopes have won target disciplines from full–bore F-Class 1000 yard championships to Airgun Field Target World Championships.

The Sightron S-Tac series is aimed at the tactical side of shooting. Being an avid Mini Rifle shooter I am always on the lookout for improvements in my kit and technique. It’s a changing game, and I have gone from red dot sights to Mil-dot scopes and now want a combination of the two.

Red dot scopes are unmagnified or termed 1x magnification and are the best sights for quick target acquisition. Many of our stages of fire required a higher magnification and better accuracy, scopes up to six times magnification are what is needed here with a parallax setting of 50m maximum due to the low powered .22 lr rimfire ammunition. Such types of sights are big in the USA for three gun competitions but command a large price tag, in fact up to £2500.

The Test Scope

Not having a limitless budget and with my ranges in reality going from 10 to 25 meters such sights are a bit of overkill. I am lucky enough to know the importer of Sightron scopes very well and being a cheeky chap asked him if Sightron could build a S-TAC 1-7X24 IRMH tactical scope re-parallaxed to 50 yards rather than the normal 100 yards. The one to seven times magnification of the Sightron S-TAC1 scope seemed ideal and it has a Mil hash reticle with a red illuminated dot at its centre. The dot’s brightness settings go up to 11 and runs off of a single 3V CR2032 button battery. The Mil-hash reticle is very clear. The lenses on this scope are aspherical which have complex curved surfaces, the radius of curvature changes according to distance from the optical axis. This means that unlike spherical lenses they can concentrate light into one point. Spherical lenses are subject to aberration and therefore cannot concentrate all the light into one point. The lenses are coated too with Sightron’s Revcoat technology. The upshot is the image is very clear.

I have to say I like the reticle very much. I was surprised as to how long the scope was. Some form of reach forward mount is really needed but I managed to secure the scope on my Rimfire Magic with four 30mm B-Square mounts side by side. If you fit the scope to an AR – as it is intended – then there are loads of reach forward mounts available for that platform.

The turrets are the tactical type. The windage, elevation and illumination dials all have heavy raised castellation’s for a really non-slip grip. Even the zoom ring is fully gripped up.

The windage and elevation adjustment systems use Sightron’s tried and tested ExacTrack design, and if it’s good enough for their benchrest scopes it’s good enough for their tactical ones. One click moves the point of impact 0.1 MRAD at 100 yards (or 1cm at 100 metres or 0.3 inches at 100 yards) and there is 5 MRAD of adjustment on both windage and elevation. The windage and elevation turrets can be reset to zero (once zeroed in at your chosen range), undo the T20 screw at the center and lift and turn the cap to set to zero then push back down and tighten back up the Torx screw.

Light Up

Illumination wise only the centre dot lights up, the diameter of which goes from 2.1 Mil at one mag viewed at 100 yards to 0.3 Mil at seven times magnification when viewed at 100 yards. In use, the red dot could be brighter, but I was testing it on a very bright day. It is something that needs feeding back to Sightron. The reticle is still super-fast in use and the crystal clear lenses give the shooter a brilliant sight picture. On 1x magnification I could see the end of the barrel in the bottom of the scope. Winding up to seven times I could take out bullet holes in my test cards at 50 metres no trouble at all. The reticle is in the second focal plane so does not alter in size through the range of magnifications. The surface finish is matt black to go with its tactical functions.

Conclusions

At a third of the price of many of its rivals the Sightron again punches well above its weight. It comes complete with flip up lens caps, lens cloth and a T20 Torx key for turret adjustment. For my maximum 50 metre shooting the re-parallaxing to 50 metres was ideal, if used on a .223 straight pull AR’s then the standard 100 yard setting if fine. Thanks again to all at Sightron and Karen and John at Aim Field Sports with help in producing this article

PRICES: £725
CONTACT: UK Distributor Aim Field Sports 01606 860 678 www.aimfieldsports.com