Just spent a few hours sighting in my Meopta Meostar R1 1-4x24 on my FAL and I am unsure what my problem is…
At 50 & 100 yards, to sharply focus my target, I have to turn the focus over 1/4 turn past the center mark towards the “+” side, but when I get the target in sharp focus the reticle goes grey and fades out. I turn the focus back towards the center mark, the reticle gets black and sharp but the target is not so sharply defined…
Odd’er yet, when I first look through the scope, BOTH are sharp, but after a few seconds the target gets fuzzier. I go do other stuff for a few minutes, come back, and when I first look through the scope, again, both are clear & sharp. A few seconds later, or after I take a shot, again, the target gets fuzzy…
I am suspecting it is just bad, old, 46-year old eyes can’t focus worth a crap… I was hoping my eyes would take to magnification better…
It would be perfect if I could “+” side the focus ring without the reticle fading out…
What is going on? Maybe a precription modification just for shooting?
The best thing you can do is take the optic off the rifle on a clear day with no clouds in the sky. Place the scope on 4X and look at a clear patch of sky. Adjust the ocular lens until the crosshairs are completely in focus. This will take some trial and error, bobbing and weaving your head in and out of the scope’s eyebox to verify, etc.
Once this is done, lock down the ocular adjustment and don’t touch it anymore.
On scopes with fixed parallax, it’s never going to be absolutely perfect unless you’re shooting at the exact distance the parallax is set to. Either the crosshairs or the target are going to be ever so slightly out of focus. Usually it’s not all that important, often barely noticeable, and has little effect.
If you do the above and are still having problems, I suppose it could be your eyes, but I fortunately don’t have that issue so I can’t offer a great solution.
a0cake,
Aren’t you supposed to do the focusing for the image you see while looking at infinity (blue sky) within a few seconds? I’ve done this for years but remember being told to only adjust the focus for the image you see right when you look into the scope. Any longer and your eyes will try to compensate the focusing after a few seconds?
I’ve always looked quickly, adjusted, rest your eyes while staring way off, look again for a second or two, adjust, rest your eyes staring way off, and continuously repeat until the image you see in the first few seconds is in focus.
It does take a while, mainly because you’re focusing with small adjustment while you’re not looking through the scope.
This is what I tried to imply with the “bobbing and weaving” thing but you said it better. What I meant is that you can make large adjustments by just looking through the optic, then go into trial and error / making small adjustments by quickly looking through the optic as you described. So we’re on the same page, I just wasn’t clear enough.