It's always nice to shoot at DIFTA,

And when we can bring together friends from faraway places, it is even better.

It was just a few days after the Nationals that I received an EMail from my good friend Sean McDaniel stating:

"I’m considering going to the next DIFTA match. Would I be able to stay with you, Veronica and the kids? Maybe come up Friday and stay until Sunday?"

Of course the answer was a resounding "YES!"

Sean is an incredible friend with whom we have spent many fine hours at the Rochester Brooks Gun Club whenever he hosts the Crosman All American Field Target Championships, and also when he was kind enough to convince us to go to the Canadian Nationals.

And to have on top the company of Eric Brewer, Hunter Piston shooter extraordinaire and also a good friend, it was shaping up to be a weekend we would certainly remember!

As time approached and I kept watching the weather forecast, it was becoming increasingly clear that conditions would not be easy.
But, suddenly the trend of the forecast started warming up and suddenly 40° to 50° didn't seem too bad.

HA!

Anyway, Sean and Eric arrived late Friday and after the normal courtesies, we called it a day and went to rest to prepare for the next day.

In hindsight, I can honestly say that I lost the Match when I got dressed. But we'll get into that later.

Early morning breakfast and off to the Match.

Along the way, I told Sean I was sad that Joe (his father) would not be able to make it to the shoot.

Upon arrival and after helping Dean set up the sight in range, we started the process of sighting in when all of a sudden Joe McDaniel shows up!
WOW!

We talked a little and shot a lot and when everyone was done with the sighting-in, we had our shooters' meeting:

Jan acted as MD in lieu of Paolo and once the formalities were over, we all went to shoot.

I got squadded with  Eric Brewer, who had just won the Nationals in his class (Hunter Piston), but this time he was playing the "IronMan" and shooting two rifles: his usual Spring-Piston LGU and a new-to-him BSA R-10.

Soon. we were all spread out​ in our starting lanes and as the Hot Line! shout propagated along the line of fire, we started shooting.

Once we were on the lanes I realized how badly I had dressed for this party.

Contrary to what we expected from the forecast, the temperature was below freezing, AND there was a steady 4-5 mph wind that came from the open field on our left that cooled you further and further as time/exposure passed by.

At first I didn't feel it, but by the 5th lane, when I completely missed an offhand shot, I knew there was something wrong. But, anyway, the show had to go on and I decided to do the best I could.

Eric started real good with his PCP, shooting first the piston gun, and only after that shooting the PCP

Eric has managed to squeeze quite a lot of info into his "DOPE" sheet!

Sean was using a new FX Streamline that has undergone some "teething problems" but is now shooting as it should.

Except for the fact that the stock is, quite literally, minuscule as far as Sean's needs are:

Make no mistake, the gun is sized a LITTLE on the small side, but there is a good reason why I call Sean "Big Papa Bear", LOL!
Hopefully, he will be able to get the stock to fit better, I am sure he will shoot better scores with a better fitting stock.

We all soldiered on and at the lane before last, on the long kneeling target, I simply forgot to hold off for wind, with the result that I missed a shot that I should DEFINITELY have made.

AH, well, next time I will dress warmer. Whatever the forecast says, it is easier and better to peel off layers than go through the shivers and brain drain that low body temperatures impose on you.

When all was said and done, Rex Gori (45) beat me by one point to take First in Open Piston with his ProSport, Mark Mayer (46) bested our scores by another point to take the First in open PCP

Eric Brewer (44) followed real close behind with only 1 point difference between us.

High score was posted by Dean's "Air-Ma Deuce" at 50 which was, essentially, a clean course because Dean foregoes the offhand lanes altogether.

The fact that Open and Hunter, Piston and PCP ended so close tells you that the course was excellently designed as far as AAFTA official Divisions and Classes are concerned.

And once the elastic bedding of the 54 was removed after the Nationals, and the trigger readjusted in let-off point, the gun shows all the promise at High Power as its short-stroked sisters show at WFTF  power levels.

It is also important to say that to this DIFTA shoot we had shooters from as far away as Ohio and Upstate NY, and that tells you the quality of shoot that Paolo designs and Jan and Mark help implement and run.

Many say that in FT you shoot against yourself, to improve on your past performances and that is all that counts.
I beg to disagree; we shoot against the elements: wind, light, temperature and pressure variations; and against the cunning knowledge that the MD and local crew have of their OWN home-turf.
The more experience you have in many different venues the better you will tackle the subtle but important differences that make or break a successful shot.

​At the end of day, we all had a lot of fun and went home happy and smiling, even if a little cold, LOL!

Make it a point to attend one of DIFTA's Matches!


Keep well and shoot straight!





​HM

It was about three and half weeks before the Nationals was scheduled to start that I was working one night and suddenly the phone rang.

It was my good friend Mark Kauffman.

After the normal pleasantries between guys who are friends apart from, being Shooter/Gunsmith he delivered the Ultimatum:

-"There are three shooters registered in Open Piston for the Nationals in Phoenix. They need 5 to run an official Class.
I will register if you register"

- WHAAAT?  Mark, come on, you are local! You HAVE to go. And I have only shot 4 matches this year!

- Nope, I will go if you go.

- Hmmmmmmmm,  . . . let me consult the Chief of Staff and I will let you know later.

So, after a quick consultation the permission was obtained and I started all the arrangements.

Registering to the shoot was the first, then came the hotel and the car, and last the flights.

When I presented to my family the first proposal: Leave on Thursday morning, and return Monday evening, the questions came back:

-¿Do you REALLY have to spend Sunday night there?
- Love, remember that last year I lost the shootoff because I couldn't stay and I defaulted.
-¿Aren't there any red-eye flights so that you can return on Sunday night?

And so, back to the website. This time I logged into my Frequent Flyer number and, Lo and behold! there were now some red-eye flights available! Who would have thought? Sneaky Airlines!

So, the change was made to return on the wee hours of Monday after the banquet. Going directly to airports after awards is not new to us, we've done it more than a few times, the most remarkable one in New Zealand, after the WFTC's there.

Back to the authorities, and the next big question:
-¿Do you really have to get there on Thursday?
-Honey, you know I like to get the gun well settled down.
- Well, if you MUST . . .

And so, back to the airline website and the final itinerary: Fly out Friday MORNING (like 04:00 hrs.), sight in and get settled, then compete Saturday and Sunday and fly back on Sunday night. For what was going to be somewhat of a marathon, things started to shape up.

Deciding to shoot the Season, and the Nationals, in Open Piston was a given from the time I came back from Lisbon. My year of protest against the idiocies of current WFTF Leadership was coming to an end and even though I do not use a harness, nor do I click., the power level I most enjoy in REAL LIFE is the 20 ft-lbs class.
What I had doubted all along the year was whether I would be even able to go to the Nationals.

Yes, I love my gun! somewhat rare because it is a 0.20" cal D-54 with Lothar Walther barrel that was made by Diana in the old factory at Rastatt, it is accurate and powerful enough to go after some fairly "solid" game (from Woodchucks and Badgers, to Foxes).
It has the T-06 trigger, but the T-05 scope rail. Clearly a "transition" gun, it was made as a prototype back in 2010.
I do love it, but I also understand its limitations.
Those were made clear during the Pyramyd Air Cup, where my performance was much less than stellar. BUT, there I was the lonely "Open Piston", now there would be 4 others! and one of them, shooting a Whiscombe.

Ah, well, this year has been quite a trip and I was really just wanting to go to the Nationals and meet with all the friends that have become closer every year, but I had seen sparsely all along 2017.

And so, bag was made, and things got ready, a LITTLE practice courtesy of our friends at DIFTA and sooner than expected the date arrived.

04:00 hrs saw me at the POD waiting for my ride to the airport.

The flight was full and uneventful and the airline gave me the fright of my life in PHX when I waited, and waited, and waited at the carousel for my bag to appear, only to see everyone leave with their bags and I did not have mine.
I inquired and was told that it HAD been brought out of the plane and that it should be there, but after more than an hour of waiting, and inquiring, finally someone took pity of me and suggested I look for it at the office. Something that, IMHO, should have been noted in the computer's baggage handling system.
Anyway I finally found my luggage at the office.

It so happens that Arizona is home to many international hunters (most of them members of  SCI in Tucson), and they fly often in/out of Phoenix. So, those two airports take VERY seriously the trust travelers put in them when they fly with guns that are worth MANY times what our most expensive FT rigs are, and they make it a point to hand manage and deliver anything that is declared as a "firearm" (requirement under TSA); with a previous check of identity. In a way I have to admire their dedication, as I assume they handle a lot of these, judging from the jaded look in the face of employees when they tell each other "This guy is looking for his gun" as if they were saying "He wants his bag of oranges" LOL!. I just wish the computer would have noted that and let me know an hour earlier.

Rental took another hour and the drive to the range a little over 40 minutes. While speed limits are generous in Phoenix, everyone tells you they are LIMITS. NOT "guidelines", LOL!

Anyway, I arrived to the sight-in range after the requisite registration process. And this was the first agreeable surprise: Because we registered LATE, and I mean LATE, we had been told that we would get no shirt, nor other goodies in the goodie bag, but my goodie bag contained all the goodies that all other bags had.
How they managed to pull this off I will always wonder, but it is just one small detail that reveals how well the organization of the event ran.

The Sight-In range was a joy to behold! Hundreds of targets well laid and yardage identified.

One thing that few noticed when they registered is that Phoenix Airgun Club even has a wind-flow analysis of their range!

Everything in the Club was geared towards us Airgunners, from the road signs:

To the internal drive signage:

To the welcome banners

Leading to the check-in area, where later we would be holding lunches, meetings and would be the general "gathering hole" for the shooters.
And, boy, we were a bother! We used the range as much as we could and quite a lot of shooters arrived to see "their" range taken over by puff guns. But they were somewhat gracious about it and some were even curious.
Hopefully, some of that curiosity and the evident enthusiasm of all FT'ers to show and share the fun will create a few more shooters for the venue. But still, thanks should go to the top echelons of Rio Salado SC because they accommodated all our activities with grace and bonhomie.

I sighted in, with some reservations, because what I was seeing was a little different from what the website described as the typical wind patterns. And because my hunting guns do not use the same bedding system as my FT guns. I had never seen the need for it when you take only a handful of shots over the day, most of which could be called "cold barrel" shots because more than one hour passes between them, and you re-zero every day, or even twice a day with the help of a cooperative knob in a tree trunk.

But it was what it was and when the time came for "dinner" I was surprised to see a band playing music.

We had some laughs, had a good meal, and when the time came to retire, I was really tired and wanting to simply crash into a bed.
So I drove "home" with the requisite stop at WalMart for provisions.

Next morning, after locating the IHOP that was most "in the way" I stopped for breakfast and then continued to the range.

It is always nice to be received well and in this case, my friend Pedro from Puerto Rico popped up from behind the railing, took my bumbag and quickly plopped it on the ground: "There, that is your place!" he said. With a smile I hope conveyed my appreciation, I sat down and while I got everything going, we talked a little. Sad situation the current one in Puerto Rico. Having lived through two Cat 5 Hurricanes, I KNOW what he talked about, and how heartbroken one can feel when you see Nature unleashing fury to that degree and the aftermath of it.
We should all remember that Puerto Ricans ARE Americans, and do as much as we can to raise awareness that the situation there has improved but little. Too much attention is paid to politician's antics in Twitter just because they are day to day source of audience rating for the media, but little is done to tackle the long term effects of completely uprooted natural environments and infrastructure.
If you can, do something about this, write to your Rep. get in contact with the American Way or the Red Cross and see what you can do, our friends and fellow Americans in PR need that.

But, back to the shoot:
Again, it was clear that the bedding was not yet settled, so after quite a few shots, screws were tightened, final groups were shot, and entered into PP-Calc and off we went to the shooters' meeting.

We were all wondering why the shooters' meeting would be called one hour before the scheduled start of the match, and why within that long time they would not re-open the sight-in range.

Then they started the roll call. And we understood why the long time had to be allowed.

This was so different from all other matches we've been to, and so different from a WFTC's where the squads and courses for each squad are posted in paper in a bulletin board outside the "Control Room" (where scores are tallied) and everyone knows that they need to be at the shooters' meeting and then head to wherever they are supposed to be, and be there on time, under penalty of the Match starting without them, that it seemed incredible.

But it worked, and the organizers made light of a hard job. They called each and every name, and then when the no-shows were located, they re-squadded everyone and in less than one hour we were off and going.
A good source of laughter was Riz Marquez' roll call. The "Organizators" didn't really know what to think, but they took everything in stride and with a smile and that helped pass the time. Now that the guilty party has confessed, we'll have to think of something, LOL!

And, so, about an hour late, we started the day.

I was shooting the Yellow course first and I was squadded with Ron Robinson and Lonnie Smith. Ron was shooting Hunter PCP and Lonnie was shooting WFTF Piston

Everyone has mentioned that the it seemed that the Red course was "longer" than the Yellow, and yes, it was true, but only by a little.
As per my notes, the average distance for the Yellow was a little over 25 meters, the average distance of the Red was a somewhat over 26. So, the average distances were not THAT different, what was different, IMHO,  was that the average KZ size WAS smaller for the Red than for the Yellow.

As an AAFTA GP course, the Nationals also have to comply with a minimum design difficulty of 28T, but this Nationals had a design difficulty of 33, or thereabouts. And yet the distances were not THAT long (compared to a WFTC), where was the difference?

You guessed it! In the size of the KZ's.
​
I generally like to document the very small KZ's of matches because to ME, it is one of the main differences between how we play "our" game and how the game is played in the rest of the world.
​So let's take a look at some of them (for sizing, my nail is about the size of a 0.44 cal bullet):

This one doesn't look that small, but it was set well over 30 meters:

I had fun along the course. Ron and Lonnie are nice squad mates to have, made some good shots and missed some easy ones. I had trouble with the standing lanes and once all was said and done for the day, my score of 35 was not good, but it was top score in the class.

Next day would be different! LOL!

I went back to the hotel, and packed as much as I could to check out next morning.

On Sunday, after checking out, I drove to the IHOP for breakfast, only to find Mike Norris and his better half finishing theirs off.
We chatted a little and they went on their way.
I took breakfast in and drove to the Match.

After a trajectory check that implied a complete redo (yes, the elastic bedding of the 54 is not the most consistent day to day) and the shooter's meeting, we went to shoot the match.

On Sunday I was squadded with Riz Marquez and Terry Markham. Terry is a "local" that transplanted himself from Wisconsin upon retirement and a perfect gentleman, Riz has been partner in crime with us a few times, having shared Nationals and World's competitions.

I was having a tough time, but I was having fun. Seeing the pellets hit the lips of the very small KZ's has become, to me this year at least, a sense of accomplishment. 
¿WHY? simply because this is a hunting gun. NO adjustables whatsoever (buttpad, cheekrest or hamster), light and easy to carry (for a 54), no jacket, harness, or ANY other aid, and it still hits with authority to within 3/4" of POA at 40 yards, it is a GREAT hunting gun!

But it is not an FT gun.

And so, after a long day of misses where my highlight was cleaning the long kneeling lane, I ended up in 3rd place.

The awards ceremony was fun and entertaining, the Apache dancer was incredible and, as usual, the Auction called for a lot of attention; the sponsors did a VERY good job of supplying interesting items. There were a few interesting bidding wars, but all was resolved amicably, no blood was spilled.

At the end, I had to drive all the way to the airport, return the rental, and find the counter. We had a little bit of a hiccup because at that time of night there was no one in the TSA area and we waited for almost 30 minutes to get the bag checked in.
The TSA guy arrived late and panting, and he gave me some pushback because my duffle bag was not "hard-sided" enough for him, but as I mentioned it was an airgun, he relented and let the airline check my bag.

After traveling all night, getting home and doing a post-mortem analysis, I confirmed the suspicion that the bedding had been acting up, I also discovered that the trigger blade had been hitting the guard when the action recoiled back.
This was my fault because I wanted the trigger as "swept back" as possible to allow for a natural alignment of the hand to the axis of the slanted pistol grip of this stock (have I mentioned it is a HUNTING gun?  LOL!), and I adjusted the break point too far back.
The trigger hitting the guard during the recoil cycle was definitely robbing me of that last bit of accuracy that I could have used with those tiny KZ's.

I also decided to use the same solid bedding I use with my FT guns, and so now the gun is not as silky smooth as it was before, but it is much more consistent, as I was to prove at the next DIFTA shoot (but that is a story for another entry, LOL!).

On the Professional front, however, I would class this Nationals as a watershed event because several of my guns, and other things, were there and performed more than creditably in the hands of very good shooters:

Mark Kauffman placed 1st in Open Piston

Jeff Carmello placed Second in Hunter Piston

Randy Smith placed 5th in WFTF Piston, what few know is that Randy had to change scopes three weeks before the Nationals and he was intensively training with his new scope. To attain fifth place under those circumstances was a well deserved achievement.

Giuseppe Avanzo shot the highest score by Team Venezuela

And if you add Ray Apelles that is also shooting a D54, it was by far the best showing of D54's in a Nationals event. Not bad for the gun that Rodney Boyce once said "If it was any good, someone would be using it in FT", LOL!
​
Not everything was milk and honey. Matt Sawyer suffered a melt-down with his 54 that we just could not pin-point. But, Matt being Matt, he kept his smile, shot a borrowed gun, and had fun.
We are looking into Matt's situation and I feel that part of the problem is using the wrong batch of pellets, but if that does not solve the situation, then we'll take the gun apart and put it right together again. These guns are not "Humpty Dumpty".
Matt is a great shooter, as he proved a few days later shooting the 2nd Annual Texas Piston Ch. and placing right along shooters that have been shooting springers for a lot longer than he has.

Much has been said about the desert. How foreign, forbidding, and foreboding it is, but the desert is a wonderful place if you just care to learn a little.
I spent countless hours of childhood roaming the deserts nearby Lerdo, Durango, Mexico; and even more countless hours of youth venturing into the desert with nothing more than a light backpack, the first gallon of water, a basic "Vivvy", an H&R 999 and a box of assorted ammo. Those outings taught me some valuable lessons, not the least of which revolved around what the REAL and RELEVANT place for a side-arm (pistol or revolver) is; the skill needed to wield it accurately at any reasonable distance, and the value of time vs. accuracy in a crucial shot. All these have very little to do with the game some like to call "Pistol FT" but, that is, also, another story LOL!

What is difficult to transmit in pictures, specially as bad as phone pictures, is the majesty of the night sky in the desert. That is something that needs to be seen to be believed. If we ever go back to the area, we'll make sure to spend some days camping at the Usery Park.

In a few more weeks, FT will go dormant in this section of the world for a few months till winter loosens its grip and allows us to play again in the sun. Perhaps, IF we are lucky, we'll get an extra Match at DIFTA in December, but it is very variable, some years we can, some years it is not possible.

What the future will bring is up in the air, WFTF?  Open? who knows?, but the good memories of a great event, well organized, well staged, and excellently executed to the last detail will remain in our memories.

BIG THANKS! to Rio Salado SC, to all the Sponsors and contributors, and to Phoenix Airgun Club and all its wonderful people for hosting a memorable Nationals!

Keep well and shoot straight!




​HM

As usual, courtesy of our legal counsel, a strong disclaimer:
DISCALIMER:  THE OPERATIONS HEREIN DESCRIBED VOID ALL WARRANTIES!
YOU ARE ADVISED TO ANALYZE AND DECIDE IF WHAT IS WRITTEN HERE APPLIES TO YOUR CASE AND DECIDE ON THE MERITS AND SIMILARITIES TO YOUR SITUATION.
CCA DOES NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTY OR CLAIM THAT WHAT WORKED HERE WILL WORK FOR YOU.
IT IS YOUR CHOICE AND YOUR DECISION.

Phew!, OK, now that that is over:

A few weeks ago, someone was chiding me for not doing more out of Field Target.
Well, the truth is that I do do a lot more, but it doesn't get written much, LOL!
But I took the gentle criticism to heart and decided to write more about things that may interest more the general airgunner.
​
This is the case here.

Optics Planet is one of the more serious retailers of optics in the USA., if you go to their "Riflescopes" section, you will get over 2,000 riflescopes with a total of over 3,400 models to choose from!
It would be impossible to list them all, but they have pretty much anything your heart could desire from the nearly $5,000 night vision scopes to the $70 budget minded shooter.

Airgunners, in general, are thrifty people. We like achieving our goals with the minimum of muzzle energy, and in many cases, with a considerable handicap as far as equipment is concerned.
The exception is the target shooters crowd that can dedicate $3,000 to a rifle and/or $4,000 to a scope.
BUT, the challenge is still the same:
Hit the target with enough energy to do the trick, but nowhere near enough to make the environment, the short distances and the small sizes of the targets become irrelevant.

And in this sense of "thriftiness" we are constantly looking for things that may work better than the manufacturers originally intended with a little "tweaking". It is the quintessential American Hot-Rodder spirit.

So, when the offer came up to see what we could do with $70, the challenge was irresistible, LOL!

We picked the Traditions Hunter series Black Powder Riflescope.

Why that one?

On one hand the magnification range seemed right for airgunners: 3.5-10 X
The objective size was interesting, not too large, not too small: 44 mm's
At 14,7 oz. (measured, because no one lists the weight) it is a light scope, will not change the balance of a good hunting rifle, nor will it make it top-heavy"
It was a FIXED parallax scope with multi-aimpoints reticle, one of which was labelled "50", so it stood to reason that the minimum parallax was set for 50 yards.
It is a little long for my taste (13", again, measured), but in optics, length makes the need for high quality optics a little more forgiving, you can get better sight picture with a long scope than with a compact one in the same price bracket.
Curiously enough, a quick question to the Tech Dept at Optics Planet about the parallax setting returned a "The manufacturers say they do not know" response! ¿¿¡¡??!!

It is worthy of note that the art. nmbr. 1145 scope is not listed in the Traditions website, so I cannot find another place to purchase this scope.

For years I have been advocating fixed parallax focus scopes for hunting and general airgunning. Problem was that most of the fixed parallax focus scopes analyzed have had very coarse reticles with aimpoints so far apart as to mean nothing to the airgunner's typical trajectory.
But this one was different, and so, we obtained the scope and proceeded to exercise it.

Carefully  testing the scope showed that the Parallax was set at the factory at 100 yards. Hmmm, not good.
BUT, at this price range it doesn't hurt much to experiment and so with a GENTLE application of a heat gun to the front ring (that acts as a retaining ring for the front objective lens, a parallax fixing ring AND a finishing ring, the front ring came off with the aid of some rubber bands wrapped around the warm ring:

The threaded element that is exposed is the Objective lens carrying ring, and screwing and unscrewing this ring will change the parallax of the scope.
It will also change the focus, after all, what AO scopes do is to make this ring accessible to the user.

Could an accessible ring be devised so that it could be adjusted for FT? Probably yes, but for FT you will need a much better scope, so I think that would be trying to turn the proverbial sow's ear into a silk purse and we're really not into that.

So, the parallax was corrected to 45 yards.
Why 45 yards?
Because with the gun in question (a Walther LGV in 0.177" cal at 12 ft-lbs with the smoothest shot cycle I have ever experienced), I am fairly confident of hitting a 1" target at that distance.
Here it bears explaining that Parallax is the error between the location of the crosshairs and the actual location of the aimpoint. The best way to correct the parallax is not the focus, but to use the "head-bob" test.
In this test a target is placed at the desired distance and the scope is set in a tripod or other fixation device, the target is placed at the reticle's crosshairs and then the shooter's eye is moved up and down and side to side.
IF the crosshairs move in relation to the target, then the parallax is still off a little.
Correct and repeat.
Once the parallax was corrected it came the time to set the magnification to something useful.
What does the magnification has to do with the usefulness of the reticle?
Well, as is usual with "economy" scopes, the Traditions Hunter is a second focal plane reticle. That means that when you change the zoom in the scope (the magnification ring), the size of the reticle does not SEEM to change.
I am emphasizing "seem" because what your eye is doing is cheating on you.
Think about this:
If the size of the image changes, and the reticle does not change, then ¿what is the constant here?
Truth is that there is no constant.
You have the image of the target on one plane and the image of the reticle on another plane. If those planes do not coincide optically in a really good fashion, then moving your eye from one of the field of view to the other actually changes the position of the reticle on the target. Is your pellet equipped with a digital transponder tracking device? Nope!
So that minute changes in the position of the eye will yield quite big changes in the point of impact.

The reason why almost all scopes nowadays are second focal plane is a historic one and the subject of another blog entry, but in here what matters is that magnification needs to be set down and NOT MOVED, and then the reticle becomes useful.

Following the set of instructions to set the magnification of a scope already posted before in this blog, we set the scope on a tripod:

And setting targets at the necessary 27 3/4 yards:

we set the subtensions of the reticle to be as follows:

​All dimensions are mil-rads, and it happens at about 9.5X:

It is important that you follow the instructions with YOUR scope because at this price range, there is no guarantee that all scopes will be EXACTLY identical.

Why is that useful?

Well, it is to me because I am "metric" and so for me if a squirrel (about 6" high sitting on its haunches, or about 150 mm's) occupies the space between the two thick to thin transitions (4 mrads), it means that the squirrel in question is at 37.5 meters.  Now we are using the reticle to RANGE the target as well as for holding off.

A crow that is about 8" or 200 mm's in height occupying the whole reticle would be at 50 meters.

There are plenty of articles in the internet about using the known dimensions of something to range the target, just look for "how to use mil-dots".

Now, if you do not feel like becoming metric, then you can follow the same process to set the magnification to a point where the subtensions are meaningful to YOU in MOA's,  or Shooter's MOA / IPHY (Inch per hundred yards), but do start the process with your typical TARGET SIZE, whether it is a squirrel, a crow, a grackle, or a starling. Start at the TARGET SIZE to define what would be most useful to YOU.

Given the MV of the gun and the BC of the pellet in usage, we then know that the hash-marks correspond to:

Of course the proof is in the pudding! LOL!
And I took the precaution to shoot a group at 45 yards BEFORE fiddling with the scope, then I made all adjustments and re-shot the same distance, in a single target, these are the results:

Each black dot is about ½" in diameter and the tests were run in a somewhat windy day shooting from the seated position. I wouldn't be afraid to take to the woods with this combo.

Once the scope has been re-parallaxed, the accuracy at 45 yards improved, the group shrunk from about 2" to less than 1" and would be adequate for hunting, everything is in focus between 15 yards and 45, no need to fiddle with the focus to get a clear sight picture, the hash-marks are mostly useful to the airgunner because they are close enough to be meaningful, and if it rained or something terrible happened, only $70 would be lost.
Now, one last caveat: DO NOT be fooled by the subtension diagrams, the REAL reticle is pretty small, but that is what makes it USEFUL at a magnification that allows no focusing for different distances.

In reality what your eyesight will show you is something like this:

All in all, a worthwhile scope at a VERY affordable price. It just needs some attention and getting it "adjusted" to the user.

Hope you have enjoyed this, keep well and shoot straight!



​
HM