Video Transcript
The Nightforce 7-35 ATACR is truly an impressive scope. I've got one mounted here to my Surgeon CSR that I've been using for bit, and on the scope, you'll actually see a small little hex spot. Just a little insert to protect the threads, and we are going to unthread that. And I do this immediately when I get a scope. Then take the throw lever itself. And there we go. Now I have something that's a little bit easier to grab as I am changing my magnification, and then I can take my little insert. If I don't want to lose that, maybe because I want to resell the scope in the future or something. And I'm just going to drop that into the bag with the beauty ring, which I don't use either. Like most 94 scopes, the 7-35 also comes with the tenor bricks, front and rear cover.
I will say, just in my experience, shooting with these and having this getting in the way of my hat and just eating up a lot of extra sort of field of view space, I generally just remove the exterior cap. And then when I'm putting the gun away, I just take it, throw it back on, and I'm good to go, can shut it, protect the glass, all that good stuff. So let's go ahead and talk about the one that I have on my Surgeon right here. Like I mentioned, I've been using the scope on this gun for the last couple years. Having 35x gives me the ability to, maybe you're utilizing a night vision device on the front of your gun, but it is not, do not expect this brightness to be that of a, say, Vortex Razor 1-6 or a Nightforce 1-8. It is literally just for very specific conditions, and I've really only shot with it once, and for the most part I'm shooting un-illuminated.
To change battery for the illumination, you're literally just going to turn the knob so you can twist the battery compartment. Then you're going to pop the 2032 battery out, add a new one, throw the turret back on, the cap, and then twist it down nice and tight, and you're set. So let's talk about re-zeroing the turret itself. So you will see on your 7-35 or similar Nightforce, you're going to have two little hex keys that are on your elevation turret. When you are done zeroing and you've moved this around to say 2.2 high or something like that, you're going to take your Nightforce tool, which I do recommend you hang on to, or use a standard hex key. You're going to get the appropriate size. You're going to loosen one side.
Loosen another without moving the adjustment that you were on as you were zeroing. This is going to spin freely, independently of where you were just at. And then you are going to spin the turret until this little notch hit the zero stop right here. Now when I drop my turret back on, I can elevate up as much as I need to. And then when I send it all the way to the bottom, it will stop right there at zero and I should be zeroed at 100 meters. I want to shoot a confirmation group. However, I don't utilize this because I like to have the ability to use what is called speed drop. Speed drop is a calculation based on the muzzle velocity of the rifle, the scope height, and everything else going on with the rifle. It basically is an exact measurement that turns the scope into a BDC reticle for rapid target engagement. So it's very similar to say you have a 5200 meter zero where you are zeroing the rifle at a very odd distance of 50 meters to then have it coincide at 200 or say 36, 300. Basically we are doing the exact same thing with the scope.
By dialing down a certain number of clicks, we are taking our mill based reticle and turning it into a BDC where one mill equals 100 meters, two is two, three is three, four is four, and so on. In most cases though, the speed drop is only going to work out to about 500 or 600 meters where five mill is 500, six is six. With this particular rifle shooting the muzzle velocity that it is of 27 something, with a scope height of three inches from bore, I'm going to be dialing backwards 1.7 mils to allow me to engage from 179 to 635 utilizing speed drop as a BDC reticle. So in order to utilize this, this is something you would like to do, and if you want to learn more information about how speed drop works, just Google some videos. I actually need to leave some space, or I prefer to leave some space, so that I can dial down 1.7. So I'm going to rotate this little notch here away from the zero stop because I need to be able to go down instead of using that.
I'm just going to eyeball roughly what dialing down 1.7 would look like. Zero will end up being about here. That should be right. It's going to be about right there. And you could finesse this, so literally you turn the turret and go down and it stops at 1.7, which would be what I need on this gun to get speed drop. I'm not going to finesse it that much. I just need enough elevation going backwards, going down, that I can utilize speed drop. I'm going to tighten these up again once you've set it to where you need it. And again, we haven't re-zeroed the turret yet.
Just set our zero stop. We're going to find the zero. As carefully as we can, we're going to center it. And we're going to tighten the two screws. It should have nice audible clicks. If you don't tighten these enough, it will just spin without clicking, so you definitely want both screws to be nice and tight. Now, I can go down. I can actually go down like 2.7, which is a little too much. But I can easily go down 1.7 and then turn my reticle into a BDC for rapid target engagement. That would be useful if I had a spotter telling me, "Hey, 350." And then instead of having to look at a dope card or maybe rely on this laser or look at my Kestrel, I literally just go to 3.5, take the shot, and I'm good to go. When I'm done utilizing speed drop, I go back to zero, and then I go back to all my traditional mill-based dope, and I'm set. Or I can dial upwards for target engagements at distance.
And then when I'm done, I just come all the way back down to zero, and I'm set. I do recommend if you're not going to utilize speed drop, at least run the zero stop. One issue with scopes like this in general is if you are dialing a lot, getting up into dialing 10 or going beyond that, if your scope elevation turret is set somewhere in the middle, what can happen is you don't actually know if you're all the way to the bottom of your original zero because this turret can go between one and three for total revolutions. So if you actually set the zero stop being at zero, you can remember, "Hey, my turret needs to be all the way at the bottom in order to have my original zero, my proper zero," and that way you're not hovering at 10 when you think it's actually zero. The process for resetting your windage when you are zeroing this is going to be identical, more or less. You're going to take the hex tool, you're going to hit the screw on this side.
There's only one on the 7-35, which is super convenient, so you're going to hit that, pull it out, reset it at zero. I don't always re-zero my wind because I don't dial wind ever, but I do recommend if you are setting a gun up properly, you definitely want to re-zero your windage turret. Right now, mine is .5, is what I had on last when I zeroed this rifle, so I was just skipping that. I'll also give a small pro tip. If you are setting your turret with a dive board that juts up right up against your elevation turret, and one of these little screws is actually against the turret, so you obviously can't get in there with a tool, what you're going to do is you're going to count how many clicks it is to move it out of the way. You are then going to unscrew just that one, put it back to where it would be when you were shooting the rifle, so if you go eight clicks left, you're going to go eight clicks back to the right.
You're then going to undo the other screw and then move the turret and do the whole process. I've run into that many times where I've had a dive board get in the way of my turret, and I just can't get the tool in there, and that's how I get around that part of the process. Another thing you're going to want to adjust when you're setting up your rifle initially is your diopter. What I like to do is pop this off so it's not in the way. There's an unlocking ring right here that protects your diopter from shifting around as you are magnifying and running the gun. You are simply going to loosen that, and now you can adjust your diopter as you need to. Once you have it in the position you like, screw the locking ring back down nice and tight, and now that's not going to shift or it should not shift as you are magnifying the rifle. You'll see the entire assembly is moving as you're throwing your hand up there. Another thing I see a lot of guys do and I've done on other scopes and I would absolutely do on this one go ahead and take some electrical tape and literally just tape over the unlocking ring and the main assembly for the diopter, and that just helps protect it from spinning around and moving.
We are currently just offering the scope in the Mill Radian format for reticles, and we're only offering a couple reticles that we really like. However, Nightforce has lots of other options out there, and they also make the scope with MOA adjustments. If you're an MOA shooter and you're into that sort of thing and you've been using it for a long time, if you are interested in some of the other reticle options out there, go ahead and head over to Nightforce's website where you can read into all of them, see large images of what they're going to look like. And if we don't offer it here on our site, there's lots of other places out there. You can obtain this scope either as a blim or in a different reticle that we currently don't offer. The main goal for us is that you can have good glass on a precision gun. And remember, when you are setting up this scope, make sure you do it properly. Make sure you are torquing everything to spec. This is supposed to be a precision instrument. This is not just a red dot you throw onto a gun. Hand tight if you torch heads and then throw some Loctite on there. This is a precision optic. You should be treating this with much more respect than, say, a set of iron sights on your regular AR-15. So make sure you're torquing everything to spec. When you are done re-zerowing your elevation and your windage, I highly recommend you shoot confirmation groups.
Odds are, in the process of shifting your turret around, you are going to slightly adjust it, maybe .1 or .2 mils. You're going to shoot a group and you're going to go, "Ugh, I'm left .2, I'm high .1." And yes, you're going to take the time of going through the whole process of re-zeroing the turrets again. I have done that three times before with this particular scope in order to ensure a proper and as perfect as possible zero. So take the time to do that. Don't just shift it and assume, "Hey, it's zero. I'm good to go. I'm now going to go smack steel at 600." So take the time to really learn this optic. Look at the manual and definitely spend time on it so that you can be very confident with this piece of equipment because it costs quite a bit of money. If you have any other questions about this particular optic or other Nightforce offerings, go ahead and email us at team@trex-arms.com.