Video Transcript
If I could only own one scope that Nightforce produces to move between multiple types of rifles whether it's a Magnum or some sort of 6.5 Creed war bolt gun or a 5.56 SPR or something in 6 ARC. The scope that I would select would be the NX8 2.5-20 now There's a few reasons for this this scope is one of the most versatile out there as far as magnification range It is small so it doesn't weigh a a lot once you're adding it to larger rifles and precision gas guns But being able to go all the way down to 2.5x and being able to operate in the 4x and 6x sort of area Allows you to use the optic at very close ranges or closer ranges than some of the scopes out there It can also then still boost to 20x which allows you to identify targets pretty far away or engage things that are also quite far away. I've used this scope out to a mile on a on a precision gas gun with consecutive hits I've also used the scope shooting it inside of a hundred meters So it is an optic that can really do a lot of different things and because of that we're offering it at T.REX ARMS And we think if you are building a precision gas gun or bolt gun out there this is an optic that you should consider now.
Let's look at what's actually in the box. So you have the optic itself it comes with two Tenebraex covers so for front and rear. It comes with a small little lens cleaner on a hook So you can hook this to your belt your chest rig or throw it into your little dock a pouch with all your cleaning supplies. The Nightforce tool this is a nice little handy dandy usable device that has three different torque sizes on it And then there's a hole here so you can run some paracord through there and maybe tie this off, to a piece of kit or into your cleaning bag or something I used to take this for granted and I used little like torques hand tools to modify my scopes and now I'm keeping these ever I go because this is so much easier. Inside the box there's something very important and that is this orange envelope I've lost a couple of these in the past but inside this there is a extended throw lever. Right here and what I like to do is I like to immediately attach it to my scope because I'm not gonna run my Scope without one of these have a manual if you're into that sort of thing This is a manual for the entire NX8 lines. So it discusses the reticles and assembly process and everything else to set it up properly a Bag of swag they've got some really cool stickers in here, they're like really thick sort of aluminum sort of stickers really interesting so you get a swag pack. That's it for everything in the box.
So we will discuss the two to twenty on this particular rifle right here This is 6ARC and since this is a small frame sort of SPR DMR rifle This optic just makes a lot of sense. It doesn't weigh a whole lot. It's not super long I could go to usually I'm shooting on 16x to 12x with this particular optic I don't write, you know, usually go to 20 But I can also down power down to 2.5 or 4 and shoot this nice and fast at closer ranges and be able to open up and see what's going. The elevation turret is Detached using two little screws here on the side. So when you are zeroing the weapon and you need to adjust it. We're going to loosen one side, you're gonna loosen the other while holding this very firmly and I actually like to position myself center So I can make sure the mills or you know, my mills aren't adjusting on me as I turn the last one, and then you're going to very carefully lift it off without moving the turret.
It's going to have a nice little pop like a cork and now I can reset the turret to zero drop it back down and tighten it. However, before I do that, I want to play with the zero stop, so these scopes have what's called a zero stop where I can swivel the entire Turret itself or the internals of the turret without affecting my zero So when I actually place this on zero and reset the whole thing I can dial up like 20 revolution like like 20 mils or something like that and then I can twist the opposite way and I twist until it stops and where it stops should be zero Which is my point of aim and point of impact at a hundred meters if that's where I decide to zero. Now in this case, I'm gonna do something that's a little bit different. I'm actually going to leave some room below the you know before I get to the zero stop so I can dial down and get speed drop speed drop is a calculation that is based on muzzle velocity optic height. Some really fun stuff and basically what it does is it allows you to change your zero To turn your scope into a BDC reticle.
There's going to be a very specific calculation where it's like a 1.3 Mills 1.5 mils down and when you dial that your reticle is then going to turn into a BDC where the first mill represents a hundred meters second mill 200 and typically it's between a hundred and six hundred meters where it's going to line up perfectly or mostly perfectly after that the ballistics start to get a little wonky and then you can't rely on it as much. But it's used for rapid target engagement maybe you have a spotter that's calling a distance 250 200 instead of having to reference a dope card or go off of your ballistic computer or your Kestrel you literally just go Oh 250 well 2.5 is going to be 250 because I dialed backwards changing my zero and then you engage, so I don't think about it like a 5200 meter zero or 36 300 you are affecting the zero of your scope by dialing down 1.6 or 1.3 that if you were to shoot that at a hundred meters.
Well, you're going to be low so it ends up being zero that may be like 40 meters Again, there's a bunch of math that's going on there and ballistic computers We'll tell you what that what your how far you need to dial down in order to have an accurate speed drop And it does allow you to shoot really fast so We're going to loosen all four of these screws here on top of the windage turret So the internals of the elevation turn I should say and now I can spin this freely. So if I take it all the way to the bottom to the zero stop and I drop this back on here for zero then It's gonna stop at the bottom which is my hundred meter zero But I want to leave a little bit of space so that I can dial down so going to. It's gonna be like a 1.5 that should be good leave a little bit if your ballistic computer gets in the way sucks first little problems though that I've gotten that all tightened down I'm going to set this at zero.
So again, very carefully dropping it straight down the center and then I want to push down, tightening these two screws without moving it. Now I can dial up to my heart's content I can come back to zero and I can dial down. 1.8 so my speed drop with this particular cartridge I haven't done all the calculations yet, but it's probably going to be 1.3 to 1.7 If I want to shoot off my speed drop, so now I have space to go down. That's very convenient. Your your windage turret same thing. Although in this case, it's going to be a capped turret So you're going to make all of your adjustments and then there's a single screw to disengage pop the turret out reset to zero. Push it back on then cap it off. I typically I don't always zero my windage because I don't play with it I just leave it set to whatever it was But if I'm you know, really really want to get this all set up properly I am going to take the time to adjust that and reset it to zero so that I can dial big wind if I need to but typically I am NOT doing that.
One of the complaints for the Nightforce products is the lack of capped turrets for the top turret that used to be a complaint of mine once I actually started shooting and doing precision shooting and Running around some kit and setting up computers and dive and dive boards such as this one I realized that the top turret doesn't really get messed with it's usually protected by other objects and items on the weapon whether it's a electronic level or or a ballistic computer and having it uncapped and having like You know not having to like pop the turret up in order to move it It is really fast to dial if you are dialing onto targets. So I actually like that it's uncapped the side definitely needs to be capped because that might be against your body if you're a lefty might be touching some kit on your back if you sling the rifle But the top turret not being capped has not been an issue for me or an issue for a lot of people out there running Nightforce scopes.
With that said once you have set both of your your elevation and your windage turrets I highly recommend you shoot a confirmation group to make sure nothing got messed with as you're screwing this back on. To the turret itself the reason for that is in the process of lifting this off putting it back down and tightening it. People will often myself included will often add a slight variance maybe point one point two mils and then when you shoot a confirmation group it's off and then that's what you do you repeat the whole process you pull the turret back off you move it over to zero put it back on try not to move things around and you will repeat this process until you are confident that holding a small paster or small targeted 100 meters or 100 yards when you press the trigger the bolt is going to go right there And it's not off because of your assembly process of the windage turret or the elevation turret itself. The illumination in this scope Right here on the side. I will say do not expect daylight bright daylight bright reticle like a 1-6 or a 1-8, it's very faint. It's for shooting generally with night vision clip-ons or if it's dusk or it's dark out and you're just not able to see the black etch reticle. It's super dim you can hit the button here on the side to kind of change brightness up and down When you want to change battery, you're just going to turn it counterclockwise. Revealing the two oh three two right here. That's held together with all these little prongs swap the battery out put the cap back on and tighten.
This scope does feature parallax adjustment, which is good pretty much every precision scope has that this one does not have numbers indicating 100 200 300 All it has is the infinity symbol the little figure eight and then lots of little lines. So when you are zeroing this rifle or shooting this rifle at distance you're gonna have to do the head bob up and down while seeing if your reticle tracks off of the target up and down. You're just gonna twist this until the reticle stops moving off of the target and then once it's set you're gonna zero From there you're just eliminating some variables that can lead to inaccuracy and without the little you know numbers on the side you may have to repeat this process pretty often one thing you could do is actually witness mark on here. You know what a hundred meters is to be parallax free something like a Sharpie so you know hey, I'm zeroing or I'm confirming at a hundred just go to my Sharpie mark You know double check it to make sure it's fine and then shoot from there. The diopter adjustment here in the rear I have electrical tape covering it up for further security.
I'm gonna go ahead and pull this off show you guys what it looks like. There's a locking ring right here and that is attached to the entire diopter sort of adjustment And you're going to pull them at opposite, you know directions to break free Something like oil underneath and then you could set the adopter to your heart's content And move the locking ring back towards the diopter tightening them together against each other and then what I like to do once it's set is take electrical tape or something similar and just tie it off. Just helps protect it from moving and then your doctor being completely off. The process of setting the scope up if you have a dive board such as this Nightforce right here You may run into a situation where one screw is facing out and one screw is against the dive board itself, don't remove the entire dive board in order to zero and level the turret Instead all you need to do is count how many clicks you need to do to expose just this screw port. So let's say it's eight you're going to unscrew this one while keeping the other one tight. You're gonna count eight going backwards back into you know where it was originally, then unscrew the other one and then lift off once you re-zero this both screws are going to be on the opposite end And then you'll be good to go when it comes to adjusting this with small adjustments.
There are a lot of different scope reticles available for the NX eight two and a half to twenty we've selected a couple that we are selling the ones that we like the most the ones that we recommend to people and we are focusing on mill radian measurements. We are not doing MOA if you're someone who likes MOA measurements You've trained on MOA your whole life It's what you've used to hunt Bambi then you may want to go out and purchase an MOA version of the scope which you can find online from lots of other retailers like I said before though this scope is one of my favorite. It's extremely versatile you can run it on a small frame gun like this. You could throw it on something much larger like this SP 10M Which I have shot with this scope on this rifle exclusively I could throw a larger scope on here, but since this is sort of a precision DMR gas gun I like to have something I can go down to 4x to engage with and I have shot this gun and this optic out to 1000 and it hasn't been much of an issue.
If you're running a 5.56 SPR, you know Maybe you're slowly getting into the precision game and you want something a little more than a 1 to 10 This is absolutely a great scope on something like this 16 inch 5.56 rifle with a Criterion barrel. You know most of the time you are not going to be shooting on 20x and you really shouldn't be you're gonna be dialing back To 16-12 somewhere in there where you can see your reticle. You can see the tree You can see what's going on. You can call splash you're not necessarily gonna be sucked into 20 and that's going to be just fine shooting a setup like this and then when you're ready to Transition this scope to a more precision II type gun or maybe a bolt gun. All you gotta do is pop it off throw it on there and it's an excellent optic that's going to work on that weapon as well. If you have any other questions about Nightforce products go ahead and email us at [email protected]