Who has experience with the eye relief of a 1.1-4.5x20mm Kahles on a .416? Does eye relief remain the same at all magnifictions or do you loose eye relief at high power?
Thank you.

The specifications that came with my Kahles 1.1-4X24 says that the eye relief is 90mm. It only gives one value. I think the loss in this lower magnification range would be minimal

Buddy: You are right, it is a 24 mm objective (with a 30 mm tube it think)...what caliber rifle do you use your Kahles on? A friend has offered to sell me this scope and I am trying to see if I can over come my habit of buying Leupolds, which have always worked for me.

Robert

I have my LOP extra long just to avoid the scope whacking me in the forehead. I've had several european scopes on hard kicking rifles and they always manage to just touch my forehead on occasion. It's distracting and the last thing I want to think about when hunting something with sharp teeth. For me they don't work in a DG application and I traded off my last one a couple months ago.

On a 416 I think the Leupold 1.5x5 or 1.75x6 are ideal.

Now you may hold your head differently and the Kahles may be perfect. The above is just my expereince.

Regards,

Mark

Mark,

You've touched on an interesting point when you mentioned LOP with regards eye relief. I put a 4x32mm Meopta on my 9.3x62mm and I was initially concerned because the quoted eye relief was 80mm.

When I tried it out, it was fine however, not even a suggestion of a problem. I have had problems with different scopes with slightly longer eye relief on lesser kicking rifles, so I was a bit puzzled. The only thing I can put it down to is my 9.3x62mm has a stock which fits me better and in particular a slightly longer LOP..

Regards,

Pete

Mark: That is basically what I thought..I keep trying to find a reason to buy a good European scope for one of my rifles, and, after some angst and analysis, I always come back to Leupolds...six months ago I was trying to talk myself into a Schmidt & Bender for my .416..and everyone said that they are excellent scopes and that they will whack you when shooting heavy rifles...

I will stick with a 1.75x6, which I use on my .378 with no problems.

The S&B variables scopes are good bits of kit, but the older ones suffer one drawback I can see and thats quite a long ocular housing.

I found that when using mounts that are in a fixed location on the action (ie Warne QD on a CZ550) I simply could not get the scope far enough forward.

I am not sure if this is still the case with the newer range S&B, but I would check before buying..

Regards,

Pete

This whole eye relief thing is a pet peeve of mine. It is one of the most misleading specs in optics.

One of my favorite scopes for heavy rifles is the old weaver V4.5. The eye relief at 1.5 is spec'd at about 4.5 inches. However, in practice it is almost like a tube sight, with the full field visible from about 2 to 7 inches. This is extremely important when trying to shoot quickly or forced to shoot from an awkward position.

When Pentax started making scopes, I bought a couple of low power variables because I liked their camera lenses, they looked pretty good, were compact and had an eye relief spec of 4.5 inches. It turned out this was true, but the full field range was bout 4.25 inches to 4.6 inches (not measured, but you get the idea). Anywhere outside this range, and you could hardley see anything. Not what you want on a heavy rifle. While the ER was high enough to protect you, you invariably had to mount the rifle and then crawl back and forth on the stock to acquire the target, depending on the logistics of the shot. Needless to say, I sold these at a yard sale.

While ER is important, it is useless if it doesn't cover a workable range. It seems to me in the last few years that a lot of low power scopes, particularly compacts, are being designed with a high eye relief at the expense of flexibility. Has anyone else noticed this?