hawke sport hd map 6x40 review

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Average Ratings

Value for Money	9.5/10
Overall rating	9.5/10

100% Recommended2 out of 2 Reviews

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By Sub Sea Sniper on 31st Aug 2005

Sub Sea Sniper's Ratings

Value for money	10/10
Overall value	10/10
Sub Sea Sniper's recommendation

Good Points

Good build quality. Waterproof. Fogproof. Nitrogen purged. Cheap. Reticule. Image quality.

Bad Points

None.

General Comments

The Hawke Sport HD MAP 6x40 is one of a new range of sights which all sport a newly designed mildot reticule. These scopes range from the £190 airmax which has a rangefinding element built into the reticule right down to the 6x40 which eliminates the rangefinding element and retails for £39.95.

The heart of this scope is the new mildot reticule which has been preset to relate to specified distances from the target you are shooting at. I will get to this later, first of all I will give and overview of the build quality of the scope and its layout.

The 6x40 is made to an extremely high standard considering its humble price tag. The optics are crisp and clean and the body of the scope is waterproof, nitrogen purged and fogproof. There is very little to this scope, the rear of the scope has a fast-focus eyeball to set the scope up for ocular relief. In front of this the saddle sports the windage and elevation turrets which have nice, easy to screw on caps, and finger adjust plastic bits on the dials. All told, a clean, quality scope. I have mine on medium mounts and it looks the biz on mt TX200HC. Also included with this scope is a Hawke branded cleaning cloth, elasticated scope covers and a sheet relating to the shooting distances of the mildot.

Now onto the reticule. This newly designed mildot has been preset to be accurate at premeasured distances if you use the following:- in 0.22 calibre a UK legal limit gun (ie 12 ft/lbs) with a 16-16.5 grain pellet. In 0.177 a UK legal limit gun with pellets of 7.9-8.5 grains.

The scope must be set to 6x magnification. This new range of scopes can be bought in variable mag which I consider to be a bit pointless as the reticule will only shoot to the predetermined ranges when the mag is at 6x, hence why I bought the basic model. Anyway, the scope, when mounted onto your rifle should be zeroed at 30 yards.

When this is done the beauty of the reticule becomes clear. There is one dot set above the crosshair, this represents the height of a (0.22) pellet at 20 yards. There are three dots set below the crosshair, these represent a (0.22) pellet at 35, 40 and 45 yards. Either side of the crosshair there is two mildots per side which represent 10mph crosswinds at 30 yards and at 40 yards. Without getting too into it take it from that system works. My rifle is zeroed to 30 yards and it performs really well in the field (as several bunnies can testify). I consider it a great leap forward that Hawke have actually set their reticule up in this way. Most other manufacturers (AGS in particular) throw on mildots, seemingly at random, with little or not thought put into the spacing between the dots and how it works out for an airgunner.

The reticule is very well ground, the lines are a nice matt-black and the mildots are easily picked out. Having used a variable mag scope with adjustable objective it is nice to just shoulder my rifle and take a shot without having to change mag and focus. This, to me, is what hunting is all about. I have used scopes in the past where the reticule has an almost bronze colour and these can be quite distracting. The quality of this reticule, and the optical quality of the scope in general, is brilliant for the price.

I would highly recommend this scope to anybody who uses their rifles for hunting. The scope is particularly suitable for 0.22 guns due to the increased drop compared to 0.177. I really can't praise this scope highly enough and I will not be rushing back to variable mag, parallax adjust and other fiddly things which get in the way of just taking my shot.

Total Respect: +2