SWFA 5x20 with side parallax knob

If you have experience with one, do you adjust it to yardage and find it’s accurate or correct?

Would it be best to have selected yardage to low or high?

This is a new to me scope and so far I do not see big difference if it’s dialed semi close. How do you use this feature? I rarely shoot over 300 yds unless a hog or coyote. Wanted the scope to help older eyes.

Thanks for any input. Trying to get the most out of this scope.

Terry

You use it to focus the reticle when aiming at different power settings. The yardage numbers are a general starting point to focus the object in the scope........for example if you know your distance is around 100 start with that number on the dial, look through the scope and turn the knob until the sight picture is focused on the target, this is what’s called the parralax adjustment to keep your poi the same at different distances.

Thank you.

Not exactly Mark. The reticle gets focued with the diopter at the back of the scope, and do it looking at the sky.

OP, on any side focus scope, turn the knob until the sight picture looks good, dont worry about what it is labeled Just that simple.

This is the "process" I follow too after reading around. I have the same scope and used it extensively just yesterday. None of the markings at 100, 300 and 400 were correct. In fact they were all over. I left it alone from 400 to 600. I may not be able to tell the difference yet but my 300 setting feels like i could have used it for the 600 as well.

Thanks for the replies. Interesting. The "diopter" at the back of the scope is very hard to turn on mine... I understand that part. Glad to hear that someone else thought the 100, 200, 300, etc markings were not correct.

There is some variability scope to scope on the stiffness of knobs. My same scope you almost need a pair of channel locks to turn the parallax knob.

That’s by design. You set the diopter ONCE to focus the reticle clearly with YOUR vision. Only if someone else uses the scope would the diopter adjustment need to change settings. And as Fireman JG says, do this looking at a plain background such as a wall or the sky. And don’t stare too long. Look briefly and adjust diopter. Repeat as necessary to get clear reticle focus.

The parallax setting as mentioned, should be dialed to make the sight picture clear (nothing to do with the reticle). That will change as you view things at different distances. On most scopes without this adjustment, it’s fixed at 100 yards since that’s a common zero range.

To see what parallax does, using your dominant eye, hold your index finger on both hands up in front of you spaced apart but aligned side to side exactly behind one another. Now shift your head slightly and you’ll see a separation of the two fingers. Now, bring the back finger right up behind the front one and do the same thing. You’ll see that both fingers seem to stay in alignment. That’s because they are both in the same distance plane and moving your head a little bit doesn’t introduce the parallax error you saw in the first part.

To summarize, the parallax adjustment brings the sight picture to the same optical plane as the reticle so that slightly shifting your head off center doesn’t affect what you perceive as POA.

With a fixed parallax scope, you have to make sure you’re looking directly through the center of the eyepiece at various distances, otherwise you will attempt to place reticle on target by moving rifle and your POI will be off.

And yeah, the yardage markings are notoriously inaccurate on parallax knobs.

On any FFP scope, you should spend a considerable amount of time getting the diopter set properly. This is probably the item I spend the most time on when setting up a scope.

After I've done that, I actually find the numbers on the parallax dial to be very accurate on all of my FFP scopes. But others report that they don't. As long as you can adjust it to get a sight picture with a crisp target image and crisp reticle image, at all distances and magnification levels, then it really shouldn't matter too much if the numbers match the distance.

JMHO - worth what you paid for it.