Where/When/How do You Set Your Scope/Hop?

[Lollingsgrad]

Living in a flat, all I can really test at home is function and FPS. I have to wait till a game day to adjust my hop and zero my scope. I do this in the morning before brief and I always feel rushed. Worse still, it always seems like I'm the only person doing it. This led me to wonder; where and when are you doing it? Do you just not bother till you're in the first game? Do you have some extra special technique which lets you do it very quickly/at home? Do you all have massive 50m+ gardens!?

 

[Jones-Effect]

I always wondered that as my garden is pretty small but honestly I've always had time to do it on site. Then again from how you're describing it I'm guessing you're on about a sniper rifle and scope, which definitely takes much logo than an aeg rifle. 

My advise is to bring another main rifle (like an aeg) that you have already set up correctly in the past and use that in the first half of the day. Then during the lunch break, calibrate the sniper rifle perfectly.

If it is an aeg rifle and not a sniper rifle (like I'm assuming) then you should have plenty of time to sort out if you arrive on site early enough

 

[Lollingsgrad]

My advise is to bring another main rifle (like an aeg) that you have already set up correctly in the past and use that in the first half of the day. Then during the lunch break, calibrate the sniper rifle perfectly.

That is actually a really good idea, thanks!

 

[Adolf Hamster]

I tend to do it ad-hoc in the field.

Hop is easy done that way, hell you even end up tweaking it as a means to make hits in some circumstances.

Scopes are a bit trickier, i preferr scopes with hand adjustable zeroing so i can tweak as required. Red dots tend not to have these so i tend to go for the "close enough for government work"

Dont see too much value in getting a "perfect" zero, because with wind you're gonna have to pile on the kentucky windage anyway.

However a decent zero is gonna really boost your first round hits especially for snap shooting at closer ranges so it is worth putting some effort in.

 

[Lollingsgrad]

Dont see too much value in getting a "perfect" zero, because with wind you're gonna have to pile on the kentucky windage anyway.

However a decent zero is gonna really boost your first round hits especially for snap shooting

I'm getting better at setting my scope faster these days because I got one of those laser bore sighters and a range finder. I pick a thing to point at with the latter, stuff the bore sighter in, zero on that; not perfect but it eliminates a lot of variables and saves time/BBs.

 

[Adolf Hamster]

I'm getting better at setting my scope faster these days because I got one of those laser bore sighters and a range finder. I pick a thing to point at with the latter, stuff the bore sighter in, zero on that; not perfect but it eliminates a lot of variables and saves time/BBs.

it's funny i have a lpvo with a mini red dot on my m4, the mini red dot i zeroed somewhat ad-hoc according to how far i could track the bb's by eye then locked it down. the lpvo i did the same at 4x zoom.

and yet the mini red dot has held zero perfectly despite changing basically the entire internals of the gun (hop barrel and engine) but the lpvo can't seem to keep a decent setting even for a game......

possibly it's just when magnified the dispersion seems a lot worse, or maybe i'm just more used to using open dots.

 

[Lollingsgrad]

My money's on China lottery there. I've got a few variable optics, some hold zero some don't and there's no correlation with price. Same with red dots.

 

[Adolf Hamster]

My money's on China lottery there. I've got a few variable optics, some hold zero some don't and there's no correlation with price. Same with red dots.

possibly, it's a reasonably nice scope, i would have thought though that it would at least need a decent knock, or be mounted/dismounted to really affect it.

it's on the same mount as the red dot, and pretty solid in there, so i can only assume it's either psychological or internal to the scope.

 

[Nick G]

I can squeeze 30 M out of our garden so I tend to do most of my setting up at home. But My best mate has an orchard , we tend to use that for fine tuning and for setting up the snipers . 

 

[Cyberlawyer]

I zero in my house/garden (firing from inside) at 25m. I set my zero at 40mm high   So at 50m it’s bang on. 

You can calculate the exact height you need by measuring the height of your sight above the bore axis and then test fire to confirm, you only need to do this bit once as it won’t change unless you changed your sight or mount or it’s position on the rail.

 

[FreeFrag.UK]

I zero in my house/garden (firing from inside) at 25m. I set my zero at 40mm high   So at 50m it’s bang on. 

You can calculate the exact height you need by measuring the height of your sight above the bore axis and then test fire to confirm, you only need to do this bit once as it won’t change unless you changed your sight or mount or it’s position on the rail.

Perhaps I'm missing something but this doesn't make sense to me. What are you basing your measurements on for your initial points of reference? Surely it's a trigonometry question as opposed to any single measurement due to all the different variables and even then that's trying to reduce it down to it's simplest form.

 

[Cyberlawyer]

Yes you are right it is a trigonometry problem. If you imagine a right angle triangle the height above bore is the short side, the middle side is 50 metres. From this info you can with a bit of maths work out the height above bore at 25 metres and zero to this. You can then test fire to check it, but it will put you in the ball park.

On my current sight that is 40mm at 25 metres to get a good zero at 50mm. Obviously it will be different for you. If I get a chance later I’ll upload a diagram.

 

[Adolf Hamster]

Yes you are right it is a trigonometry problem. If you imagine a right angle triangle the height above bore is the short side, the middle side is 50 metres. From this info you can with a bit of maths work out the height above bore at 25 metres and zero to this. You can then test fire to check it, but it will put you in the ball park.

On my current sight that is 40mm at 25 metres to get a good zero at 50mm. Obviously it will be different for you. If I get a chance later I’ll upload a diagram.

surely that only works for regular ballistics rather than the pseudo-flying that our bb's do?

 

[Lollingsgrad]

surely that only works for regular ballistics rather than the pseudo-flying that our bb's do?

I think it works for scope setting, I reckon you want the scope pointing at the right point for the distance you want to hit as if your BBs go straight, then you want to set your hop till the BBs are roughly landing at zero. At least then when they never ever do, you can feel good about how you tried your best.

 

[FreeFrag.UK]

@Cyberlawyer middle side?... Triangle... erm...

 

[Adolf Hamster]

I think it works for scope setting, I reckon you want the scope pointing at the right point for the distance you want to hit as if your BBs go straight, then you want to set your hop till the BBs are roughly landing at zero. At least then when they never ever do, you can feel good about how you tried your best.

i was thinking more that the calculation implies a projectile that's constantly falling, when our bb's can do the complete opposite and rise up.

it's quite possible i'm misinterpreting what he's meaning though.

generally i tend to zero for as far away as i can see and then just slap on a load of kentucky windage.

 

[FreeFrag.UK]

Recon Brothers - How to zero your optics on airsoft guns without firing a shot - You need some bits of kit but this seems like a pretty solid way of doing it.

 

[Cyberlawyer]

i was thinking more that the calculation implies a projectile that's constantly falling, when our bb's can do the complete opposite and rise up.

I zero on the basis of a flat trajectory (with zero wind). This is completely achievable at 50m for any decent Airsoft rifle with the correct BB and hop adjustment. 

I get that some people looking for maximum range will set the hop to get some rise towards the end of the BBs flight, but I prefer more predictable aiming at the expense of a few meters of range.

In the real steel world for 5.56 (and based on a standard muzzle velocity for a16” barrel) bullet drop doesn’t become an issue until you get out to around 300 metres. So is largely irrelevant when zeroing, and can be factored in later for long shots.