Help!!! SWFA 5-20 non illum

Please somebody help me figure this out.

I got in on a SWFA 5-20x50mm Non-illuminate deal with the Black Friday Special. This is my first high dollar scope, and I jumped all in. Never had more than a 200$ scope.

Got my scope Wednesday worked Friday, came home and set it up this morning with the instructional video from the NSSF.

Glass is better than anything I've seen, but I'm having a major problem.

I focused the reticle according to the video, look away adjust the bell housing look back for a few seconds until the reticle is crystal clear. I'm almost at the stop, but I get a clear picture. That done I'm off to the range.

Bought a couple of the black shoot n see targets from the office. The yellow bordered stick on type that has 4 quadrants. Get in the prone, find my NPA, and here's where the problem comes in. While looking at the brown background I can see the reticle perfectly. Move to put it on the red dot in the black, and the reticle goes away, can not focus on it a bit. I've got the side focus set on 100 and it is perfectly clear, but no reticle. Zoom out to 5, and I've can see the reticle everywhere, but on the black. It's sunny no wind and 60 degrees lots of light, and no reticle. I switch over to my other rifle with a vortex crossfire 6-25, and no problems whatsoever.

I love the view of the surroundings behind the glass, but if I can't see the reticle, what gives? Am I do something wrong or is it the scope.

Somebody please help me out, I don't want to think I just spent a house note, and I'm SOL

Sounds like you got it out of focus to the extreme.  What where you aiming at when you focused it originally?  The ideal backdrop is a clear blue sky

Well I was not aiming at the sky, across the street at my neighbors door.  When I first took it out of the box, I held it up to the sky light, and couldn't see the reticle at all.  The 6x that came with it, I saw right off. 
While at the range, I adjusted it all the way out, way out, and all the way back in, the only time I can see the reticle is when it is almost all the way in toward the magnification ring.  Everything else and the reticle is waaay blurry.

Did I get a bad unit, or am I doing something wrong.  Like I said this is my first high dollar scope.  I was gonna spend a lot less and get a vortex pst, but with all of the good press, and sweet deal, I thought this was a no-brainer.

i'm sure you were sh*ttin bricks, but even if it's a bad scope, swfa will never leave you high and dry.

i just looked at mine, and the reticle is clear as a bell from 1 foot to forever.

i would get someone to look at it, and mess around with it. then if there's no resolution call swfa.

Better believe it!!! LOL

That's what I'm going to do.  It just didn't look right, when I held it up right out of the box.  I really hope I can get it rectified.  That's a lot of money in my neck of the woods, to not be right.

If something is wrong SWFA will fix it, have no fear there.  Problems happen no matter how much something costs, that's just the risk of buying stuff. 

I bought a $2400 pair of Leica binos and they have a chipped internal lens.  How that passed QC I will never understand.  But Leica is making it right and fixing them.  In the end that is what matters. 


Edited by supertool73 - December/02/2011 at 17:41

I haven't seen the video, but a little help on focusing:

Thanks, on the parallax and focus fighting, I will give your method a shot.  It's dark now, so I'm not gonna be able to do it till next day.  24hr shift, and no booms at work.  So I can look at the sky. 

What concerns me most though, is when I took it out of the box, and couldn't even see the reticle, looking through my bedroom sky light.  That's never happened, not even with the 6x that came with it.  Normally just picking up a scope you can at least look through it, and see the reticle, but it was so blurry.  I didn't get it close to right, until running the bell all the way in against the stop, and that was after loosening it all the way. 

My method was:  While looking at it from behind I would shut my eyes for a bit and then open for a second every time I made an adjustment, and see if it would look clear.  I did this for like an hour, trying to make sure it was right, never really got as perfect as I thought it should.

That's my luck though, I'm a chicken crossing the road at rush hour.

Make sure the parallax is set at infinity and the sky is clear, and the scope is at max power.