Barska retro AR carry handle scope

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

This Image above is a screenshot of somebody else's owners manual on their genuine Colt scope. My scope is a Barska, but I am using this image to show how externally it looks just like the original Colt.

I recently got a BARSKA brand, made in China, fixed 4X scope to mount on the fixed carry handle of my full length AR-15 (20" pencil barrel, fixed buttstock, triangular handguard).

When I was a kid, the only type of scope you could put on an AR rifle was a Colt branded scope that looked like this, but made in Japan. They were pretty good quality, although simple in design and lacking a lot of features that we consider standard today.

So I got this cheap reproduction that cost $62 through Amazon dotcom, and has a normal retail price of about $70 from many online dealers.

I have had it for about two months, and I've taken it shooting twice. I've also done some experimenting with dry fire in my backyard to check the scope's low light capability right after sunset.

MY IMPRESSIONS:

1-- The clarity of the view in good light is good; as good as I would expect from any scope costing $100 or less.

2-- under dim lighting conditions, this scope is slightly inferior to full-size scopes that have 32 to 50 mm front lenses. This BARSKA scope made just for A.R. 15 fixed carry handle rifles has 20 mm lenses on the front and rear. I find that soon after sunset you will lose your ability to see and I.D. an animal in the woods about five minutes sooner with this small scope. Other scopes can extend your hunting daylight by five minutes.


https://www.barska.com/4x20mm-carry-handle-30-30-electro-sight-by-barska.html


3-- The magnification does not look like 4X to me. It looks smaller than three other 4X scopes I compared it to side-by-side I wonder if it's really a 3X mislabeled as a 4X, but I have no way of proving that.

But, a true 3X scope would serve my needs just fine, because my goal is simply to have better accuracy than I can achieve with iron sites usually at 200 or 300 yards. Occasionally I might go out to 500 or 600 yards too. But out there, my target would be the size of a barn door and if I could hit a 5 gallon plastic bucket from that far out I'd be happy.

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

4-- This scope seems to have a very short range of what is considered the proper eye relief. If your face is a half an inch too close or too far away, then you lose the full field of view.

I have heard other people say that some scopes have an unusually large, or an unusually small, "eye box." If that's the correct terminology then I can say that the scope has a small Eye Box. It is sensitive to the correct placement of your eye directly behind the rear lens.

See this article from Shooting Times about how the size of the image coming out the rear lens of a scope affects its shoot ability especially if you're trying to aim & pull the trigger quickly.

The specs of this scope, per the BARSKA factory website, say that it has a 5 mm exit pupil. That would be wider than a high magnification target scope, but it is fairly small compared to many low variable power optics that people mount on their AR carbines.

https://www.shootingtimes.com/editorial/optics_opticpupil_061907/100357

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

5-- I suspect that each click of the scopes internal adjustment ---meaning how you would adjust it with a coin or screwdriver after you've unscrewed the turret covers / caps --is MORE THAN THE STANDARD 1/4 minute per click. When I first shot it after mounting the scope, without any boresighting or attempting to adjust it by using the rifles iron sites (which you can still see by looking under this scope), I was A foot off-center at 100 yards it only took a dozen or so CLICKS to get in the middle! So does each click move the point of impact one full MOA? I don't know, but it seems that way. I'll have to do further experimentation and measure bullet placement with a ruler.

6-- This scope also has a quick adjustable sleeve over the elevation turret which lets you go from 100 to 500 yards just by grabbing the entire turret itself and twisting it. But, after I had the external adjustment set on the number "1" , for 100 yards, and after I zeroed it at 100 yards, I then moved the turret number up to "2" just before going back to the 200 yard firing line.

From 200 yds, I was shooting several inches high and left. I have no explanation for this. the ballistics of a 55 grain 223 rifle bullet show very little drop in the distance from 100 to 200 yards. Why did this scope move my bullet up several inches just because I told it I was adding another hundred yards to my range?

I will have to go back to the range and pay closer attention to this and test it again. But based on the couple groups I shot at 100 and 200 yards so far, the bullet drop compensator (BDC) on the exterior of the elevation turret is way off.

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

7-- This BARSKA scope has a mil dot reticle. Six equally spaced dots going in every direction away from the center of the crosshairs. The space in between any two dots should be one milradian, or 3.6 inches at 100 yards. Or, 3.6 MOA if you like to think in terms of minute of angle.

Since the dots are spaced equally apart they can't be directly used for bullet drop compensation. But if you find that the external turret adjustment numbers from 1 to 5 do not perfectly correspond with your rifle zero at 100 to 500 yards, for the ammunition you are using, then perhaps you can use a hold off based on these dots. You can use the horizontal mill dots to hold over for windage if you don't want to dial in your windage correction directly into the scope.

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

P.S. According to BARSKA's website, the newest versions of these scopes will not have the mill dot reticle but will instead have a 30/30 duplex reticle.

It still is the type that you could use for rangefinding since (in theory) the distance between the points where the cross hair lines go from thick to thin should be 30 inches apart from each other at 100 yards. Both on the horizontal and vertical axis.

 

[BIKER13]

and thanks for the info.

 

[Bamafan1973]

Could the scope bdc be setup for a 20" barrel? As to the adjusments not "adjusting" as expected, I've had budget optics do this often. However, they usually held zero once finally set. Very interesting info you provided. Thanks and Merry Christmas!

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

I'm sure the BDC would be set up for a 20" barrled AR, using the standard mil-spec ammo of the early 1970s when these scopes were first introduced-- 55 gr. flat base bullets.
And that's what I was using. Plain old 55 gr. FMJ.

I'm using a 20" barreled AR. The only thing different is the twist rate. I doubt switching from 1:12 twist (Wasn't that standard back in the day for the first-generations Colt M16s and SP-1 rifles?) down to 1:9 has changed my bullets' impact at 100 or 200 yards.

 

[BEREZKA]

brownells makes one of these as well