2015-09-16
2100-2230
70F
12 MPH S
Goals: Test q-14. 5.56(18) at 500yds.
Environment: Windy, but highly variable, spiking up to 15 MPH, but averaging around 10 MPH with spells of 6 MPH. Some clouds, but milky way and several known (to me) constellations visible. The cutting/baling of the main pasture is now 90% complete ... and the second cut of the alfalfa patch as well. This is the one time of the year, I allow the light vehicles (buggy and 4-wheeler) to drive on the pasture during shooting practice.
Equipment: 5.56(18) with FLC 55gr, zeus 75mm 640(30), SPW556, harris 9-12 (9). LRF, PVS-14 on TW Helmet, kestrel, q-14 as handheld monocular.
Activity: Rolled out to the pond dam in the buggy. Got out with q-14. By holding it with right hand, exactly where it should be if mounted correctly, I do have "fusion" in the sense that the images are merged. I did this for 15m 3 times during the time I was out and headache inducement seems minimal, but not zero. I used the Sepia pallet. I think the "OEM Custom pallet in the Apollo I had and the Zeus I have now, would be better, but the q-14 doesn't have that one. Sepia is next best in terms of minimizing brightness variation induced headache for me. I will play with it some more to see if I can adjust the brightness down and bit further. Having the i2 image along side the thermal image greatly improves my confidence in moving at normal night speed. I saw a critter down in the high grass around the pond with the thermal but it was several feet into the grass and it was just an occasionally moving white fuzzy dot. I switched to WH when I spotted it. I saw two deer at about 50yds but they spotted me first and where moving away pretty quickly. Fawn and mother. I need to get the DVR working, but depending on how you mount the q-14 on the helmet, you need to mount the dvr rail on a different side of the q-14. So I just removed the rail so I don't have to keep moving it back and forth. Still trying to figure out if we can come up with an interface for the q-14 to mount it to my dual bridge and get it side by side with the pvs-14. But if we can, then this combo q-14 beside pvs-14 on dual mount, will be a winner for me.
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Here is pic this morning of line of fire from 500yd FP to target.
I had to walk around and check from 5 different spots to find an LOF through the bales last night.
G01, G02, G03 are from previous night, so ignore those.
G11 is from last night:
G11 - 3rds - 500yds - accuracy - 2rds clipped the black circle - theoretical aiming point between the 2 handwarmers and one rd clipped a handwarmer. One round was a bit high. I was clicked to -2 on the Zeus reticle. Precision 5 inch group.
Wind was from 190 off the bullet path at average of 11.8 MPH for 2m avg. I did not hold for wind.
Results: The Zeus continues to impress in terms of its ability to see and hit small targets at longer distances. With the Apollo I never tried at over 300yds. My Apollo was 336 and the Zeus is 640, the apollo was 42mm the Zeus is 75mm and the inherent optical 3x doesn't hurt either. The main issue is lack of a useful reticle. I'm trying the "cross dot" reticle hoping that the gap between the dot and the cross pieces can be used to hold and also that the lengths of the crosses can be used to hold. But with the wind behind me the last 2 nights have had to hold for wind yet. I should probably come in to 100yds and try to "calibrate" the reticle. I don't care what the "hash marks" might be - I could calibrate them myself, but it would be nice to have a reticle with some hash marks!
Mounting the handwarmers on both sides of the theoretical aiming point did not work out well. I could not see the handwarmers nearly as well as previous night when they were 50% stacked on top of each other. So when using handwarmers for 300yds+ thermal shooting I will do the 50% stack thingy again.
