scope waviness

[petev]

I have bought 4-5 scopes in the past couple of years and they all have a lot of waviness, especially in lower power. By waviness I guess I mean that the sight picture around the center of the cross hairs appear warped or wavy, not a flat plane picture. It does not seem to be a matter of parallax, and so probably does not affect accuracy, but my old scopes did not do that (two of which I still have), and I wonder what's going on with the new scopes, and what others think about it. On another thread about the Simmons Aetec scope people mentioned the same thing. Maybe it's not important, but I would be interested to hear any thoughts. Pete

[missedagain]

Hi Pete,
Can't speak for you or your eyesight but all of my scopes have started to get wavy or slightly out of focus of late. I need correction to read now days since my arms have gotten shorter but I resist going and getting checked out for longer distances. It must be heat mirage, yea, that's it, for sure!
Jeff

[petev]

No, it's that small print they've all gone to, honest. I have a couple of old scopes, and dont notice it much. I saw some discussion on a post awhile back that the grinding process of the lens is different now. I was in fact trying to double check with anyone if there is something like that that has happened.

[ozark]

In scope discussions I never hear about rotating the eyepiece to make the crosshairs stand out distinct and clear to meet the users eye. I am sure petev knows about this need but thought it might help someone. The procedures for doing this comes with the scope instructions so I would guess 90 percent gets this right. If 10 percent don't then they will not be satisfied with the view. Ozark

[petev]

Yes, I get the X-hairs to focus, although not as easily as I used to, but the waviness I was talking about is when you move your eye slightly up or down, left or right and it seems that the objects viewed through the scope are bending around a bunch. The parallax is Okay though, with the X-hairs staying centered on the target/object. Thanks for the replies.

[RAF]

I think what you're describing is the parallax. I assume you're taking about a scope the AO. If that's the case a slight adjustment either way should cure it. If the scope doesn't have AO then it was set at the factory. In most case it's set for 100 yds with the exception of scope made for special application and usually for shorter ranges. If that's the case you can't do anything about it. You just have to make sure that when you shoulder the rifle your eye is centered behind the scope in the same place each time.