I saw a 40x Tasco telescope, with a 30mm "finding" lense above the main lense, and a large tripod for sale brand new for $9.99 - and was wondering if that might work out OK for a spotting scope for range work.  Of course, I also saw a Zeiss spotting scope for $1200.  Would be nice if I could afford that, but . . .

The image will probably be inverted.
Just a heads up.

You will need a terrestrial lens for the image correction (inversion).

But yes after that it would make an excellent one.

I had a 4" refractor that had a terrestrial lens. I could read the numbers off the utility poles on 12th street from my backyard. Which was a distance of approx 3/4 Mile.

Looked to be like 6" letters.

But you set it up like this.
The Terrestrial Lens just extends the focal length to invert the image for normal viewing and then you put your occular lens in the terrestrial lens. So you end up with whatever magnification is given by your occular lens.

The telescope does not have the perpindicular lens - just a straight-through viewing lense like a riflescope.

Benjamin - how would I go about getting a terrestrial lens?  I didn't realize that telescopes inverted the image you looked at - seems kina weird to be looking at the moon and seeing it upside down, eh?

Good idea!  I might try that too!!!

Hmm, Can you remove the lens???


You could probably order one from TascO??


Or if you havn't bought it yet, go to Service Merchandise or some such and find yourself a 4"Refractor.

Usually they are 200.00 or less.

Look on the Tasco webpage.

My telescope was billed as a "Portable Telescope" was slightly less then $200.00.
You might also seem them listed or sold as Telescopes with 400-600 times magnification.
Sometimes 800x

EDITED TO ADD:
But as someone mentioned above you will have to get it to focus at 100yards or 200 yards or whatever. So the lower the magnification the better off you are. say the largest occular lens 12mm or above. Just a wild ass guess there though. Just see what you can do with it, but the terrestrial lens will make it easier.

Most of the best telescopes don't brag on the box about their astounding magnification.  Most quality scopes will use the objective mirror or lens measurements as a way to tell how good they are.

In Astronomy, a high magnification is not necessairly a good thing.  Contrary to popular belief, most observable objects aren't all that small, they are just very faint.  With a given 4" reflector and 10x magnification, the Andromeda galaxy is wonderful to view, but with a 100x magnification, you won't see much.  As you zoom in, the less bright the view is.  That is not good for space observation.  High magnification is more useful for viewing Jupiter and Saturn.  They are bright enough to hold observable levels of light even at high magnification.  At these high levels though, the earth will shift the image out of the viewfinder every few seconds or so, so you need a motorized mount.

For rifle spotting, the scope will be used during bright times.  Therefore, you can zoom in pretty good as still have plenty of light to observe.  If you try to spot a target on a bright sunny day with a 4" mirror, be careful for your eyes!  A LOT of light is collected, and at low zoom levels, it may be too bright to view.

I have used a $99 Bushnell 12-40x44 Refracting scope to spot with, but when the weather is hot, the heat waves blur the holes too much anyway.

My spotting scope is a cheapie I got for about $30. It works OK in that I can easily see spotters and scoring discs well enough.

Of course, my pal's got a Kowa that's a whole lot chearer