| Interesting. The rangefinder appears to work in a manner similar to the standard mildot, in that you need to know the approximate size of the object you are attempting to range. It's not a laser rangefinder. IMO, it would be of limited use for the average shooter. |
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I've got one. It is NOT a laser rangefinder. It's primarily a marine navigation instrument, useful but less so for land navigation. It's the only optic I know of that offers moderate magnfication, digital compass and monocular form factor in the same package. Thus it is somewhat unique, and also uniquely suited for a) taking bearings on objects from the heaving deck of a boat or b) finding small objects like bouys you know the bearing of from your GPS or radar. On rare occasions I've used it for "a", but more normally I've got my GPS plot at a high level of confidence and usually only use it for "b". Its monocular form factor makes it easy to keep one hand for the boat. The relatively low magnification is enough to find those pesky small bouys, but no so much your field of view is too small for higher sea states. The compass works very well and its display is clear and illuminated. It's not much larger than a good hand bearing compass, either. It's good for spying on the competition when sailboat racing as well! Changing batteries is a pain but they last a couple of months. The ranging function is simply a bar graph reticle you adjust to match the known height of an object. Then you enter the height and it reads the range. Not terribly accurate. Semi-useful these days with GPS, but a very basic navigation technique on the water where heights of many large objects from sea level are marked on the charts. Hard to use on land where there is no sea level reference to measure from. Conversely, a laser is hard to use on water where most things are more than a mile away when you start to get interested in knowing range. I wouldn't go offshore without one. BTW, I had a chance to try the Bushnell LRF binocular the other day. Thought it sucked. Staying with my Leica 1200. Would like to try the new Swarovski, though. |
thanks aa that is pretty much what I figured it was including the rangefinding properties. Thought it might work as well as a laser. From what I've heard, most of the combo bino/rangers don't work all that great. Makes sense to stay with the stand alone. Ditto on the swarovski. If you ever get a chance to check one out, let me know what you think of it. BTW, how do you like the Leica? Worth the dough? |