Thermal zero retention and unintentional/intentional drop tests

Duhhh

Duhhh

Well-known member
Well I did something dumb last week and dropped my thermal (AGM varmint V2) onto my garage floor. I had taken the scope off the gun and used it at work for the day. When I got home I was opening the garage door with too much stuff in my hands and the scope fell from about my stomach height which is around 43-47 inches. No clue what part of the scope took the initial impact but it bounced a few times after the impact. Needless to say, I was pissed at myself. On the outside, there is no damage or noticeable dings on the scope that I can find.

Before this, I’ve had the scope and gun riding around in the back seat of my truck. Driving has been a mix of washboard roads to some two tracks. I have a sweet suspension on my Tacoma so a lot of that two track driving has not been nice or smooth haha. To top that off, I also put the scoped gun in a hard case and in the back of our family pickup before making a 600 mile round trip too my wife’s family farm in Minnesota. Although it was mostly interstate travel, there was still a bunch of vibration and bumping along the way. Not to mention, the outside temps at the time were well into the negative teens. All together, I estimate the scopes rode in the above described conditions for approximately 1,500-2,000 miles.

With all the above mentioned “abuse” I mounted the scope back on today and checked zero. I fully expected it to be wildly off so I started at 50yards and shot three rounds. I was still dead on with my horizontal zero and my vertical appeared to be alright too. So I moved out to 100 and shot another group. To my surprise, I put three bullets Into my folded up hand warmer (less than an inch in diameter). I would have been ecstatic with that result but the reality is my previous zero was supposed to be exactly 1 inch high at that distance. So long story short, I did have a vertical zero shift but it could have been so much worse. Everything on the scope still functions as it should and the ADM mount is tightened to spec.

Anyone else have any other torture or drop test results on various thermals?
 
Good to hear they are tough and it held up. I'm also using AGM, the new Spectrum 4K LRF, loving it. And an AGM handheld thermal AGM Taipan V2 19-384, liking that one too. So far no mishaps.
 
Don_P said:
Good to hear they are tough and it held up. I'm also using AGM, the new Spectrum 4K LRF, loving it. And an AGM handheld thermal AGM Taipan V2 19-384, liking that one too. So far no mishaps.
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Time will tell haha. I just helmet mounted my Taipan v2 15-384. Hoping to put it to use tomorrow night.
 
jmeddy said:
Don't know that the truck rides are much to brag about BUT the drop test sure is IMO
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The truck ride info wasn’t meant to be any sort of hard use testing. However, I included it because I’ve had daytime optics fail to retain zero from vibration of vehicle rides alone. To me, I’ll get rid of an optic can’t handle slight vibrations.

I’ll fully admit, I’m not entirely sure if a thermal scope alone has the ability to be knocked off zero while turned off.
 
Duhhh said:
The truck ride info wasn’t meant to be any sort of hard use testing. However, I included it because I’ve had daytime optics fail to retain zero from vibration of vehicle rides alone. To me, I’ll get rid of an optic can’t handle slight vibrations.

I’ll fully admit, I’m not entirely sure if a thermal scope alone has the ability to be knocked off zero while turned off.
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I sent a couple back to Bering that had POI/POA issues that when returned they stated that the Germanium lens was loose. Have read others who stated they had the same issue.
 
Are germanium lenses usually glued in?

I watched an entire batch of the gen 1 eotechs fall apart on patrol rifles. Turns out the glass inside was glued in and they couldn’t handle highway driving vibrations.
 
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