Diopter focus/eye relief questions

[shrewd]

so a few months ago I decided, after having my carbine all squared away, that i should totally try out variable scopes and swap out the aimpoint, and picked up one of the new SWFA 1-4s that came out around black friday.

i mounted it and took it to the range and made sure i was around 2 inches low at 25 yards at my indoor, but havent had a chance to properly zero it at range. still, i'm digging it. An unexpected plus, since i focus the diopter to my right eye, its helped tons with my natural cross dominance, and i've startled my dog dozens of times running around the house dry firing with it.

i've noticed a couple things though. First, and it's probably my error in mounting the scope, but when i zoom up to 4x, i have to place my face closer to the eyepeice. i figure it's not a big deal as if i'm at 4x i'm probably proned out anyway and my face will naturally be a little closer anyway. last night, while dry firing in the house (that poor thermostat and fridge magnet have so many imaginary rounds through them...) i noticed that when i zoomed in to 4x, the crosshairs would get blurry on what i thought was the correct diopter focus. After playing around with it a good bit i may have found a better spot, but it feels a little strange on 1x now. More fiddling, target blurry at 4x but all good at 1x.
Now, the target was just a magnet on my fridge, no more than 15 yards away....is this to be expected? Will it be all clear at 100 yards?

It makes me question if i mounted it/focused it right from the beginning. Do you let your eyes focus on the crosshairs, or hard focus on the target like a red dot? The instructions i was given for setting the diopter was to look at a while wall, bring up the rifle, and adjust until the crosshairs appear crisp naturally, which is what i did the first time.

Any pointers/thoughts/concerns/you dude you're totally stupid you're supposed to do it this way comments?

 

[rcmodel]

Yes.

The higher the power the further away the focus will be.

1x will focus very close, 4x not so much.

What you really need to do is stop playing with it indoors and go outside at realistic range.

You should focus the scope outside by pulling up and looking at a bright sky. (Infinity)

Focus so the X-hairs are clear & sharp when you pull up and look at the sky.
(Do Not look through the scope while adjusting the focus.)

Your eye will try to adjust too the out of focus scope faster then you can screw it in or out to adjust it.

In other words, adjust, pull up and look, stop looking and adjust again, then pull up and look at the sky again until the X-hairs are razor sharp.

rc

 

[shrewd]

So would setting the focus at 2 or 3x be best for usability in courses of fire requiring going from 1 to 4 and back in one string?

 

[rcmodel]

Set it at the highest power and it should be right at any lower power, as those are less critical to focus issues being off slightly.

If the scope is made & collimated right, it will stay right at lower powers once focused at the highest power.

rc