HET7: US Optics FDN-17x 3.2-17x50
As I continue to go through the individual write-ups for the sopes in this comparison, it is time to re-visit US Optics FDN-17x and its strengths and weaknesses.
I have talked about this scope at length in the past, so this should be a refresher of sorts. Of the scopes I have in this comparison, optically, Steiner, S&B and US Optics are a little bit weaker overall than TT, ZCO, March and Zeiss. However, they are weaker for different reasons. Steiner has issues on high magnification and with FOV. S&B is actually pretty well balanced, but there are obvious compromises made to keep it short (remarkably few compromises, to be honest). FDN17x has an entirely different problem: tunneling on low magnification.
Since US Optics changed ownership and moved across the country, their products went through a few changes. Mechanically, it appears to be a very different scope from the original USO designs and, frankly, that’s not a bad thing. Original USOs were essentially hand built custom scopes and there was so much variance scope to scope that I sorta stopped looking at them. Fast forward a few years and these are proper production scopes with apparently reworked mechanics. The optical system has not been redesigned, but the new mechanics seem to have made it consistent. These are nice mechanics too. The new EREK elevation turret is one of my favourite designs out right now: it is a larger diameter, but comparatively low profile turret. The click feel is sorta unique. Because the turret is of a pretty large diameter, the click spacing is very good, but the clicks are pretty quiet. They are nicely tactile though. It is very difficult to describe the feel. Some turrets out there are “thunky” and some are “clicky”. The latter are the louder ones with high pitched sound. The EREK knob is definitely the quieter “thunky” variety.
Windage turret is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It is covered, which I like, but it sticks out a bit too far. I would have preferred something lower profile.
Side focus is very easy to use and since I have been torturing this scope for a while, it did develop a little bit of hysteresis, but nothing to get excited about. That’s a pretty normal thing.
Reticle illumination is of a push-button variety that generally leaves me cold, but it works.
Magnification ring is one of the better designs here since it is rather large and very easy to grab without needing a cat tail. Resistance is also perfectly calibrated.
Going back to the optics, remember I mentioned that the optical system does not appear to have been reworked? That manifests itself in two ways: the scope is quite long and some of the internal optical elements are of a rather moderate diameter resulting in tunneling on low magnification. What tunneling means in this case is that as you go down to lower magnifications, at some point the FOV stops getting wider. Instead, the image circle gets smaller. In practical terms, that means that with the FDN 17x, the useful magnification range is from about 4.5x to 17x. Below 4.5x you are not really getting any more FOV. Now, that does not mean that lower magnification are completely useless. However, their only real utility that I can think of is when shooting from very unstable positions. In those cases, lower magnification helps with perceiving as little tremor as possible. I find it to be very helpful when shooting standing, but that, admittedly, is not a hugely common use for precision scopes. I am definitely in a minority here in that I shoot offhand quite a lot with pretty much every gun I have (ever since I discovered how terrible I am at it).
Now, once you get above that ~4.5x magnification, the FOV is the widest here and the eyepiece is nicely forgiving. It is a very easy scope to get behind. Eyerelief is a little shorter than other scopes in this comparison, so this is not the scope I would put onto an unbraked 8lbs 338 Lapua. For normal rifles, however, it works really well. It has spent time on everything from rimfires to my rather potent muzzleloader (275gr bullet at a bit over 2400fps) and it never came close to giving me a black eye.
Image quality, is not quite as good as ZCO or Tangent, but it clearly belongs in this group and I did not see any fading or performance drop at high mag. It does not quite have the resolution of ZCO or Zeiss. It does not quite have the micro contrast of the Tangent, but it is not far off from either. It has the widest FOV and it costs a good bit less. Honestly, it is a pretty easy scope to recommend. There are compromises, as with anything, but I can work around them quite easily.
Arguably the biggest achilles heel of the FDN17x optically, aside from tunneling, is flare control. It is better than on US Optics scopes of a decade ago, but I still see more artefacts here than with several more modern designs. Most of them do go away if you use a sunshade, but that makes an already really long scope longer yet.
Lastly, let’s touch on the reticle which, in this case is the JVCR. It is excellent. It is sort of a sparse tree design that looks to give you a tree reticle with a “less is more” approach. It does not give me all the holds that I like to have, but I would much rather have this than the messiness of H59 or Tremor3. Another interesting thing is that the reticle lines of the JVCR design are notably thicker than those of other reticles in this comparison. This is easily the best one I have seen lately for aging eyes and very appealing overall. It is a very easy reticle to acquire and keep on target. I did not find the somewhat thicker lines to obscure the target in any sort of objectionable way.
I said earlier that this is an easy scope to recommend. Let’s flesh that out a little. What is the ideal use case for this? Well, if you are looking for an absolute alpha level scope, but you do not want to step up to the $4k price range, this should be on your list. Here is the compromise: if you are planning to run it with a clip-on where lower magnification and short length make a difference there are better options. The overall adjustment range is respectable, but not huge. This is not an ELR scope. Generally, aside from that, overall length and low magnification performance, there is really little to complain about.
https://bit.ly/3tRx53g or https://bit.ly/3Mc5anW
It is slow, but accurate and consistent.
This ammo showed some mild pressure signs, but not too significant. 
