Nice tripod! This is heavy enough that I wouldn’t want to ruck it in the mountains all day, but I like how sturdy it is. For static positions it’s great, and the weight helps with recoil management for followup shots or multiple targets. Adjustment is great, clamp holds my rifles securely.
Others have talked about two issues. Number one is the lack of a ball head because it’s “hard to level the rifle.” This is sort of true, but it really depends on how much you expect to be panning the rifle. If you use the bull’s-eye level on the leg bracket, and take a little bit of time to level the gun, you should be level throughout a wide panning angle. If you put a ball head on this thing and the leg bracket is not parallel to the ground, when you panned, you’re going to be out of level anyway. For me, this is not really a huge issue.
The second issue that a lot of people have, which I think is significant, is the amount of play in elevation even when the elevation swivel is locked. Mine had about 3° of slop in it, which is massive in terms of the effect on accuracy. I tracked this down to the interface between the plastic saddle and metal pivot inserts. There’s just enough play here that no matter how hard you lock it, it will wiggle up and down. To fix this, I used JB Weld (hey, it’s good for something!) to epoxy the pivot inserts in place, filling the tiny gaps between the metal and the plastic. It is now rock solid. To disassemble it, you have to pop the cap off the pivot lock and take off the nut. Don’t attempt this if you are not handy.
Some people mention the horizontal swivel bearings being rough. As other reviews have stated, you can mitigate this by adjusting the 5mm cap screw on the bottom of the swivel. However, any apparent roughness when you’re turning the clamp by hand usually goes away when you have a rifle in place…so make any adjustments with your rifle clamped in! Otherwise you’ll make it too sloppy.
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