HatsanUSAOptima 1 X 30 Red Dot

First off, I am disappointed that the dovetail mount was $9 more than the same sight with a weaver mount. $9 more? Really?Anyway, the sight works well. I've had it mounted on various guns from a CO2 AirBug pistol to a 17fpe springer...no problems. Far better than many other budget-friendly reddots.Not sure why people couldnt mount it on their Chaser, it works fine on my Chaser and AirBug. Photo shows it on my Crosman 2240XL.BTW: If the dot looks fuzzy, has a corona, or a tail.....you may want to see your eye doctor. Like me, you may have Astigmatism. I have it and my eyes see a 'tail' under the dot. I just ignore the tail and proceed to stack pellets in a ragged hole.

I've now tried two Hatsan Optima 1x30 red dot sights on my Hatsan Mod 25 Supercharger QE air pistol. This is spring loaded and has considerable multi-direction recoil even though some of that is damped by a sliding barrel mechanism.Both of these Optima red dots x30 failed after about 60 shots and in the same way: the top reticle adjustment turret broke internally and would just spin around freely. I thought that something inside had broken, but from web info later found this is usually from tiny screws inside loosening up, because they aren't treated with a threadlock / loctite compound at the factory.Others have reported the same problem, and many other low-cost red dots look to be made the same way. It's a shame because the sight is otherwise beautifully made, with a solid anodized aluminum body and many machined screw internals, precise click adjustments, and covers for everything.I conclude that these red dots aren't robust enough for spring aka springer airgun use in general. There are cases where it works but the likelihood of failure is obviously high. That may be repairable but I didn't have the knowledge or tools to do so.For guns without such recoil, such as PCP / CO2 airguns or powder guns, these are probably a best buy. So I add below what I found about using the sight. The Hatsan instructions are useless btw.- - - - - -Hatsan Optima 1x30 Red Dot Sight usageFirst, the "dovetail" model of this sight is advertised to fit either 11mm or 3/8" = 9.5mm dovetail rails. It comes from the factory with the rail grip brackets oriented for 11mm. For the smaller dovetail, loosen the nuts from the rail mounting screws and flip the front and rear holding pieces over. Per Hatsan the sight is also made with a Weaver mount which is listed here on Amazon.I only tried it with 11mm rails, on which it mounted fine. See below on keeping it tight. Be aware that some mounts advertised as "11mm or 3/8" will actually fit only one of those properly, because the two designs do differ in more than just the nominal size. I had a BSA red dot which claims such compatibility but favors the 3/8" style, and it was very difficult to mount on my 11mm rails. With this Hatsan red dot the story may be reversed i.e. it may have trouble with 3/8" rails. Look for other comments here and in forums if you have those.Next, the sight is to be mounted with the large reticle selector knob on the top towards the front of the gun. This isn't obvious and there are some confusion factors, so be guided by that basic fact. Which means the windage (left / right) adjustment control will be on your left, as will the rail mounting screws.The tightness of the mounting rail screw / nuts is crucial. I recommend applying thread lock compound aka loctite. If you don't then after initial tightening these will begin to loosen with each shot - so check them again after each couple of shots, to begin with. A quarter coin is perfect for this as you probably can't generate enough force to strip the threads with it. Eventually the sight will loosen less when shooting and you'll only need to check the screws occasionally. Keep the quarter handy.If you do apply thread lock compound, the nuts may not loosen much at all, but still check them for a while and periodically later.You switch the red dot ON and OFF using the top reticle selector knob. That knob also lets you choose a red or green dot, each in 5 different levels of intensity. Turn the dot off (to the "R" or "G" position) when not using this, to preserve battery life. The battery is accessed via a slotted threaded cover on top of that reticle knob. It comes with a standard 2032 flat battery, which should last for hundreds of hours.To get at the windage and elevation adjustment screws / dials, remove the plastic screw-on protective caps. These adjustment screws have turning directions marked "L" and "Up" respectively (to be ignored; see below). A dime is perfect for turning these and they have nice click stops.There are quite a few online tutorials about how to zero a red dot sight. One way is to shoot the gun from a soft rest at a typical target distance for your usage, and adjust the POI = Point of Impact to be where the red dot is pointing.If the red dot is a jumble / mass of dots, you got a bad unit which is unfocused internally. Nothing can be done except to return it if you can.If the red dot is a starburst or has a tail like a comet, you probably have astigmatism and will just have to use the center of the red dot mass as your aiming point - a more expensive red dot won't be any better. You can mitigate this some via the "6 o'clock" method which means adjusting the red dot to be right below the point of impact, so even if blurry the dot won't obscure the target. Then when shooting you aim the same way.Red dot adjustments on this unit: Ignore the "L" and "Up" direction markings because, depending on how you interpret these things, one of them is wrong. Turn the windage screw (on the left side) clockwise to move the POI to the right. Turn the elevation screw (on the top) clockwise to move to move the POI down. Again, the goal is to get the POI to coincide with the red dot. And do this with the red dot generally in the middle of the viewfinder, not off to one side, to avoid making any parallax issues worse.Once you have the POI aligned with the red dot, at a range typical for your use, you need only put the red dot over your target and shoot. Again, try to have the dot near the center of the view during this, to minimize parallax error. I didn't notice much parallax error with this sight but wasn't carefully checking.

Easy to mount. Once zeroed, hitting a dime size target at 10 yards offhand is almost impossible to miss. Bright red or green dot.One star off as the windage adjustment is backwards. Turning the adjuster Left should move the POI Left, but it's the opposite.

Really nice optic, solidly made works really good On my Crossman .177 pellet gun.

This scope is made by Hatsan so you'd think it would work on a Hatsan pellet gun. It doesn't. For whatever reason Hatsan puts 11mm dovetail scope mounts with no stop pins/ anticreep options on its pellet guns. That's a unusual choice. There aren't a lot of red dot sights that fit on an 11mm dovetail. So here comes this Optima scope made by Hatsan that not surprisingly fits directly on an 11mm rail. Powerful spring/piston pellet guns are notorious for destroying scopes of all kinds. The Optima scope is no exception. I've used it for about 200 shots and it's falling apart. In my photo you can see that there's a tube inside a tube kind of design. In the photo you can see the inner tube is no longer centered in the outer tube. Also there's some kind of bracket or tab that's visible protruding from the inner tube into the field of vision. That should NOT be there! I've tried to keep this scope sighted in by using huge windage/elevation adjustments but as the scope falls apart, it doesn't hold center for more than 20 shots before needing another huge adjustment. Do yourself a favor, spend a little extra on a better sight even if you need to purchase an additional mounting rail to mate it to the Hatsan 11mm mount.

Quick service. Great item.

I put this on a Hatsan 135 Vortex QE .177 rifle.Once I sighted it in, 3-5 shots and you in, I was getting Eur. Starling head shots without much effort.I have never used a red dot but was always interested in trying...I'd not use a red dot on any of my real guns...but I'm impressed with its accuracy, build and ease of use for a novice dot user.

Nice little red/green dot and I would have given it five stars but the windage adjustment is backwards. If you want to move your group left, you need to turn the click adjustment to the right. Elevation is correct. I mounted it on an old Crosman model 1400 air rifle and it makes it much easier to shoot. My older eyes were having trouble seeing the iron sights.