One of the the leading names in air rifles, BSA was once famous for its centrefire rifles now just a memory. A few years ago the company relocated to the U.S.A and introduced a line of Chinese-made riflescopes designed to offer good value at a modest cost.
BSA’s line includes not only hunting scopes, but scopes for varmint/target shooting, handguns, rimfire rifles and air guns. A series of red dot sights includes two with an interchangeable reticle. Parabellum Imports, the Australian distributors for BSA sent me three scopes for review – a 3-12×44 AO air rifle scope, a MD 4-12x44AO Essencial scope, and a BSA Panther 6.5-20×44 AO. All three scopes are rather heavy, being ruggedly constructed from heavy alloy tubing with a focusing objective – something essential with any scope of over 10x and particularly with an air rifle scope which is used at very short ranges. A practical matte black finish is standard. The scopes are conventional for the most part, having standard one-inch diameter body tubes.
The 3-12×44 Air Rifle is 332mm long and weighs 650 grams. The effective aperture of the objective lens is 42mm, and objective and ocular bells measure 61mm and 43mm, respectively. The exit pupil ranges from 14mm to 3.5mm, and field of view at 100 yards narrows from 36 feet at 3x to 10 feet at 12x.
The 4-12x Essencial is slightly longer at 340mm and weighs 668 grams.Objective lens diameter is 42mm and the objective and ocular bells are 59mm and 42.60mm in diameter respectively.
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