The Nautilus Sidewheel – Nature Meets Science for Field Target Shooting.

Last week, I was visiting HAM PCP Tester Doug Rogers. While there, I saw something unusual yes beautiful. It was a “sidewheel” for the Sightron scope attached to his Air Arms HFT500, yet it wasn’t circular. This was my first view of a Nautilus Sidewheel.

Intrigued and interested, I asked Doug about this strange sidewheel. “Oh,” he said. “It’s great, I bought it from Hector”.

Hector is, of course, Hector Medina, the well-known, expert Field Target shooter. IN addition to competing, Hector also has his own business – Connecticut Custom Airguns. Here, he specializes in custom tuning to order and also designs and sells a small number of specialist parts – including the Nautilus Sidewheel.

So, I talked to Hector and here’s what he told me about the Nautilus. Like many great ideas, it evolved to fix a problem…

“One of the problems we find when we travel and shoot  with our sidewheel scopes is the difficulty in packing a scope with a large sidewheel.” Explained Hector.

“And yet, a large sidewheel is not really needed for ranges from 10 to about 35 yards. It is only above 35 yards that the marks in the tape of 3-inch, and 4-inch sidewheels become too close to call accurately and with any consistency.”

You can see more about tapes and side wheels in HAM Field Target Editor Greg Shirhall’s recent post.

“Some shooters use 6-inch and even larger sidewheels.” Continued Hector.” But we have found that large wheels are somewhat fragile and become a weak link in the scope section of the system.”

So how could the problem of accurate focusing at longer ranges be combined with compactness? Enter the Nautilus!

The Nautilus is a mollusk that is a direct descendant of the mollusks that lived on earth’s primitive seas about 500 million years ago.

The growth pattern of the Nautilus follows a logarithmic pattern. And it so happens that the lenses of a telescope, when moved with uniformly spaced threads, follow a pattern that closely resembles ta logarithmic curve.

So, says Hector, this curve seemed to be ideal for making a sidewheel!

The Nautilus sidewheel has a 3-inch diameter at the short ranges section, and a 8-inch diameter at the long end of the ranges. It’s easy to pack in a soft case for transport from lane to lane and it’s easy to pack into a hard case for long travels. Being light it poses little threat to the delicate mechanism of the sidewheel shaft.

The Nautilus Sidewheel is now available for the following scopes:
AEON, Sightron SIII, Sidewinder 30 , SWFA sidefocus, Nikko Stirling NightEater, Diamond, and Falcon T-50.

For more information on Nautilus Sidewheels, check out Connecticut Custom Airguns.