First pictures of this ridiculously tall optics mount made by MDT engineers and called Sky High Scope Base were teased in March of the current year. Back then, many thought it was an upcoming April Fool’s Day joke. However, the reason for creating this scope mount, which MDT claims to be the world’s tallest scope base, is to find out if scope height over bore matters for long-range shooting if you use modern ballistic data gathering and calculation tools.

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The distance or “height” of your scope over the bore of your rifle is an important factor in calculating your D.O.P.E. (Data On Previous Engagements aka, how much you need to dial your scope turret for elevation at distance), but, as long as you know the measurement, does it really matter how high or low it is?

Traditionally, it was accepted that a shooter would want the scope height over bore as low as possible, this made it easier to calculate your D.O.P.E. when stretching your shots out to distance. However, with modern-day tools like Kestrel, or even a simple downloadable phone app to help us non-mathematicians calculate this, we wanted to explore the topic a bit more, and in true MDT fashion, take this test to the extreme.

When MDT engineers attached the Sky High mount to a rifle and mounted a scope to it, they ended up with a scope height over bore of 20 inches! They sighted in this rig at 100 yards and then tried to engage a target at 520 yards dialing the scope using the Kestrel data. Long story short, the scope height over bore does not matter for engaging the target if you have accurate data for making adjustments to the scope.

Trajectory differences of rifles sighted in at 100 yards with a standard 2.5″ scope height over bore versus the 20″ HOB of the MDT Sky High mount.

To learn more about the challenges and results of this MDT experiment, watch the video below.

I am sure many of you think about the same – mounting a red dot sight to the Sky High scope base and using it in a scientific hip firing experiment. Let us know in the comments section what other uses you can think of for the MDT Sky High scope base.

Pictures by MDT, www.mdttac.com