Why We Built the Dead Center Arca Plate

Welcome to the Deadfall Design blog. This is our first post, so a quick word on what we plan to do here: share the thinking behind the gear we build, what we learn using it, and the occasional story worth telling. It made sense to start with our newest product, the Dead Center Arca Plate, because the reason it exists says a lot about how we approach everything else.

For years I'd been tuning and adjusting the Arca plate on my spotting scope so the image would match when I swapped between binoculars and spotter on a tripod. Functionally it worked great. Getting it right was the problem. It was slow and fiddly, and it would come loose and lose adjustment a couple times a season.

If you've spent time behind glass you know how critical the seconds are between locating an animal and getting your spotter on him. With a matched spotting scope and binoculars, it's about as close to instant as you can get.

The conversation that started it

I never really talked about it or gave it much thought until I recorded an episode of the Rokcast with Travis Hobbs called "The Top 1 Percent". Among a lot of other things, we got into how critical it is to run a straight spotting scope, and discovered we'd both been tweaking, adjusting, and shimming our scopes to match our binoculars. Two people solving the same problem the same way, neither of us talking about it.

When I started Deadfall Design last year and released the Guardian Chest Plate, this was already in the back of my mind as the next problem worth building a better solution around.

What we built

I worked with Salmon River Solutions on the design and came out with a purpose-built adjustable Arca plate that lets you adjust rotation and incline. It makes it easy to "sight in" a straight spotting scope, and far less likely to work loose over a season.

The adjustment comes from a machined peaked top with front and rear adjustment screws that let you level the plate or match it to another optic. I measured a lot of different scopes and settled on two front-and-rear spacing options that should cover most spotting scopes out there. We also added texturing to the center peak to cut down the chance of rotation.

Will it fit your scope?

Before you order, watch the compatibility tutorial. It walks through how to check your scope against the two spacing options: Dead Center compatibility tutorial.

Where to get one

I couldn't be happier with how it came out, and I believe it's a no-downside upgrade for anyone serious about glassing. Built in Idaho. Dead Center Arca Plate

A version of this first ran over on Rokslide, where the conversation is still going.

— Dioni Amuchastegui