Shane45

Lots of stuff coming out. Lots of new offerings from new companies. BUT I dont roll for the latest greatest. Paid the early adopters tax way to many times. Raz, the 1.1 thing with the S&B was a euro formula issue from what I recall. If you do the math the same way american companies do it it comes out to 1.0. With that being said the only one that really felt like 1.0 of the optics Ive had was the Elcan. But a small + doesnt really other me much as it does some people. Now about those 1-6/1-8's. I could possibly see a 1-6 replacing some of my glass. I have a USO 1-8 but it lives on a 308. I dont see me running one on a 5.56. Im just not digging on the 1-8's unless its on a rifle favoring the 8X side over the 1X side.

Doubling up hearing protection helps.

I dunno, I still have my S&B short dot in my inventory. Havent found better yet in a 1-4. Locking turrets. Daylight usable dot. Good eyebox. Comes with knobs calibrated for 5.56 and 7.62. Id like to get hands on the Steiner 1-5 though! It might be a contender.

Again, its not about recoil. Good technique can take you pretty far. But good technique and a good brake can take you farther. But unless you are running on the clock you just might not detect the difference. If there was no advantage to it I guarantee top competitors wouldn't run one. I mean its simple physics. If a brake reduces recoil by 50 to 70%, even if recoil is small, it will help control that muzzle. Sometimes that can be a bad thing. Thats why I mention neutral muzzle movement. I stopped running Battle Comps because I was actually experiencing a negative muzzle impulse. In other words the muzzle was kicking down, not up. I switched to Griffin's because they were more neutral. The KAC brake is supposed to be neutral even if you are shooting at an angle. Keep in mind that even a flash hider acts as a brake to some degree. Just not as efficiently as a dedicated brake or compensator. Back to the KAC brake, that was a lot of dev and money for a brake for spec ops. Im sure they didnt ask for it because of no advantage. Im not saying I couldnt survive an encounter without one or my shooting would go to crap. But in the words of Jack Sparrow, "Pirate!" meaning Ill take every advantage I can get.

Because out of all the places Ive eaten at in Dallas, that was one of the best. Chain or not the Dallas Fogo was way better INCLUDING other Fogo's! I did forget 3 Forks! Thats probably the best place Ive eaten in Texas. I tried many M&P's and well....nothing better than Ive had in NJ which was disappointing to say the least.

fogo de chao

Why are you saying a brake is useless? It may be useless to you, but it is useful to many others. You could have the threads lathed off. Probably a lot cheaper than pinning a brake. A parachute is useless to a suicide jumper but its not useless.

Its not about recoil its about neutral muzzle movement. And its only a facet of that equation. If you dont have good technique, it wont matter. If your not interested in putting rounds on target FAST in as close to shot 1 as possible, it wont matter for you.

Yer welcome!

I would agree there are more players on the field. I dont entirely disagree with your point. I DO remain skeptical of their durability. BUT not everyone needs that durability and you may not need it for every firearm in your safe. My go to guns all have proven optics. But I am asked so frequently about budget optics and have nothing to offer so I bought a few that looked to me to be a solid offering at a reasonable price point. Those two were a Holosun and the Steiner P4XI. In case you were unaware, it looks like you can get the Steiner for about $70 more than the PA 1-8. So I would consider these comparable price points. With that being said, I think the P4XI was in the $700 range when it came out but I think the foreign competition is driving down the price of the big boys. That could be good, or it could be bad if the big boys start cutting corners in premium optics to chase market share.

Vlad, I actually have Astig. Red dots suffer the most distortion for me. I havent played with the Steiner enough to know if there is any distortion but none jumped out at me at first blush. With that being said, the two options that are probably better are reticles that light. My short dot illuminates this way. There arent many that illuminate this way that are daylight usable. The Elcan does as well but....Arms mount :(. The USO 1-4 is unique in that it uses a beam splitter to make its dot in the second focal plane. VERY bright and I dont see distortion of the dot. My gripe with that optic is they use a coating to make sure the beam doesnt emit out the front. Because of that it goes dark a little quicker in lowlight situations than other optics. But back to the Steiner, if you need to make a precise shot, you can just click off the illum and use the ret. It has off ticks in between all illum settings. The attraction to the Steiner is the amount of scope you get for little money. This scope is what I would consider a great value in Optics. There are a lot of things I would change, but for the price, its cheaper than an Aimpoint with a lot more capability. Hard to ignore. Ray, your basing your recommendation of $100 scope on your experience with a $400 scope? Why are you recommending the cheapest thing you can find? He looked at and liked the Triji and was asking about it. Vlad isnt exactly a newbie looking for an entry level entry point. Considering his experience and inventory I do not think bargain basement entry level optics is what he is looking for. Im not going to bash PA because I dont have any experience with them. But the general consensus on PA entry level optics would leave me concerned about recommending them to Vlad. Its not about throwing money at a problem. But how much quality do you think you can get for $100 bucks? I FULLY ADMIT that I am not the right guy to ask about budget optics. At the same time I believe firmly in the false economics of cheap. Does he need to drop 2700 on an S&B short dot? Probably not unless he decided he wanted top tier, battle proven(meaning rugged and reliable in harsh conditions). But optics is a complex personal choice. As Ive said a bajillion times, optics are a compromise on many levels. You need to decide what compromises fit YOUR needs. For some, a $400 scope for their range fun is perfectly fine. Others have other criteria they are looking to fulfill.

Vlad, at roughly the same price range the Steiner P4XI is hard to ignore. It has a lot of aspects of it I dont like but if you look at it from a perspective of a red dot with benefits, its a contender. Reliable. Daylight usable dot at 1X. Excellent clarity. BDC reticle good for minute of man. If money isnt an issue I love my Schmidt and Bender short dot.

Ray, how do you know this? Have you run both? Id be interested to hear if th PA illum is daylight usable. (not visible, usable). How is the eyebox on the PA. I have owned the Triji and the eyebox and eye relief was very good. The clarity was excellent. I havent heard those same comments about the PA. But I havent had hands on myself. I would not suspect that the PA and the Trji are in the same class.

The finite balance of thermodynamics, pythagorean theorem and their intersect in calculus.

Soooooo... I went down this rabbit hole to a pretty significant degree. I will skip all my boring research and cut to my findings. ALL of which are my opinion and open to interpretation and additionally could be entirely wrong. But people I talked to, experts in the field of combat optics, helped me form this opinion. Your performance with a LPV vs a red dot may have nothing to do with the optics themselves. Its a software issue. Your performance is dependant on the sight picture your brain will accept vs what the optic is doing. Now that I know this I can watch out for it when someone is having trouble with a LPV. What I find is that they are way more critical of their aim with a red dot in a scope instead of the red dot of say an aimpoint because its not a scope. They have to learn to use it like an aimpoint and only see what you need to see to break the shot. Tactical Monkey and I did a LOT of testing with probably about 10k in optics on the table, simple repeatable drills from MDTS, and a timer. A lot of our data just didnt add up! Again for brevity, TM and I are comparable shooters. But the times between ourselves and Red Dots vs cross hairs vs horseshoes etc etc varied significantly! So varied it simply didnt make sense at all. What really showed this was the Acogs. My speeds as distance shrunk did not fall off nearly as much as TM's. Stark differences. The reason, his brain would not accept the sight picture. Same thing happened with the LPV's, just not as dramatic. My brain had no issue with the sight pic so the performance difference between a red dot and a LPV at 1x was fractions of a second. Now TM's Brain craves a red dot. So his performance with the red dot was very consistent. My brain actually seems to prefer reticles. So my performance varied more with the RDS.

There are two things that can cause a shift in a rail mounted front sight. The one he is referring to is likely deflection of the forend from outside forces such as the sling. Thus the reason he is saying you need a strong forend (that doesn't deflect as much). The other thing is when a barrel heats up, if it walks a bit, the rail mounted sight didnt go with it possibly causing a shift as well. If the sight is on the gas block and the barrel walks, since its on the barrel, theoretically it will reduce the shift because it moves with it.

Sorry, swiped a pic off the internet. STI Costa Carry Comp in 9. Considered the host to escape the Costa banner on the side but....I hate the holes in the slide on the Omni!

Speaking of Permit jail, waiting to be sprung:

Those are annual rates?

Better to have a rail and not need it......

Fixed it for you

Are you sure? IIRC they use Accurate mags and I dont see those in 20. Does someone else make a compatible mag?

I believe thats a 10 round mag.

Well...there is that whole accuracy thing :D. If I wanna shoot fast I use the dot. If I want to make a tight group at a reasonable distance I use irons. Tactical Timmy aside, in a more practical sense, the outing need not end if the optic dies. In terms of competition, I have had to deploy my BUIS in a stage when the dot went TU. And then there is real use. There I am a fan of fixed, lower 1/3rd. But I live with flip irons 99% because thats not my world, Im mostly LPV's at this point. I just designed for the other one