As some of you probably guessed, I am off on work travel again, which limits my ability to test optics, edit videos, and stuff like that.
At the moment, I am in a hotel in New Jersey, drinking a surprisingly decent Old-Fashioned in the downstairs bar of my hotel.
The days here are spent at a customer location trying to figure out a few things in the lab. Once I am out of there, it is very hard to resist spending a couple of hours on catching up with the Ukraine developments. The developments are interesting, but nothing particularly earthshattering. I'll keep an eye out on what's happening and put together an update during the weekend, likely as a live show.
My original plan was to kick off an optics lecture series this week with an "Introduction to thermal imaging", but my flight schedule is interfering with that. It will have to wait for a few days.
Before I left for this current trip, I did look at a few things.
I finally went and test-fired my Keltec CP33 that came back from service. It had almost identical issues to to the earlier ones, but with a little less severity: "stovepipe" failures to feed with CCI Mini-Mag ammo that is supposed to work well in this gun. That was quite disheartening. Then I went and tried CCI's AR Tactical 22LR ammo and that fed without any issues. If I understand this correctly, this load has bullet shape slightly modified to work in semi-auto 22LR ARs and that seemed to make a difference with CP-33.
While I will talk to Keltec and find out what ammo they tested it with, having something that works is already adequate. Not ideal, but adequate.
I have wrapped up with the test of Crimson Trace CTS-1550 red dot sight. Frankly, this was one of the more boring tests I have done. It did not give me any issues and I carried it with the same battery for 11 months. I will continue using it as an offset sight on a long gun and let you know if any issues develop. In the meantime, I decided to kick off another test of a Crimson Trace red dot sight on my carry gun, this being the new RAD Micro Pro. It is a decidedly more sophisticated sight than the CTS-1550 with a supposedly beefier housing and "shake awake" motion sensor. The base of this sight is narrower, so it is a better fit for slim carry guns like my Glock 43x. That does mean that the battery is smaller: 1632 instead of 2032. With more efficient circuits and shake awake, the battery life should be good still, but time will tell. The base of this new sight is slightly taller than that of the CTS-1550. I can co-witness with stock Glock sights, but barely. I think I will get a slightly taller set of irons for this gun.
Another handgun I have been messing with is the Alpha Foxtrot AF-C. It is essentially a Glock 19 clone, except it is a very refined one. The frame is aluminum, so it has very different vibration profile compared to regular plastic frame Glocks and I must admit that it is a very smooth shooting gun. The slide is pre-cut for a red-dot sight with RMR footprint, so what I have on there right now is a Holosun 507C-X2 with ACSS Vulcan reticle. It is a really exceptional red dot sight, but it is slightly wide for the slide. I think it is a better match for the 10mm Glock where it used to reside. I plan to take a handgun class with this gun when I am in Florida for work next month. I'll let you know how it goes. I am currently going through a holster selection for it and I have an interesting option to try. More on that later.

The preciously mentioned 10mm long slide Glock, is at the moment the platform on which I test the new Steiner MPS enclosed emitter reflect sight. The MPS is also proving to be fairly trouble free. Most of my carry sights do have auto adjust dot, while the MPS is manual adjust only. Battery life has been good and the design does offer a couple of interesting advantages. The interesting thing here is that the emitter of the MPS is in the top of the sight. That keeps the optical axis and base height very low, so co-witnessing is easy., but you so see a little bit more of the sight's body above the sight picture. It does not seem to both me much so far and I like the low mounting. It fits on Aimpoint ACRO mount and I simply got a Glock MOS ACRO adapter plate for it. It has not shaken loose and seems to work well. Since the emitter is up top, the curved lens is angled differently (up vs sideways), so the parallax behavior is different. It is perfectly symmetrical left-to right, but has some up-down asymmetry. Still, the overall collimation quality is quite good. For rifle use, I would probably prefer a more sophisticated reticle than just a dot, but it does work well on handguns. I have not spent a ton of time trying to destroy it, but from a maintenance standpoint, I have to admit that enclosed sights are notably easier to keep clean. Supposedly, they also have an advantage if you drop it, but I do not drop my guns all that much. I might test that out though.
With conventional riflescopes, I have been spending some time with Zeiss LRP and I like that scope. The next big review I finally wrap up with will be the comparison of fancy high end tactical designs.
The final wrap up of the Trijicon Tenmile 3-18x44 review is also going to be happening fairly soon. I am not excited about how long this scope is and that length did give me some mounting issues, but aside from that, the scope has a lot to recommend itself.