https://www.everydaymarksman.co/podcast/rifleman-pentathlon/
Linked above is Matt's thought-provoking article on a modern day pentathlon adapted to the rifle. I like where he is going with this one and I hope he succeeds in getting this competition going.
Many of the aspects there will require a change in thinking for people who are used to competitions that only focus on one aspect of it, like shooting fast.
Real world is multi-faceted and one of the skills that does not get enough mileage is the need to positively identify the target at an unknown distance and with challenging lighting conditions.
If I were setting something like this up, I would consider adding a couple more aspects to it that, again, do not get enough coverage:
1) low light shooting with flashlights/lasers/NODs/thermals. Yes, I know that the expensive electro-optic stuff is out of reach for a lot of people, but as these become more common we should all strive to develop some competence with them.
2) the precision portion has to involve at least one shot that is unsupported and at least one shot that requires trajectory compensation.
One way to get everyone to practice is to identify some number of shooting scenarios and publish what they are. Let's say we can identify 30 of them. The competition will have only 10, but you do not know which ones, so you have to practice all 30. It is kinda like end of the year in-person exams we used to have: there are 50 topics you have to study. When you get to the place where the exam is administered, you draw a random number that identifies which topic you have to address. It is one of the 50, but you do not know which one in advance.
With all that, as far as this competition goes, the moment it involves running, I am out.
As I get older, I become more and more convinced that the main reason I still have two functioning knees is that I spent the bulk of my adult life studiously avoiding running.
If you want this to be viable for the middle-aged, find a different way to make us winded. Hiking uphill with a 50lbs pack is fine (that's very relevant to hunting out west). Wading through an alligator infested swamp with the same pack is fine. Ten minutes locked in a porta potty with half a million starving mosquitos is fine. Running is an absolute no go. I appreciate that it is one of the most fundamental of exercises and all that. I really do, but I would much rather bring back boxing, wrestling and pankration. Running is a hard no.
Then again, it is just my opinion. YMMV.
Here is a final, likely, wrap up of where I think the GLx 2x from Primary Arms belongs.
It is likely the best general purpose optic for AKs and ARs I have seen in a while for shooting inside of $200. Definitely the best for the money and per ounce.
Now, when I say "inside of 200 yards" I do not mean trying to shave a hair of of a mosquito's left testicle. Assume shooting at typical subjects the size of a human torso, or a hog's vital zone.
Most of the time, I have the GLx sitting on a 300BLK pistol. I used it to teach one of my kids to shoot and it was a very easy and forgiving optic to use for a 7 year old. It is equally easy and forgiving for adults as well. It is just that easy to get behind and moderate magnification helps with the ease of use tremendously.
Now that pistol braces are verbotten, the GLx ended up on a 7.62x39 AK (a somewhat tricked out WASR-10) and I think it is going to stay there permanently.
https://alnk.to/ge40PLW
The ACSS reticle on this one is done just ...
This one is a very simple review:
-it is small
-it is robust
-it works they way it is supposed to
-it does not cost a huge amount of money
-the Ironside shield is a good idea
-RMSc footprint is a good idea
I messed up on price in the video. It is about $50 less than I thought at Brownells: https://alnk.to/a41u5D4
Ironsides stainless steel shield adds $40 to it: https://alnk.to/hDo4gJf
I plan to examine a few more prismatics as I go along, but here is the first installment that discusses SwampFox Saber 5x36 and Vortex Spitfire Gen2 5x25.
The interesting part is how little they have in common and how they do compromises differently.
Saber used a large CR123 battery, for example, but the housing gets in the way of a conventional offset red dots or irons should you choose to use one. However, the red dot mounted on the body of the sight, I think, works better.
Vortex, unlike the SwampFox comes with two different mount heights, so I was able to use it on both AK and AR platforms. It is more at home on a lightweight AR though.
The approaches to FOV, reticles, packaging and mounting are very different, which makes it all interesting to me.
The next video on 5x prismatics will talk about the Element Immersive 5x30 and Primary Arms SLx 5x Micro in some length.
What would be your recommendation for a scope for an accurate .22 rifle used mainly for ground squirrel control in my yard? Shooting distance is under 100 yards.
It will be very interesting to see how this one pans out for the Trump campaign. Back when Trump's ATF banned bump stocks, I thought it was one of the stupider things they did. Given Trump's propensity to mouth off on all sorts of stuff there was some stiff competition there.
On the other hand, I keep on hoping that if ATF keeps pushing the boundaries, eventually we will get the entirety of the NFA overturned.
The whole thing is arbitrary and unconstitutional.
To be clear, full auto firearms do absolutely nothing for me. It is waste of ammo as far as I am concerned. I do care about SBRs and suppressors though.
Happy Father's Day, Y'all!
I tried to sleep in this morning, but it did not work.
It did become a nice teaching moment about the meaning of the word consequences...
And for all the college kids out there going to elite liberal arts schools and who forgot how this works:
And to wrap up with a little crassness that has really been lacking lately:
Somehow, round numbers stand out to us, so when I saw that as of today there are exactly 2500 subscribers here, I noticed.
Looking at the history, it was 2000 in February of 2023. Prior to that, we hit 1000 in October of 2021. The pace of the growth is certainly slowing down. Either I am asympototically approaching a limit of how many people are willing to listen to my ramblings or I need to be doing more review videos. I have been focusing more on livestreams, because I enjoy the interaction. That may or may not be a good thing. Either way, given how narrowly focused a lot of what I do is, none of this is surprising.
Locals offer some analytic tools even for small communities.The trend in terms of how many people join this Locals community is interesting. This plot shows how many people joined each month.
One interesting observation is that there was a precipitous drop in new subscribers right after the time the world went insane (Russia invades Ukraine) and again after the October 7th when Hamas attacked Israel. Both of those events resulted in my dayjob and work travel going bonkers. I suspect that had a negative impact on the quality of the content I provide here. If that is the case, I should get my ass in gear and do more review videos. That would resolve the question of whether I am getting close to the natural limit for a community as narrowly focused as this one or id this decline in new subscribers simply correlates to the qualit of the content.
Another graphic I have here suggests that it might be the former, since the number of comments (a good metric for engagement), has been inching up:
Either way, this should be easy enough to test. I should make more videos anyway and I am very flattered that 2500 of you were itnerested enough to join.
THANK YOU!
The question of the reticle dimensions comes up occasionally. I have shared them here and there, but figured I should post them in a more searchable post. The scopes are available from Opticsplanet https://shrsl.com/4j1i0 and a few other places here and there https://alnk.to/3ngwfAT
There are two reticles LPR-1D MRAD and LPR-1D BDC
The mrad reticle is more of a general purpose design.
The BDC/MOA reticle is calibrated for 62gr SS109 ammo out of a 16" barrel and 200 yard zero. It can be adapted to other loads with small modifications in zeroing process.
If you need help figuring out how either reticles works with a particular ammo/load you are working with, let me know.
They are designed to look veyr similar to each other when you have to quickly acquire the target: horseshoe is of very similar size, as is the primary aiming point.
If you have a chance to slow down and aim varefully, there are wind and lead holds in both designs.
I did a livestream on these when production samples first showed up here:
