As is usually the case, I am completely incapable of writing anything thoroughly heartfelt, thought provoking and pofound.  Yet, my usual forte of dark and cynical somehow feels inappropriate for this day, so bear with me.

It is a beautiful summer day and a celebration of the birth of a beautiful place.

America is divided.  People are at each other's throats.  There are plenty of reasons to be concerned.  Yet, I am optimistic that we will get through this current insanity and emerge from it a better place than we were before.  It will require serious effort in order to stop the onslaught of marxism in our government and, especially, educational institutions.  It will also require serious effort in order to stop the onslaught of some of the particualry brain dead branches of populism, isolationism and personality cult that are popping up with alarming regularity.  All of these are largely propagated by a diversified group of grifters whose time in the limelight has an expiration date.  The American experiment will outlast them all. 

There is work to be done, but America is fundamentally a good place.  That is not easily erased.

Whenever I feel despair creeping up (usually after checking up on current events), I think back to my family's immigrant story.

It is a very uncomplicated story and I know of so many other people coming here from different parts of the world whose American immigrant experience is eerily similar.

We came here with nothing beyond a bag of clothing for each person and a few hundred dollars of cash squirreled away from selling our posessions in the Soviet Union.  We tried to send out several packages with our books (we had a somewhat etensive library back in Moscow that was precious to us), but most of those were stolen my Russian customs.  Whoever has our books now, I hope they are enjoying them.  I have been slowly trying to rebuild it, piece by piece.  Books matter to me. 

Whatever we were able to bring with us was not much for a family of five.  Getting out of the Soviet Union was rough.  Going into this new world, new culture and new society was scary.  We knew nothing of what we were going to face and we were filled with apprehension.  We came here as refugees.  There was nowhere to go back.  We had no intention of ever going back.  We came here in 1991 and none of us or our children ever set foot back in Russia.  I plan to keep that way.

Immigration was hard.  Adjustment was hard.  America made it a lot less hard that it could have been.  That goes for both American government and American people.  Both welcomed us with open arms. We were fortunate to have distance family in the US who rented an apartment for us and paid the security deposit.  We had a place to sleep and air to breath. Beyond that, every opportunity to succeed was available to us.

The government helped us during the first few months while we all found some sort of an employment.  We did not like to be on government assistance and were done with that quickly.

We studied.  We worked hard.  We did what we could.  We moved furniture, washed dishes, cleaned houses and distributed restaurant flyers until there was skilled labor we were qualified for.  

When I came here, I was high school age.  My brother was starting out in college.  Our adaptation was pretty quick.  It was undoubtedly much harder for our parents who had the entire weight of responsibility on them.  I am almost the same age now as my father was when we came here.  Maybe now I can finally comprehend what my parents went through.  They might be paying for it now the way their health is.  I am told Parkinson's disease is a consequence of living an unhealthy lifestyle when you are younger, so there is a good chance my mother's current condition stems from that.  Or something else.  We can't know.

Still, as hard as immigration was, I can't help but realize that every time I look back and think about it, America was incredibly gracious to us.  It only wanted one thing from us: to work hard.  Maybe that's what is truly required to make immigrants into Americans.  The ethos of working hard and reaping the rewards of your own labor is an essential part of the idea that is America.

I leave you with a short piece written by George Friedman back in 2016.  It is as true today as it was back then.  He truly has the gift of the word.  If you have not reas his book "The Calm Before The Storm", I highly recommend it. https://amzn.to/4buSBAn

Happy Fourth of July!

Two hundred and forty years ago today, the American people were declared to be a unique and independent nation, distinct from all others. This was the conception of the people, but the sovereign government of the United States was born in battle. The revolution lasted eight years and about 25,000 died – a higher percentage of the population than died in World War II. This led over time to the Constitution, which founded the regime that governed the American people.

It was a unique regime because it did not trust politicians. The founders feared the politicians’ desire for power. To solve this problem, they founded a regime so unwieldy, so inefficient, that very little could get done.  Their vision of America was a country of businesses and farms, churches and societies. They envisioned a nation whose heart was not in Washington – an artifice invented to hold politicians – but in private life. The life of farmers, businessmen, clergymen and eccentrics. Few other governments were founded with such fear of governance.

I recently told a foreign friend that his country has excellent relations with Washington, but it needs a better relationship with America. Many of our non-American friends live in countries where the political capital is the heart of the country. That isn’t the case in the United States. The American revolution was fought to make certain the government was weak and society strong and free. Our founders feared strong presidents and contrived to cripple them before they took office by confronting them with two Congressional houses run on different rules and a Supreme Court. Very little can get done, yet America flourishes.

When you marvel at our candidates for president, bear in mind that the U.S. president is among the weakest heads of government in the world. The sacrifice of 25,000 was to make sure tyranny would not rule this country. If the price was political paralysis, it was a small price to pay.

When looking at modern budget LPVOs, the ones that stand out to me are the versions with fiber illuminate reticles.  These have been around for a while in different guises, but they started (at least the ones I can think of) with Japanese manufacturers.  Trijicon has been dabbling with different version for a long time, but Vorte Razor Gen2 1-6x24 is the scope that really put it on the map.  These have been made in significant quantities and acquitted themselves very nicely.  A while back, I spent some time in the place that maintains a lot of the small weapon systems for the various specialized troops we have.  I was not there for dayoptics, but boy did I see a lot of Razor Gen2 scopes there.  They were well liked and they held up well.  Simple reticle was easy to use and the ultra bright fiber dot made the scope seriously fast.  Wide and very well corrected FOV did not hurt either.  The scope is not cheap, so Vortex offered a similar reticle illumination scheme in a much cheaper Phillipino made PST Gen2 1-6x24 https://alnk.to/aANR0Sl

A lot more recently, Chinese OEMs figured out how to do fiber reticles and Primary Arms' 1-6x24 with Nova fiber iluminated reticle became an unmitigated success. https://alnk.to/6bUUuw4  

Fiber illuminated reticles are electroformed (wire), rather than etched out of glass.  That prevents reticle designers from adding many features of questionable utility into the sight picture.  Apparently, the concept worked since Primary Arms has since added a fiber illuminated version of their PLxC 1-8x24 which is really impressive https://alnk.to/4XvBCQE (review coming soon).   That's the scope that goes head to head with the Razor Gen2.

What, then, goes head to head with the inexpensive PA SLx?

That would be the 2nd generation of SwampFox Tomahawk scopes.  I saw the 1-6x24 version at SHOT and it is avialable with a wire fiber illuinated reticle (BFO in SwampFox parlance) and more conventional, but less bright glass etched reticle.  All of these reticles are avialable in 1-4x24 and 1-6x24 models.

Unlike most other scopes out there, SwampFox offers their fiber illumination in four colors: red, blue, green and amber.

After staring at the specs a little bit, I got my hands onto the 1-4x24 model with amber iluminated dot.

I suspect more people would prefer red or green dot https://alnk.to/58qmBLq , but I had a very specific thing I wanted to test.

I have mild astigmatism and an ultra bright red dot does trigger it slightly.  It does not impact my shooting, but amber is supposed to play better with astigmatism.  For people with more sever eye astigmatism than mine, this could be important.

Well, to cut the long story short, the amber dot is indeed sharper to my eye.  Here is the view through the Tomahawk II on 1x:

and on 4x:

I looked at the Tomahawk next to he similarly priced Primary Arms SLx 1-6x24:

In comparison, the new Swampfox is about an inch shorter and a couple of ounces heavier.  The illumination on the PA is a bit brighter, but both were easily day bright in midday Albuquerque sun.

PA's SLx has simple covered turrets.  SwampFox uses locking exposed turrets.  That probaby accounts for the weight difference.  On a scope of this type, covered turrets work just fine, but as long as the turrets lock, I do not hugely care.

What I do care about is the FOV and that is the reason I went with the 1-4x SwampFox instead of the 1-6x.  On 1x, it has 134ft @ 100yards FOV.  That's a lot.  All of the scope I talk about in the background section above are in the 115 to 120 ft range.  Here is the view through the SLx on 1x.  Note that FOV difference:

The 1-6x version of the Tomahawk II has FOV nearly identical to the PA, but the 1-4x is wider.  To me, that is probably more important on a budget LPVO than the erector ratio (within reason).  I'd love to see a truly modern 1-4x LPVO that is very short and has wide FOV.

In the meantime, I am pretty hapy with the new SwampFox.  Optically, it is a step up over the previous generation and a flatter image than the SLx.  Now, it is not a true apple to apples comparision due to different erector ratios.  However, it is a very nicely sorted out scope in terms of image quality.  Resolution and contrast are pretty good even at the edges.  I spent time with it in a variety of lighting conditions without any issues.  Even flare is fairly well controlled.

Mechanically, I have not had any issues yet, but it is a sample of one.  I did not test whether the windage turret tracks.  It tracked correctly while sighting in, but that's oe adjustment.  I did check the elevation turret to the tune of about 30MOA and it was accurate.  Since I do not intend to dial with it, I did not spend much time on that.  The clicks are 0.5 MOA each and one full turn of the turret is 50MOA.

That gets to what I consider to be the main weakness of the design: like several SwampFox products it is MOA only.  That basically makes it a non-starter for my own personal use, but if you are an MOA shooter, you might like it.

If you can live with the MOA reticle, the new Tomahawk II appears to be a very nicely sorted out budget LPVO option.  Like all SwampFox products to date, it is made in China, which is why it costs what it costs.  If you want a different country of origin, you'll need to open up your wallet a bit wider.

However, you would have to open it MUCH wider to get a alrger apparent FOV.  The 1-4x24 Tomahawk II clocks in with an apparent field of view of just over 25 degrees.  That's quite a lot and is one of the reasons it works well with clip-ons.  Between that and the different reticle illumination options, it offers a compelling alternative.

This competition is a blast.  Next year, I am going to shoot it.  It is an interesting combination of normal precision shooting with both bolt gun and semi-auto, shooting from unsupported positions with both, and some handgun shooting.   The focus is still on stuff that requires good precision, but it does require a lot of versatility, thinking outside the box and team communication.

Simply watching people shoot was very illuminating.  Field stages are long rifle only.  Assault stages is where things get creative. 

Each team has two shooters.  One carries a bolt gun and a handgun.  The other carries a semi-auto carbine and a handgun.

For example, there was one stage where the first shooter has to shoot several plates with a handgun.  The plates are far enough where you need to know what you are doing.  I tried it with my carry gun (G43x) and struggled a little.  Watching other people shoot at these with full size handguns made me feel a little less bad about myself.  When a pistol shooter missed a target, his teammate had to shoot a hanging plate 250 yards away with whichever long gun he happens to have.  250 yards is not very far, except you are not allowed to use tripods and can not sit or go prone.  You can get on one knee, but nothing else is supposed to touch the ground.

The people who had triple pull Ckye bipod did not have any issues there.  Here is a picture with Dorgan settng up to make it look easy:

If you do not have a tall-ass bipod... you improvise.  Here is one of the more creative methods I saw.  It looks odd, but beats the hell out of doing this unsupported. 

After they were all done, we shot a little at that 250 yard plate.  My kids shot it prone and made quick work of it.  I shot it unsupported and only connected on the third shot.  I suspect that doing this on the clock would make things worse.

On long rifle stages, pretty much everyone was shooting off of tripods, some kneeling, some standing.  I think many people unutilized the gear they had and completely forgot that it is a team event where they can use their teammates gear as well (they shoot one at a time).  The whole team aspect makes it even more interesting.

I spent even more time with the Signature LRF bino.  I like it.  It is going onto my list of recommendations.  https://shrsl.com/4kzs1   10x42 is not my favourite configuration, but it works well enough.  User interface is quite familiar.  All I need from it is to give me the LOS distance and horizontal distance, which it easily does.  Ranging worked pretty well to a bit beyond 2000 yards.  It is probably more along th elines 1000-1200 yards on a deer though.  That's plenty for my purposes.  The binocular is easy to hold.  Rubber coating is just right in terms of giving me a secure hold without getting too sticky.  Collimation quality is good, since I did not have any real eye fatigue to worry about.  Focus wheel is not showing any apparent hysteresis.

I also shot a bit with a handgun that had Burris' new Fastfire C red dot. https://alnk.to/cSHEuuf It is a RMSc pattern sight with a 6MOA dot.  You can either run it in a manual mode or in an autoadjust moode (my preference).  One the Burris guys had a G43x similar to mine excpet with the Fastfire C.  My G43x wears Crimson Trace's Rad Micro (I am wrapping up with a lng term test).  Rad Micro has worked well for me, but in terms of sight picture and dot quality, I have to admit the Fastfire C is a better sight.  Between these two, the only reason to go with CT would be if you have a preference for green dots https://alnk.to/6TzT8NE

There was a lot more to observe and tomorrow I'll head out to other stages and do some more shooting when the competitors are done.