If you own a pair of scope rings or really any firearms accessory that’s made of metal, chances are that metal is aluminum. And if you look at the marketing description it may describe it as “Aircraft grade” aluminum or “Aluminum Aloy” which means that chances are that type of aluminum is 6061.
But there is also 7075 aluminum which was secretly invented in Japan before WWII and used in the famous Mitsubishi A6m “Zero” fighter. This aluminum is technically lighter and harder than 6061. But also harder to mill and work with, which makes it more expensive than 6061.
Discovery optics new line of scope rings and mounts are surprisingly well designed and constructed, with features like lightening cuts and recoil lugs. Moreover they all feature clearly printed informative labels with useful information like the height and diameter or the rings, the amount of torque to apply to the star Torq screws, and the sequence to tighten them down.
The 6061 “lightweight” cantilever offset mount features an index pin to more precisely align the top and bottom halves of the rings together and provide reinforcement against recoil sheering sheering forces on the screws. As the name implies their 20MOA Heavy Duty mount has a 20MOA cant built into the base for Extreme Long Range shooters and features “Pre-Lapped” rings that are polished down to the bare metal providing the mirror smooth contact surface with your scope tube. It also offers 6 screws per scope ring which offers more clamping power if you’re mounting a heavy scope on a big bore (ie. 50BMG) or magnum cartridge rifle.
If you don’t need the 20MOA for pushing out to Extreme Long Rang shooting, you probably don’t want it because that also means you’ll need to compensate by adjusting your scope 20MOA to counteract that ballistic drop of the mount for “normal” range setups.
Both the 6061 and the 7075 rings also feature this pre-lapped treatment. In fact, I’m a bit hard pressed to find a use case for the 6061 rings over the 7075 rings. Certainly the 6061 rings are lighter and 40% cheaper than the 7075 rings but both are under $100 and therefore so affordable as to make the difference in price negligible.
In general you should choose scope rings for the most versatility in scope setups on bolt action and semi-automatic rifles. Discovery Scope mounts will only fit on Picatinny 1913 rails due to their triple recoil lug bases. But if you’re mounting a scope on an AR or a rifle with limited rail space, you may need a mount to provide enough forward offset to push your scope eyepiece far enough forward to provide you with sufficient eye relief to use the scope safely and effectively.
No matter which you choose: scope rings or an offset scope mount, Discovery’s offers exceptional value and by all appearance, exceptional engineering and construction. In all but the most extreme conditions, either 7075 or 6061 should provide you with a strong enough mounting system for your scope.
The Klarus E5 looks like a flashlight Apple would design: a cross between a highly functional EDC and an overpriced minimalist fashion accessory. But the E5 is anything but overpriced. Flat EDC lights are a mini-trend in flashlights. The Olight Arkfeld is probably the best-known example. Klarus has staked out its position by offering the lightest, flattest EDC.
The 1.4 oz E5 weighs less than a pair of Apple AirPods (with charging case). It’s about the size of 3″ bladed EDC knife and shares about the same pocket space. It has a magnetic tip that allows the E5 to tail-stand as a work light or be attached to the roof of a car as a warning signal. The EP5 comes in 6 different colors, with matching colored belt clips.
The EP5 has two light emitters. In function, it’s intended to be primarily a clip-on lapel light. Its main LED emitter is its larger round light on its side. Its auxiliary light forms the top end opposite its magnet. Both lights are activated and controlled by a single side button the light. Tapping on the button after the light unit is activated switches the main light from low-medium-high-flash/signal modes. Keeping the button pressed after activation switches between the Main and Aux light emitters. Double tapping the button activates the Aux light in strobe mode. Triple tapping the button activates the Main light in Turbo mode, outputting a maximum of 600 lumens
The EP5 trades off ergonomics in controls and function for minimalist aesthetics. The EP5 is stylish and lightweight, making it appealing, but it lacks features like mode memory, which are required in a real EDC work light. But its low price, lightweight, and packability make it a great every-day-carry light, just not an every-day-use light.
Cheering Guide – When a KPop or JPop group puts out a video when they release a new title track, and it’s so the fans (if they want) know when and what to cheer at specific times.
Vocaloid – A singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project between Yamaha Corporation and the Music Technology Group in Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
Maven has some of the sexiest looking scopes on the market in terms of build quality, materials, and styling. But don’t let a hot body fool you. Like an exotic sports car the Maven RS.4 has serious engineering under the hood.
The RS.4 is Maven’s scope for PRS competition or long range Western hunting. It offers many features optimized for long range enthusiasts. Maven offers it in MIL or MOA with a variety of Christmas tree and specialty reticles. I got the CFR-MIL reticle which is similar to the PR2 reticle on the Leupold Mk5.
The turrets are oversized and large diameter to provide quick turns to adjust dope and fine adjustments. The turret have a hidden tool-less locking top to allow the user to reset them. Under the elevation turret you’ll find a black metal ring that can be dropped to engage a pin on the turret base to engage a precise zero-stop.
All the nobs and rings turn smoothly. The turrets offer precise tacticle clicks that are audible. The reticle illumination is powered by a CR2032 coin battery and is split between red and green settings with an off in-between brightness settings. The illumination dial layout is a little unusual with the highest settings in both red and green are on the same side of the dial. Unfortunately it’s illumination is only so-so. Only the very central cruciform of the reticle is illuminated with a faint glow on the Christmas tree. The RS.4’s brightest isn’t noon-day daylight which a liability for certain lighting conditions.
The RS.4 has ED glass which gives it excellent sharpness, clarity, and color balance. Chromatic aberration was greatly minimized in all but the highest contrast conditions. Even in those extreme cases, I noted an orange fringe rather than a purple or green one. The eyebox was a bit unforgiving, even with the magnification dialed down to 10x. At 30x it’s very tight, so it’s imperative the shooter have a firm and comfortable cheek weld on their rifle.
The RS.4 is a beautifully designed scope with long range shooters in mind. Especially the kind of shooter who step out of their custom Cybertruck wearing their ironed T.A.D. outfits and matching Canadian Goose parka.
Clint Eastwood’s first leading role was in “A Fist Full of Dollars“. Not many people know this, but that Western was a remake of the Japanese film, “Yojimbo” by Akira Kurosawa. Even fewer realize that Kurosawa was inspired to write his samurai film, by his love of American Westerns.
All this came to mind when I opened up the Midas LE Gen2 box sent me by Athlon. I was struck by how much the LE looked like a giant micro red dot. I realize that RMRs (Ruggedized Miniaturized Reflex-sight) are themselves shrunk down reflex sights. Like the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns: the original was great, the copy was just as good and different enough to be its worth it.
The LE has a reticle that can be changed from a 2MOA red dot, a 65MOA circle-cross, or combined. Activation, brightness, and reticle are controlled by two function buttons on the left-hand side of the LE. Pressing both button simultaneously changes the reticle. The unit has motion activation (aka Shake Awake) and Athlon claims the LE can run for up to 50,000hrs in medium intensity off its CR2032 battery.
The LE was designed as a rifle top red dot. Despite its giant RMR appearance, the LE only a little bit wider than a typical tube-style red dot and about the same weight; it’s smaller than an EOTech X. It offers a nicely designed locking QD Picatinny mount and relatively low profile sitting less than 1.5″ above your rail.
Everyone who tested it remarked on how light it felt on the rifle and how easy it was to sight in. The large reticle and its wide field of view made it easy and fast shooting, thanks to its massive 26x35mm objective lens. Its rare for me to test an optic and then have those who tried it asked me later for links so that they could order one themselves! If Athlon ever roll out an LE Gen 3, I hope they offer a green illumination option and add a 25MOA circle reticle.
Putting on a Plate Carrier (PC) tactical vest can be easy or moderately challenging to the user who customized its setup. But for anyone else, that PC can be a puzzle of buckles, straps, and velcro, that can vary widely by brand and by each user’s customization. Easy enough if the user is conscious but good luck if that user is knocked out or cognitively incapacitated.
Feyachi came up with what may be the easiest way to take off a PC: magnetic buckles. They came up with a unique system that connects the shoulder straps and cummerbund to the front plate that easily disconnects using a cable actuated magnetic buckles. These buckles snap into locking position mechanically. Pulling the cables, moves the magnets which unlock the buckles. This disconnect process is nearly instantaneous and while not always 100%, disconnects enough of the 4 buckles to easily pull off the PC vest of the user.
But that does bring up the question, what’s the use case for this super fast disconnect? Is it in case of a vehicle rollover? Perhaps if the PC is on fire? Or in the case of a water accident, to ditch the heavy PC? Feyachi doesn’t say and if I was their lawyer I probably wouldn’t want them to claim what it does for liability reasons.
For casual PC users such as airsofters who use a vest on a regular basis, having a quick release between skirmish games is pleasant, though most airsoft vests have pretty easy buckle systems. As a PC it is light duty vest that is cheap at around $120.
For professionals the vest feels a bit bit too lightly reinforced and the included pouches are cheaply constructed. The stitching looked budget, with loose thread ends around the velcro, and no gusseting reinforcement in critical straps. Surprisingly the vest’s internal plate pockets have pretty good with extra straps to hold plates in place. The biggest gripe expressed by my tester was that the cummerbund does not have stretch panels, so you have to suck in hard to attach the buckles and put on the vest.
One issue in the design is that he quick release cables are exposed and could snag in real battle situations. The quick release actuator is positioned directly in the center of the chest for easy access but does mean that you can’t position an Admin panel or equipment that would cover it. The vest’s impact padding has air flow channels but the foam pads are a bit too thin to allow for uniform fabric not to fill them in.
This PC vest isn’t bad but it has it’s trade-offs. For tactiCOOL types, having a unique whizz bang bit of of unique gear to flex is its own reward.
One of the first video reviews I posted when I started my channel Moondog2A (nee Moonog Industries) has been getting a lot of attention lately. This was a review of a cheap CVLife reflex sight that I posted over 3 years ago. About two weeks ago I got a strange comment posted that simply read “Triston Mountains” from @RolandaPierzchala-h3l.
I try and respond to every comment posted to my videos, at least with a thumbs up. I even respond to the negative comments when appropriate. But this one was somewhat nonsensical. I Googled “Triston Mountains” which turned out to be on an island in the middle of the South Atlantic and administered by the British Commonwealth. I asked the poster if Triston Mountains was where they lived? They didn’t answer.
But I would get one or two posts a day from other different accounts posting a comments that were simply a random place name, like Garrison Falls, Connelly Valley, or a list of random first and last names. I thought these names may be attempts to tag people but they lacked an @ symbol. These appeared to be random bot accounts simply posting random names. Why?
I asked some fellow YouTubers if they recently had similar posts on their videos and some replied, yes they were bots. We suspect they may an attempt to validate bot accounts by generating a patina of legitimacy by accumulating posts on those fake accounts (building up post counts on YouTube analytics?). Or they could be trojan posts, that are innocuous words now but will later be edited to add in phishing or spam links later. Whatever the case, they do not appear legitimate and we agreed that it would be wise to delete or hide the posts.
Unfortunately I have about a hundred such posts to now go through and manually report to YouTube and delete. The only positive news to report is that so far this spamming has only happened to one of my videos. Be careful out there. The internet is only getting less trustworthy and it’ll only get worse as automated bots and A.I. get better.
I recently reviewed the ED-AR LPVO from Discovery Optics. I even performed a drop test on it and it held zero (though it did shift after dropping, it held that shifted zero). This weekend I had an opportunity to put it through a performance test by using it as my optic in a Falling Plates Match at the Coyote Point Rifle and Pistol Club (CPRPC).
I zero’d out the scope and it performed well. Despite the ED-AR’s middling illumination brightness, it was more then sufficient in helping see a visible aimpoint against a white metal plate and the dark grey of the backstop. Except for one ammo malfunction on my last shot in the first round, I had perfect scores all the way through.
But it all fell apart on my final round. I’d been running the scope at 1x through the first 3 rounds of the match from 30yrds, 35yrds, and 40yrds. But for the last round at 45yrds, I decided to change my magnification from 1x to 3x matching the size of the reticle round to the size of the plate at this distance. I thought that would make it easier to hit the targets. Instead it did the opposite: it made me slower and less steady.
What I failed to realize is that when I had been practicing before the match, I had the scope at 1x. I had gotten used to aiming with the reticle at that size. Moreover each round during the match had given me extra practice and experience shooting with the scope set at 1x. When I switched it to 3x, I didn’t have any practice at it. I was fighting against my muscle memory and the increased magnification made my aim more “jumpy”.
I flubbed my first string only knocking down 2 out of the 6 plates. My second string was better but I only managed 4 out of the 6. Lesson learned: don’t introduce new variables into your optic during a match, without practicing it before hand.
Instead of coming in first (had I against scored a perfect 6 as my previous two rounds). I came in 4th. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
If you would like to compete in a CPRPC monthly Falling Plates Match, you can sign up for their mailing list pistolexecutive@coyotepointrpc.org
This prize supplied by Feyachi and is awarded at their sole discretion and direction.
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