Category Archives: Shooting Sports

Firearms and shooting sports

Shooting Sports

BORESCOPE CONTEST

GRAND PRIZE: Teslong Rifle Borescope & Evike.com Package ($325 value)

The Grand Prize will be chosen from all contest entries submitted from July 28, 2022 through August 28, 2022. Entries must be received no later than 12pm EST on August 28, 2022.

UDPATE
Congratulations Steve Dannuzio of California for winning the contest!

CONTEST INSTRUCTIONS

1. Subscribe or follow my YouTube Channel (Moondog R&D), TikTok, and/or Instagram

2. Take a screen shot of the channel screens showing you have subscribed/followed and email it to me



3. Email me with the Subject: “Borescope Contest”
• Attach the JPG or PNG screen shot
• Include your full name and ship-to address in the email (so I can confirm you live in the US or Canada)

Use the button email below or email me directly at: contest@moondogindustries.com


4. BONUS: Share this with a friend and get them to enter the contest too. Ask them to reference your name and email address in the body of their message ie. “My buddy johndoe@gmail.com clued me into the contest”, and I’ll award you an extra-bonus entry to the contest. It’s important that they reference your email so I can easily look up your entry. Each friend that subscribes and refers to you in their email will earn you another bonus entry for a maximum of 10 entries (including yours).

EMAIL YOUR ENTRY

RULES

NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY TO ENTER. YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING DO NOT INCREASE WITH A PURCHASE. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

1. Eligibility

Void where prohibited by law. Must be legal resident within the USA or Canada. Moondog Industries employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, advertising and promotion agencies, employees’ immediate family members, are ineligible participate in the contest/giveaway.

Entrants must be willing and able to appear on YouTube to discuss the contest and post images of the prize on their social feed should they win the contest.

2. Sponsors & Platforms

Moondog Industries (known as the SPONSOR) is a video Edutainment producer and game promotor based in San Francisco, CA. YouTube, TikTok, Rumble, and online video platforms (known as PLATFORMS) are not SPONSORS or in any way affiliated with the contest or content.

3. Agreement to Rules

By entering your contest, participants agree to abide by the SPONSOR’s Official Rules and decisions. The SPONSOR retain the right to refuse, withdraw, or disqualify entries at their sole discretion. By submitting an entry, the participant agrees to accept the decision of the SPONSOR as final and binding.

4. Entry Period

Contest email entries must be received by between:
12:00pm EST 28 July 2022
and
12:00pm EST 28 August, 2022.

5. How to Enter

This contest requires your skill in navigating your phone or computer controls to screen capture an image of the following YouTube channels/Social Media accounts. Subscribe or Follow and make a screen capture of those pages showing a greyed out Subscribe button or indicator that your account is Following that page. Send a screen capture image file of any of those sites to contest@moondogindustries.com . One entry per person or per Social Media account/platform. Fraudulent methods of entry, photo retouched, or other methods of circumvention of the rules may result in the SPONSOR invalidating a participant’s entries.

6. Prizes

Winner must be able to receive the prize by e-mail or by physical mail. Prize may be substituted at the sole discretion of the SPONSOR. Acceptance of the prize grants SPONSOR permission to use the Winners entry, name, and likeness for advertising, promotion, and trade without further compensation or remuneration unless prohibited by law.

7. Odds

Odds of winning is dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.

8. Selection and Notification of the Winner

The winner will be chosen at random by the SPONSOR from among the entrants that demonstrated the skill to navigate the electronic entry and have met the minimum requirements. Winners will be contacted via the email used to enter the contest no later than December 31, 2022.

SPONSOR are not liable for the winner’s failure to receive notification of winning if he or she provided a wrong email address or if their email security settings caused your prize notification to go into the spam or junk folder. If a winner does not respond within 24hrs of sending a notification, the SPONSOR will select an alternate winner. Receipt of the prize is upon the condition of compliance with federal, state, and local laws.

9. Rights Granted by the Entrant

The SPONSOR, upon submission of an entry into the giveaway or contest, has the right to use the participant’s submission, voice, likeness, image, statements about the contest, etc., for publicity, news, advertising, promotional purposes, trade, and so forth, without any further notice, review, consent, compensation or remuneration.

Participants shall defend or settle against such claims at their sole expense, and shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless the SPONSOR from any suit due to damage of or by the prize.

10. Terms & Conditions

The SPONSOR reserves the right to modify, suspend, cancel or terminate in the event that non-authorized human intervention, a bug or virus, fraud, or other causes beyond your control impact or corrupt the security, fairness, proper conduct, or administration of the contest/giveaway.

11. Limitation of Liability

Entry into this contest constitutes the participants agreement to release and hold harmless the SPONSOR and PLATFORMS, their subsidiaries, affiliates, employees, etc., against all claims liability, illness, injury, death, loss, etc., that occurs directly or indirectly from participation in the contest or use/misuse of the awarded prize.

12. Disputes

As a condition of participating in the promotion, the participant agrees to resolve all disputes with an arbitrator designated by the SPONSOR in the state of California, without resorting to any form of class action. Entrants waive all rights to punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, and waive all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.

13. Privacy Policy

Participants agree to abide by all privacy and NDA laws in the State of California and any federal laws of the United State of America.

14. Winners List

Participants may request a list of winners by submitting a request in writing to Moondog Industries for up to 30 days after the contest ends.

15. Social Media Platform Rules

Winners will agree to post a photo of the prize on their social media channels in such a way as does not violate any rules of that platform. The winners also agree to appear for an interview where they will discuss the prize and its performance. If there are functional problems with the prize, the winner agrees to make a good-faith effort to resolve all issues with the SPONSOR prior to posting reviews or opinions about the prize.

16. Affirmation of Acceptance of and Agreement to All of the Official Rules

By entering the contest, the entrant has affirmatively reviewed, accepted, and agreed to all of the them. 

Airsoft, Shooting Sports

CONTEST July 25

Use your phone and computer skills to win a prize every week.

Enter to Win $100 in Evike Gift Cards
INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: Moondog R&D

2. Take a screen shot of the channel screen showing you have subscribed/followed and email it to me

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is TT.jpg



3. Email me with the Subject: “July 25 Contest”
• Attach the JPG or PNG screen shot
• Include your full name and ship-to address in the email (so I can confirm you live in the US or Canada)

Use the button email below or email me directly at: contest@moondogindustries.com


4. BONUS: Share this contest with a friend. Ask them to reference your name and email address in the body of their message ie. “My buddy johndoe@gmail.com sent me this contest link”, and I’ll award you an extra-bonus entry to the contest. It’s important that they reference your email so I can look up your entry. Each friend that subscribes and refers to you in their email will earn you another bonus entry for a maximum of 10 entries (including yours).

Entries must be received no later than 11:59pm PST on July 24, 2022

EMAIL ME A JPEG

RULES

NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY TO ENTER. YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING DO NOT INCREASE WITH A PURCHASE. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

1. Eligibility

Void where prohibited by law. Must be legal resident within the USA or Canada. Moondog Industries employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, advertising and promotion agencies, employees’ immediate family members, are ineligible participate in the contest/giveaway.

Entrants must be willing and able to appear on YouTube to discuss the contest and post images of the prize on their social feed should they win the contest.

2. Sponsors

Moondog Industries (known as the SPONSOR) is a video Edutainment producer and game promotor based in San Francisco, CA.

3. Agreement to Rules

By entering your contest, participants agree to abide by the SPONSOR’s Official Rules and decisions. The SPONSOR retain the right to refuse, withdraw, or disqualify entries at their sole discretion. By submitting an entry, the participant agrees to accept the decision of the SPONSOR as final and binding.

4. Entry Period

Contest email entries must be received by between:
12:00pm PST 19 July 2022
and
11:59pm PST 24 July, 2022.

5. How to Enter

This contest requires your skill in navigating your phone or computer controls to screen capture an image of the following YouTube channels/Social Media accounts. Subscribe or Follow and make a screen capture of those pages showing a greyed out Subscribe button or indicator that your account is Following that page. Send a screen capture image file of any of those sites to contest@moondogindustries.com . One entry per person or per Social Media account. Fraudulent methods of entry, photo retouched, or other methods of circumvention of the rules may result in the SPONSOR invalidating a participant’s entries.

6. Prizes

The winner will receive $100 in Evike gift cards and a H&K promotional cap shipped to them from San Francisco. Winner must be able to receive the prize by mail. Prize may be substituted at the sole discretion of the SPONSOR. Acceptance of the prize grants SPONSOR permission to use the Winners entry, name, and likeness for advertising, promotion, and trade without further compensation or remuneration unless prohibited by law.

7. Odds

Odds of winning is dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.

8. Selection and Notification of the Winner

The winner will be chosen at random by the SPONSOR from among the entrants that demonstrated the skill to navigate the electronic entry and have met the minimum requirements. Winners will be contacted via the email used to enter the contest no later than December 31, 2022.

SPONSOR are not liable for the winner’s failure to receive notification of winning if he or she provided a wrong email address or if their email security settings caused your prize notification to go into the spam or junk folder. If a winner does not respond within 24hrs of sending a notification, the SPONSOR will select an alternate winner. Receipt of the prize is upon the condition of compliance with federal, state, and local laws.

9. Rights Granted by the Entrant

The SPONSOR, upon submission of an entry into the giveaway or contest, has the right to use the participant’s submission, voice, likeness, image, statements about the contest, etc., for publicity, news, advertising, promotional purposes, trade, and so forth, without any further notice, review, consent, compensation or remuneration.

Participants shall defend or settle against such claims at their sole expense, and shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless the SPONSOR from any suit due to damage of or by the prize.

10. Terms & Conditions

The SPONSOR reserves the right to modify, suspend, cancel or terminate in the event that non-authorized human intervention, a bug or virus, fraud, or other causes beyond your control impact or corrupt the security, fairness, proper conduct, or administration of the contest/giveaway.

11. Limitation of Liability

Entry into this contest constitutes the participants agreement to release and hold harmless the SPONSOR and its subsidiaries, affiliates, employees, etc., against all claims liability, illness, injury, death, loss, etc., that occurs directly or indirectly from participation in the contest or use/misuse of the awarded prize.

12. Disputes

As a condition of participating in the promotion, the participant agrees to resolve all disputes with an arbitrator designated by the SPONSOR in the state of California, without resorting to any form of class action. Entrants waive all rights to punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, and waive all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.

13. Privacy Policy

Participants agree to abide by all privacy and NDA laws in the State of California and any federal laws of the United State of America.

14. Winners List

Participants may request a list of winners by submitting a request in writing to Moondog Industries for up to 30 days after the contest ends.

15. Social Media Platform Rules

Winners will agree to post a photo of the prize on their social media channels in such a way as does not violate any rules of that platform. The winners also agree to appear for an interview where they will discuss the prize and its performance. If there are functional problems with the prize, the winner agrees to make a good-faith effort to resolve all issues with the SPONSOR prior to posting reviews or opinions about the prize.

16. Affirmation of Acceptance of and Agreement to All of the Official Rules

By entering the contest, the entrant has affirmatively reviewed, accepted, and agreed to all of the them. 

Shooting Sports

FBI Citizen’s Academy

In late May, a request went out to the members of the Coyote Point Rifle and Pistol Club (CPRPC) for volunteers to work as RSOs (Range Safety Officer) at a special firearms training event to be held at the Indoor Pistol Range. The CPRPC has its home at the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office Seibel Firearms Training Range, where we use and operate its outdoor rifle range; but the club does not have access to the state-of-the-art indoor pistol range.

The FBI Citizens Academy of San Francisco’s Alumuni Association was invited to by the Sheriff to hold a firearms safety and familiarity course at the facility. Since most of the participants had little or no firearms experience, it was required that there be a 1:1 ratio of RSO’s to students while handling firearms. Thus, on a sunny Saturday in June, I and about 16 other CPRPC members found our selves supervising about 20 FBISFCAA members at the range.

The FBISFCAA members spent the first few hours in a facility classroom taking a Basic Pistol course from a Firearms Instructor. Then in groups of 14 they entered the Pistol Range and were paired up with a CPRPC RSO who supervised them. The FBISFCAA supplied their own ammunitions and each student got to fire 10 rounds each from a pistol and/or revolver on the bench. All of the students performed well and everybody left with a big smile on their face and greater respect for firearms safety.

One thing that struck me was how many of these students had very little or no experience with firearms until today. And many of them were older than me and I’m not youngster. That just reinforces the fact that since the 1960’s average American have had less and less first-hand experience with firearms. Along with the erosion of civility and our sense of civic duty, this is a trend we have to reverse.

Every year, each responsible shooter should introduce a new shooter to the range and shooting sports. If we don’t, the general public will distrust firearms and firearms owners more and more. Humans an an instinctive fear of the unknown. If we have a right to bear arms, then we also have a responsibility to use them wisely and show others how to do so.

If you’re interested in learning more about the FBI and the Citizen’s Academy, check out their website. They have chapters all over the country: https://fbisfcaaa.org/

If you’re Bay Area resident and local shooter and would like to join the Coyote Point Rifle and Pistol Club learning more on the website: http://coyotepointrpc.org/membership

Shooting Sports

CONTEST July 17

Use your phone and computer skills to win a prize


Enter to Win an H&K cap and a $25 Evike Gift Card
INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel or Tiktok.

2. Take a screen shot of the channel screen showing you have subscribed/followed.

3. Email me a JPG or PNG screen shot, using the button email below or email me directly at: contest@moondogindustries.com


4. Include July 17 in the subjectline, your full name and ship-to address (so I can confirm you live in the US or Canada)


5. Each subscribe/follow to each channel is worth (1) entry, for a maximum of (2) entries per person. You may submit both screen caps in your email. Entries must be received no later than 11:59pm PST on July 16.

Submit Email Entry

RULES

NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY TO ENTER. YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING DO NOT INCREASE WITH A PURCHASE. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

1. Eligibility

Void where prohibited by law. Must be legal resident within the USA or Canada. Moondog Industries employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, advertising and promotion agencies, employees’ immediate family members, are ineligible participate in the contest/giveaway.

Entrants must be willing and able to appear on YouTube to discuss the contest and post images of the prize on their social feed should they win the contest.

2. Sponsors

Moondog Industries (known as the SPONSOR) is a video Edutainment producer and game promotor based in San Francisco, CA.

3. Agreement to Rules

By entering your contest, participants agree to abide by the SPONSOR’s Official Rules and decisions. The SPONSOR retain the right to refuse, withdraw, or disqualify entries at their sole discretion. By submitting an entry, the participant agrees to accept the decision of the SPONSOR as final and binding.

4. Entry Period

Contest email entries must be received by between:
12:00pm PST 8 July 2022
and
11:59pm PST 16 July, 2022.

5. How to Enter

This contest requires your skill in navigating your phone or computer controls to screen capture an image of the following YouTube channels/Social Media accounts. Subscribe or Follow and make a screen capture of those pages showing a greyed out Subscribe button or indicator that your account is Following that page. Send a screen capture image file of any of those sites to contest@moondogindustries.com . One entry per person or per Social Media account. Fraudulent methods of entry, photo retouched, or other methods of circumvention of the rules may result in the SPONSOR invalidating a participant’s entries.

6. Prizes

The winner will receive a the prize described in the video shipped to them from San Francisco, CA. Winner must be able to receive the prize by mail. Prize may be substituted at the sole discretion of the SPONSOR. Acceptance of the prize grants SPONSOR permission to use the Winners entry, name, and likeness for advertising, promotion, and trade without further compensation or remuneration unless prohibited by law.

7. Odds

Odds of winning is dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.

8. Selection and Notification of the Winner

The winner will be chosen at random by the SPONSOR from among the entrants that demonstrated the skill to navigate the electronic entry and have met the minimum requirements. Winners will be contacted via the email used to enter the contest no later than December 31, 2022.

SPONSOR are not liable for the winner’s failure to receive notification of winning if he or she provided a wrong email address or if their email security settings caused your prize notification to go into the spam or junk folder. If a winner does not respond within 24hrs of sending a notification, the SPONSOR will select an alternate winner. Receipt of the prize is upon the condition of compliance with federal, state, and local laws.

9. Rights Granted by the Entrant

The SPONSOR, upon submission of an entry into the giveaway or contest, has the right to use the participant’s submission, voice, likeness, image, statements about the contest, etc., for publicity, news, advertising, promotional purposes, trade, and so forth, without any further notice, review, consent, compensation or remuneration.

Participants shall defend or settle against such claims at their sole expense, and shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless the SPONSOR from any suit due to damage of or by the prize.

10. Terms & Conditions

The SPONSOR reserves the right to modify, suspend, cancel or terminate in the event that non-authorized human intervention, a bug or virus, fraud, or other causes beyond your control impact or corrupt the security, fairness, proper conduct, or administration of the contest/giveaway.

11. Limitation of Liability

Entry into this contest constitutes the participants agreement to release and hold harmless the SPONSOR and its subsidiaries, affiliates, employees, etc., against all claims liability, illness, injury, death, loss, etc., that occurs directly or indirectly from participation in the contest or use/misuse of the awarded prize.

12. Disputes

As a condition of participating in the promotion, the participant agrees to resolve all disputes with an arbitrator designated by the SPONSOR in the state of California, without resorting to any form of class action. Entrants waive all rights to punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, and waive all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.

13. Privacy Policy

Participants agree to abide by all privacy and NDA laws in the State of California and any federal laws of the United State of America.

14. Winners List

Participants may request a list of winners by submitting a request in writing to Moondog Industries for up to 30 days after the contest ends.

15. Social Media Platform Rules

Winners will agree to post a photo of the prize on their social media channels in such a way as does not violate any rules of that platform. The winners also agree to appear for an interview where they will discuss the prize and its performance. If there are functional problems with the prize, the winner agrees to make a good-faith effort to resolve all issues with the SPONSOR prior to posting reviews or opinions about the prize.

16. Affirmation of Acceptance of and Agreement to All of the Official Rules

By entering the contest, the entrant has affirmatively reviewed, accepted, and agreed to all of the them. 

Shooting Sports

Sniper ZY 4-14×44

Texas Precision Optics sent me a Sniper ZY 4-14×44 FFP scope to test and its specs were impressive. With a street-price just under $140, you get a First Focal Plane (FFP) scope with HD glass, illumination, locking turrets, and a set of high-rise scope rings and additional accessories. Too good to be true?

Like many of TPO’s scopes, the ZY came pre-mounted out of the box. The scope rings are typical budget/generic Picatinny scope rings. No recoil lugs and rounded cross bolts. It has a 30mm tube and many shooters will likely buy higher quality rings or mounts.

The scope itself appeared will built with solid looking turrets. There was a fair amount of slop between clicks. This is not a precision long-range scope but it did hold zero at the range.

The scopes most unique features is the cogwheel shaped ends. The Sniper’s OEM was definitely going for a gear and tool aesthetic in the externals. Unfortunately the cogweel at the eye-piece had pretty sharp edges, making changing ocular focus uncomfortable. It could really use a bit of sanding/buffing the edges.

Optically, the scope has better than average sharpness and resolution for a 4-14x scope. There was noticeable blurring toward the outside edges of your field of view. The thin inner reticle can be illuminated in red or green with 5 level of intensity.

Available on Amazon
https://amzn.to/3Hjv48m

RESOLUTION
Group: -2
Element: 6

OVERALL RATINGS (out 5)
Build: 4
Glass: 4
Reticle: 4
Holds Zero: 4
Turrets: 3
Eye Box: 3
Value: 5

Shooting Sports

Weight Sorting 5.56mm Ammo

There’s old-school rimfire lore that you can make any cheap box of loose, bulk, 22LR into “match grade” by weighing each bullet cartridge and sorting it by weight into batches. In theory this makes sense because “match grade” ammo differs from “normal” ammo in extra quality control more than construction. I decided to see if this was true? In my tests at 100yrds, I found that my weight sorted 22LR ammo formed 50% tighter groups than unsorted 22LR randomly pulled from the same box.

Which got me wondering, does the same sorting process work with centerfire ammo? I tested it out with a bulk ammo can of Winchester 5.56x45mm 55gr FJM “white box” that I bought at Bass Pro in 2019 before the pandemic and ammo shortage. Winchester White Box has always shot kinda oko in my Aero Precision 20″ Mil-Spec upper; reliable but meh. I usually to get a 3″-3.5″ group at 100yrds, bench rested.

I sorted out 50 cartridges that all fell within 0.5gr of each other and 50 rounds randomly pulled and headed to the range. I set up a target with 8 paper sticker dots. I fired five rounds of weight sorted ammo into each of the four dots in the top row. Then I fired the unsorted ammo at the second row.

Upon inspection, I found that I got on average 2.39MOA in the the weight-sorted ammo. On average, the weight-sorted groups were 7% smaller than the unsorted ammo groups. Comparing mean group sizes, there was only about a 5% difference. If not for an especially bad flyer in one target of the weight-sorted group, that number would have been 2.07 MOA or approximately 20% smaller than the unsorted group. The two smallest weight-sorted groups were almost half the size of the two smallest unsorted groups. And

While this difference, as a percentage, is not nearly as dramatic with 5.56mm as with my .22LR tests, both tests due confirm a significant improvement can be made by simply weighing your bulk box ammo. This is especially helpful due to our current pandemic induced ammo shortages, when Match Grade ammo is nearly impossible to find.

Shooting Sports

OP: Bad Blood 2022

I flew out to the East Coast last week and on Saturday, June 25, I produced another successful Operation: Bad Blood airsoft event at EMR Event Park in northeastern Pennsylvania. Over 800 players made it to the field this year despite the outrageously high gas prices and equally as high humidity and heat (90º). Evike.com sponsored the event for the 14th straight year and sent Matt and a camera crew to take part in the action.

The heat caused numerous heat-related exhaustion injuries which had to be evacuated by EMS from the field; 6 occurred within the first hour! The game ran non-stop all day, with the players forming 4 different competing factions and non-aligned Tribal forces warring it over 200 acres of woods, multi-leveled forts, and simulated villages. The objective of the game for the factions was to collect up to eight different blood sample stamps hidden in the field and on the person of each faction commander.

A bonus mission this year was the capture and extraction of Evike Matt in the last half-hour of the game. No faction won the bonus. The Black Shirts, who were the first to find him, chose instead to run out the clock. Due to safety concerns caused by the oppressive heat and humidity, I called for an early end of the game at 16:00 (much to the relief of all players).

At the end of the game, the sample cards were collected and Marxists and Deus X were tied for the most stamps at 6, but the win was awarded to Deus X because the Marxist CO was unavailable for a tie-breaker duel.

After all the players exited the field and recovered, they gathered around the EMR stage for the legendary post-Bad Blood raffle. Each player received a complimentary raffle ticket and over the course of nearly an hour we raffled off over 50 AEGs, pistols, plate carriers, weapon lights, gift cards, and accessories supplied by Evike.com, Jackal Tactical, Amped Airsoft, O-Light, and EMR. Evike alone supplied a variety of morale patches (over 1000!) that were tossed and distributed to the crowd.

The next morning, I organized a bonus game of OP: Dead Blood, a zombie game. The majority of the attendees camped on the field, too tired from the previous day’s game to drive home. I organized about 300 die-hard players spread out around Fort War and competed against each other to find bio-hazard markers. As players were killed they added to the ever-growing zombie hoard. The rest of the Sunday, EMR ran skirmish games for everyone.

The following Tuesday, while I waited for my delayed flight at Newark Airport back to California, I reflected on the event. Thanks to Evike, EMR, and many players who stepped up to volunteer to help me put on Bad Blood 2002. Despite the brutal heat, the overwhelming feedback I got was positive. I fly back with many lessons and thoughts about how to improve the event for OP: Bad Blood 2023.

Help me reach 1000 subscribers on my Moondog R&D YouTube channel. It’s free, just click the subscribe button on any of my videos https://www.youtube.com/moondogR&D
and help find a cure for diabetes by supporting the JDRF: https://www2.jdrf.org/site/Donation

Story and Event by: Moondog Industries http://www.moondogindustries.com
Photos by Primer Productions https://www.facebook.com/PrimerProductions

Shooting Sports

UTG Recon Flex II Bipod

UTG/Leapers is a Taiwan based maker of optics and firearms accessories that is often miscategorized as a cheap Chinese knock-off brand. But their most recent offerings are often original designs that often copied by the aforementioned knock-off brands. Case in point, their Recon Flex II bipod was one of the first direct attach M-Lok bipods to market.

I purchased the Gen 1 Recon Flex a few years back and found it to be an affordable, rugged, and stable bipod. In addition, its side-mounted M-Lok design made it exceptionally low profile when stowed. It’s major drawback was it’s slow speed in deployment compared to spring-loaded Harris style bipods.

This deficiency was the main feature rectified in the Recon Flex II. Like a Harris bipod, the Flex II has spring loaded lower legs which quickly extend the legs to max extension when the locking tab is pressed. The Flex II also features smaller metallic feet which can be user replaced with Atlas compatible pads.

The lower legs are sectioned to index when adjusting for height. The release tab must be pressed to retract or extend, unlike the Gen 1, which could be pulled out without depressing the release tab. Like the Gen 1 the Flex II has an adjustment wheel should you require a leg length between index stops to level a rifle on uneven terrain.

The Flex II still has not come up with a quicker means to deploy the legs. Unfortunately, the slight redesign of the locking collar with a less aggressive checkering, makes the legs harder to unlock and deploy compared to the Gen 1. A slightly flared collar or raised checkering might solve some of this but the short of adding spring loaded legs or creating an unlocked free swinging mode, this design will never be as quick to deploy as a Harris-style bipod. The trade off for the quick deployment its legs is a thinner profile when stowed and the option to angle the legs forward to pre-load the tripod.

Because of the bipods M-Lok side-mounting, the bipod can not swivel or cant. For some shooters this is no loss and may be preferred. The Flex II offers a very rigid and strong shooting platform which just a slight amount of give for micro-adjustments required for precision shooters.

Overall the Flex II is an improvement on the Gen 1 but the changes are not all improvements. The two handed leg lock design and the smoother locking collar both make for a new design which can actually be slower to use than the original Recon Flex. But a retail price still below a $100, this is one of the most affordable high-quality, bipods available.

This Recon Flex II is available on Amazon through my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3sL5ItE

The original Gen 1: https://amzn.to/3wGheIb

Shooting Sports

Hawke Sidewinder 30

Hawke is one of the top hunting optics makers in the United Kingdom and the largest maker of precision airgun optics in the world. But chances are, unless you shoot competitive or hunting airguns in the U.S., you’ve never heard of Hawke scopes. You should.

I meet the folks at Hawke at Shot Show this year and they showed me some of their newest products. The Sidewinder caught my eye because it had an unusual temperature gauge like window in the elevation turret, to indicate how many revolutions you turned. I wanted to get my hands on one to test at the range and Hawke was kind enough to send me a Sidewinder 30 6-24×56 FFP model.

The box had a clean, white design indicative of in high end European brands. Inside was a scope, sun shade, parallax focus wheel, throw leaver, cleaning cloth, allen wrench, and instruction book. The scope came with a modern update of old-school see-through caps, kept in place with an elastic band.

On close inspection the scope was of excellent build. The 30 in the name denotes the tube dimension which offers it a wider range of reticle adjustments from their older 1″ tube designs. My first impression was that the scope felt light and its stated weight of 27.3oz is approx 6oz lighter than my Athlon Helos Gen2. The tube has a smooth matte black finish and all the nobs and turning surfaces are well checkered and treaded to aid in manipulation for wet or gloved fingers.

The parallax focus and ocular fast focus turned smoothly. The parallax ranges from 10yrds to infinity. The eyepiece ocular/reticle focus has locking ring, an uncommon feature nowadays but a welcome one for hunters.

It’s most striking feature, and which originally caught my eye, is the elevation turret. At the base of the turret there is a witness window showing a red-on-white gauge numbered 0-4, which rises or falls with the turn of the turret cap. The turret clicks are clearly audible and tactile positive. Both turrets are locking, with a pull-to release allowing the cap to turn freely.

The elevation turret had a noticeable wobble when released. This concerned me enough to contact Hawke which suggested I send it back to have a Service Tech examine it. Hawke was a no-fault lifetime warranty, so this was done easily, with them sending me a mailing label to ship it back to them.

A few weeks later, I followed up and their Tech assured me that there was nothing wrong with my scope. The wobble is an unintended side effect to the unique design of the elevation turret. They shipped it back to me that same week.

I would like to note that the “wobble” did not effect the function of the scope in my testing. The windage turret, of a traditional design, had no wobble. Both turrets are resettable by unscrewing the cap.

The scope has an illumination dial on the parallax turret. The center third of the reticle illuminates red when activated. The dial has settings from 1-6 in intensity with an off-setting between the numbers. At its highest setting at 24x magnification, the reticle is bright enough for daylight use.

The reticle itself is exceptionally fine/thin to a fault. It is a cruciform, Christmas-tree style with MIL sub-tensions. At 6x it floats in the center of the field of view without touching the edges. As a First Focal Plane (FFP) reticle, it thickens up considerably at 24x to a weight more typical of a SFP reticle.

This reticle may appeal more to target shooters rather than hunters? At 6x it is so thin as to be easily lost in heavy foliage. Then again, some hunters may want a clearer field of view when wide scanning at 6x.

Most MIL or MOA target reticles (especially Christmas-tree style) have a few reference numbers along the reticle sub-tensions to indicated MOA or MIL radiant from center. The Hawke Sidewinder lacks any numbers or letters and is as naked as a duplex reticle. This has the advantage of offering the user a much less cluttered sight picture even for a Christmas-tree reticle but with the added challenge of carefully reading their user manual and remembering the size and distance each sub-tension mark.

As a primarily Precision competition shooter, this thin and simplified reticle very much works for me. The Christmas-Tree employs mini cross-hairs instead of dots to denote its holdover positions which makes shooting at paper much easier. But for an ELR or NRL22 shooter, you’ll have to devise your own cheat sheet and get very used to remembering and counting your marks.

The scope has a generous 4″ and the eyebox was better than most even at 24x. Looking at my reference targets at 24x at 100yrds, there were noticeable chromatic aberration but the image was evenly sharp from center to edge. The image was bright, though slightly warm in tinge and lacked a bit of contrast compared with Vortex and Leupold scopes I’ve tested.

Where this scope shines is in sharpness and resolution. You can easily make out .22 caliber holes on paper at 100yrds. On the USAF-51 optical resolution chart, I could make out the Element 1 / Group 0 element bars with my naked eye (my phone camera could only make out Element 6 / Group -1). This puts it on par with a comparably priced Leupold Mark 3HD and almost as sharp as much more expensive Leupold Mark 5HD.

Available on Amazon through my Affiliate LInk: https://amzn.to/3z5R3NQ

RESOLUTION
Group: -1
Element: 6

OVERALL RATINGS (out 5)
Build: 5
Glass: 5
Reticle: 4
Holds Zero: 5
Box Test: 5
Turrets: 4
Eye Box: 4
Value: 4

Airsoft, Shooting Sports

OP:BB 2022 OLight Giveaway

OLIGHT Baldr Mini

Enter by Jun 15, 2022 to Win


Enter to Win an OLight weaponlight. Use your skill to SUBSCRIBE, JOIN or FOLLOW any or all of these Social Media Channels/Accounts. So there are multiple ways to enter.


1. Use the button below to email a screen capture of any of these pages to olight@moondogindustries.com


2. Include your full name and ship-to address (so I can confirm you live in the US or Canada)


3. Each subscription/follow is worth (1) entry per person. You may submit multiple screen caps in your email. Entries must be received no later than 11:59pm PST on June 15.

Submit Email Entry


NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY TO ENTER. YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING DO NOT INCREASE WITH A PURCHASE. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

1. Eligibility

Void where prohibited by law. Must be 18 years of older to enter and residing in the USA or Canada. Moondog Industries and OLight employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, advertising and promotion agencies, employees’ immediate family members, are ineligible participate in the contest/giveaway.

Entrants must be willing and able to appear on YouTube to discuss the contest and post images of the prize on their social feed should they win the contest.

2. Sponsors

Olight USA and Moondog Industries are collectively known as SPONSORS. OLight USA 7951 Angleton Ct. STE B, Lorton, VA, 22079 is supplying the prize(s) and shipping them directly to the winner. Moondog Industries is a game promotor based in San Francisco, CA is organizing the contest on behalf of OLIght to promote the OP: Bad Blood event for EMR Event Park and Evike.com

3. Agreement to Rules

By entering your contest, participants agree to abide by the Sponsors Official Rules and decisions. Moondog Industries and OLight retain the right to refuse, withdraw, or disqualify entries at their sole discretion. By submitting an entry, the participant agrees to accept the decision of the Sponsors as final and binding.

4. Entry Period

Baldr Mini entries must be received by between 12:00pm PST June 1 and 11:59pm PST June 15. Baldr Pro-R entries must be received between 12:00PST May 7, 2022 and 11:59pm May 31, 2022.

5. How to Enter

This contest requires your skill in navigating your phone or computer controls to screen capture an image of the following YouTube channels/Social Media accounts. Subscribe or Follow and make a screen capture of those pages showing a greyed out Subscribe button or indicator that your account is Following that page. Send a screen capture image file of any of those sites to olight@moondogindustries.com . One entry per person or per YouTube channel/Social Media account. Fraudulent methods of entry, photo retouched, or other methods of circumvention of the rules may result in the Sponsor invalidating a participant’s entries.

6. Prizes

The winner will receive an OLight Baldr Pro R weapon light shipped to them from Olight. Winner must be able to receive the prize by mail. Prize may be substituted at the sole discretion of OLight. Acceptance of the prize grants Sponsors permission to use the Winners entry, name, and likeness for advertising, promotion, and trade without further compensation or remuneration unless prohibited by law.

7. Odds

Odds of winning is dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.

8. Selection and Notification of the Winner

The winner will be chosen at random by the Sponsors from among the entrants that demonstrated the skill to navigate the electronic entry and have met the minimum requirements. Winners will be contacted via the email used to enter the contest during the week of June 6, 2022 and announced June 12, 2022.

Sponsors are not liable for the winner’s failure to receive notification of winning if he or she provided a wrong email address or if their email security settings caused your prize notification to go into the spam or junk folder. If a winner does not respond within 24hrs of sending a notification, the Sponsors will select an alternate winner. Receipt of the prize is upon the condition of compliance with federal, state, and local laws.

9. Rights Granted by the Entrant

The Sponsors, upon submission of an entry into the giveaway or contest have the right to use the participant’s submission, voice, likeness, image, statements about the contest, etc., for publicity, news, advertising, promotional purposes, trade, and so forth, without any further notice, review, consent, compensation or remuneration.

Participants shall defend or settle against such claims at their sole expense, and shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless the Sponsor from any suit due to damage of or by the prize.

10. Terms & Conditions

Sponsor reserve the right to modify, suspend, cancel or terminate in the event that non-authorized human intervention, a bug or virus, fraud, or other causes beyond your control impact or corrupt the security, fairness, proper conduct, or administration of the contest/giveaway.

11. Limitation of Liability

Entry into this contest constitutes the participants agreement to release and hold harmless the Sponsors and its subsidiaries, affiliates, employees, etc., against all claims liability, illness, injury, death, loss, etc., that occurs directly or indirectly from participation in the contest or use/misuse of the awarded prize.

12. Disputes

As a condition of participating in the promotion, the participant agrees to resolve all disputes with an arbitrator designated by the Sponsors in the state of California, without resorting to any form of class action. Entrants waive all rights to punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, and waive all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.

13. Privacy Policy

Participants agree to abide by all privacy and NDA laws in the State of California and any federal laws of the United State of America.

14. Winners List

Participants may request a list of winners by contacting Moondog Industries for up to 1yr after the contest ends.

15. Social Media Platform Rules

Winners will agree to post a photo of the prize on their social media channels in such a way as does not violate any rules of that platform. The winners also agree to appear for an interview where they will discuss the prize and its performance. If there are functional problems with the prize, the winner agrees to make a good-faith effort to resolve all issues with the Sponsors prior to posting reviews or opinions about the prize.

16. Affirmation of Acceptance of and Agreement to All of the Official Rules

By entering the contest, the entrant has affirmatively reviewed, accepted, and agreed to all of the them.