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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Hazzbro is a reloading YouTuber who I met (virtually) on the Guns, Beer, and Therapy livestream hosted by American Hillbilly. He created a Mario themed target shooting contest called the Hammer Time Challenge. He’s inviting everyone to download his targets and shoot it for points and to post up your results.
I took up the challenge and download the 22LR target sheet. After my falling plates match at the range, I set up Hazzbro’s target at 50yrds and shot them with my CZ457 using CCI standard velocity ammo. We’re in the middle of a heat wave here in the San Francisco Bay Area and unfortunately, by mid-afternoon the 50yrd line was fully exposed to the sun.
It was an uncomfortable process of zero’ing out the scope and shooting the targets. But I managed to not miss too often or hit Mario. Still I failed to hit either of the coin targets and only scored a 16 after penalties. Can I do better? Possibly. Certainly with better ammo but I’m reasonably satisfied with my performance, though I won’t be winning any prizes with it.
At about 80k miles, I replaced the headlight bulbs in my KIA Sorrento 2019 with similar Sylvania H7 halogen bulbs. Most newer cars have switched to LED bulbs so I was interested in upgrading my lights to LEDs but many require cooling fans and “ballast” boxes containing controller electronics which make it difficult to fit into light housings without modification.
I found these H7 replacement bulbs by MIFMIA, a brand I’m not familiar with. Testing them out I found that their design was indeed identical length and form factor to halogen H7 bulbs. They fit in my housing and installed without issue. Their beams were brighter than the halogen bulbs and provided a whiter/bluer light.
Unfortunately my KIA’s computerized diagnostics system registered an error and displayed a warning light that my headlamp bulbs were burned out/disabled. These MIFMIA bulbs were returning an incorrect voltage signal to the car’s diagnostics and setting off a false alarm. Unfortunately they didn’t work for my 2019 KIA but they may work for your car.
On this Live Chat with my viewers we talked about my new October Contest giveaway prize: Discovery Optics 7075 offset scope mount. While setting up that contest, I discovered that PayPal ended of their fundraising feature. I wonder why? I didn’t use GoFundMe because that service doesn’t allow me to contact or info about the donor so I can register them in my contest.
Almost four years ago, I posted one of my first rifle scope reviews of my Vortex Diamondback Tactical (DBT). For the longest while it was my go-to scope on my Ruger Precision Rimfire when I wasn’t testing a scope. In those intervening three years I’ve reviewed dozens of scopes and thought it was worth revisiting my assessment of it.
The DBT is one of Vortex most affordable partly due to it’s more paired down features. It does not have illumination, a zero stop elevation turret, nor locking windage. It does have an excellent FFP reticle with a Christmas tree for long-distance shooting and nice thick outer cross hairs to make it easier to see the reticle out at low power. It was a “cross-over” scope before there was even a term for it. I especially like its tiny 0.25 open center, which allows me to more precisely see the center X when competing at 100yrd matches.
What I’ve forgotten or failed to notice was the DBT’s faults. The scope has an unforgiving eyebox at 24x. It has rather sloppy feeling turrets that pass the box test and track. The glass has noticeable chromatic aberration but despite that shows surprisingly sharp resolution.
Despite its flaws it is still a solid performer and one of the best value scopes, giving a solid option in Vortex’s low entry level scopes.
