I guess you guys missed herthis?:



HOWA latest entrant into the precision rifle running.

The M1500 is in an MDT Oryx chassis. (Canadian, eh). ACIS pattern magazine. 6.5CM, 6mm CM and .308.



How can you resist a smile rifle like that?



https://www.alloutdoor.com/2019/01/27/h ... Newsletter

Here is what the REVIC 428 optic looks like with the screen - the 824 is the new zero based on how many clicks of elevation you're set at. Temp, compass and barometric pressure are also displayed and calculated for. Wind hold is also displayed based on user entered wind information. Pretty cool!





I'm excited to try this thing out.

Cool delio.

In a somewhat connected subect....You'd think with all of the electronics that can withstand recoil now-a-days that Leupold would get off its a$$ and make their Thermal Imager monacle and especially for the price.

Now... on to VLTOR's new buffer kit.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/201 ... Newsletter

From Guns America @ SHOT 2019: The Double Barreled Revolver
8 shots/4 trigger pulls.

https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/stan ... show-2019/

Funny you posted this. Me , and a guy I had lunch with today was mentioning it.

You rock Mike, thanks for specifically addressing each request!

Agreed. Mike took that list very seriously and worked hard on it.

I beg for forgiveness in my tardiness in posting up on SHOT. You've heard of the proverbial one-legged man in a butt kicking contest? For the last several months I have been the one-armed, two-arthritic-legged, insomniacal man in a getting-his-butt-kicked contest. I am only now catching up with the work that I left for later when I went for SHOT. Please to forgive your humble servant.

First up is :


Primary Arms 6.5CM Apollo.
https://www.primaryarms.com/pa-3-18x50m ... cm-reticle

I spent about 35 minutes at the PA booth... Some of that time was waiting for an available rep, and the rest was spent with a rep name of Ian. He is an engineering support tech for PA, and the fellow who performs the endurance testing.
The bottom floor of the SHOT Show is not the most ideal environment for checking out the clarity of the glass of various scopes, but it did look good to my uncalibrated eye. I focused in on the furthest details which are usually pretty dark as I am looking up in the ceiling a few hundred feet away. I just hate looking through a rifle scope along where people are walking, even if said scope is attached to a fake rifle stock. It's just a terribly strong habit to try to break.
Objects like wiring and cables for hanging ventilation looked clear. Those small (1/8" maybe?) cables remained sharp despite the low light conditions in the ceiling.

Some specs of the Apollo scope :
SLx6 3-18x50 FFP
3x-18x - 50mm obj.
~ 4" of eye relief. Pretty nice I thought.
12 Step illumination, powered by a CR232.
Locking turrets. (Pull up, adjust, push down to lock.)

Primary Arms Optics come in 4 "tiers" in ascending price/quality.

Classic CLx ("unlike some other brands, we don't use the word "value" as a euphemism for "junk." [...] budget conscious [...] We take the time to 100% inspect every product at our facility here in Houston..." ) No country of origin is named for their CLx line.

Silver SLx ("heart of our lineup") No country of origin is named for their SLx line.

Gold GLx ("all-new Gold Series, engineered in Houston and constructed in the Philippines [...] exacting standards. latest technology and upgraded materials... intuitive solutions")

Platinum PLx ("flagship scopes manufactured and assembled in Japan with superior glass clarity and best materials [...] maximize the capability of the latest ACSS reticles")
The 6.5CM Apollo is in the PLx tier.
The 6.5CM Apollo is in the SLx tier. Thank you for the correction Isildur.

Which brings us to the ACSS reticles.
ACSS Reticle Images

I'm easily impressed, being a country bumpkin who has loved the heck out of iron sights, but I think I was even more impressed with some of the ACSS details. I have heard many people talk about how some reticles are "too busy"... I have even parroted comments like that myself sometimes, because simple just seems to feel right(er) than busy.
But the truth is that for me I only see the part of the scope view that I need to see at the moment that I am looking through it. I mean that I am not distracted by all the other bells and whistles going on around my target inside the scope.
So, if you like the old school crosshairs more than BDC and new fangled wind hold dots, you may not enjoy the ACSS reticles as much as I do.
ACSS core features : (From several of the other scopes, core features listed in the PA catalog.)
1. Chevron tip provides infinitely small aiming point blah blah blah (I don't even notice anything other than the point.)
2. Bullet drop compensation ladder provides holdovers for increasing target range. Nice small ladder too. I like.
3. Wind hold dots provide holdovers for crosswinds as target distance increases.
4. Vertical and horizontal automatic ranging determines distance to target.
5. Moving target leads provide holdovers compensating for target speed.
6. Breathalyzer that paints a circle of expected inaccuracies based on BAC for a given distance to target (DMOA, or Drunk MOA.)

Alright you caught me. I made the last one up.
But the reticle is not too busy for me. I thought that in a long range target shooting situation, every one of those "busy" options could be very cool to have.

ETA : An image of the reticle for Apollo-6.5CR



Alright, a couple of details. Ian showed me a pretty nifty (aftermarket) fold out magnification lever.
The parallax adjustment is inside the illumination ring.
Lifetime Warranty : I love PA's description of their lifetime warranty.



I asked if this scope had been tested for 50BMG. A: No. Ian does the ruggedness testing with .308 to 1000 rounds.
The reason that he doesn't test for 50BMG? Costs too damned much. hahah
Also, he pointed out that PA is located in the city, and it's a bit of a pain to drive to a range that he can properly run out 1000 rounds of 50BMG.

This write up is done by a relative new guy to scopes. Have used them all my life, but generally leaned to iron sights and simple cheap scopes <$300. Any errors or omissions, please let me know and I'll try to get straightened up myself and fix the write up so as not to mislead others through my ignorance.

Nice write-up, but I believe that scope is in their SLx line:



PLx are here: https://www.primaryarms.com/search?keywords=Plx

Sounds right, but Ian from PA said PLx and that it was made in Japan. I may have misheard him regarding the PLx, and they make the SLx in Japan too?

Corrected in the write up... Thank you sir!

Also added an image of the reticle for the Apollo 6.5CR.

That's odd... PA rep told me that the Apollo 6.5CR was made in Japan. I wrote it in my little notebook!

A few items that caught my eye and made me turn back to admire...



sinus211 Mike held this beauty up for the photo... The photo does not capture the colors at all. It was a real stunner in real life.


What can I say except that I like wood!

I surely wish that I had been able to shoot one of these... I am a big fan of bullpups.
The booth:


Most of what I will be typing out is from simple eyeballing, listening to a few reps while they were talking with others (busiest booth that I tried to catch a rep at), and from the literature that I picked up.
I hefted 3 of the MDRs... They're not built for light weight. They're solid and heavy at 8.35 pounds for .223 Wylde, .308 Win and .300 BLK.
I have always liked the balance and feel of a bullpup rifle, and this one was no different. It tucked in nice and would provide more maneuverability over a full length rifle, and more muzzle velocity (and penetration) over a SBR of the same length.
MDR Micro Dynamic Rifle. All three calibers are advertised at 1.5 MOA. MSRP $2274 and $2524.
Bbl lengths are 16.125" and Overall lengths are 26.2"
Trigger - 2 stage 4.7 lbs
Completely ambidextrous, including swapable casing ejection. I saw one of the reps perform a partial ejection swap- I couldn't tell how difficult that would be in the field, but I got the impression that it is supposed to be quick.
My bad... "patented forward ejection ... if ejection chute becomes damaged in the field, it can be removed and the rifle will eject normally to the side." Now I understand what the rep was saying in the booth , a week + later.

Being a bullpup, some people cringe at having a high power cartridge going off next to their pretty faces... MDR has a built in over-pressure "relief" path up into the picatinny rail and out pressure relief plugs. I thought that was pretty cool.

The black oval "insert" looking thing at the rear of the rail is the pressure relief plug... same thing on the other side.


I did not test the trigger, and I regret it.


Here's a collage of Desertech's feature displays:

Spoiler: show

No one asked about their SRS-A2s, but... Chub-worthy.


Looked to be available in .308Win, 6.5CM, .338 Lapua Mag, and .300 Win Mag.
22"-26" barrels, ~9 - 9.5 lbs. All calibers advertised as 0.5MOA.
MSRPs from $4299 to $4649.

As I was finishing up at the Desertech booth, a familiar yet sinister voice behind me said "You never know who you'll run into here."
I had been kind of hurrying towards the end at Desertech because we WaGunners were going to meet up at the Forster booth to check out WaGuns' favorite booth babe, Mr Kelly Bachand, but here he was a loong way from his assigned booth!
At the Forster booth Kelly gave a very cool demo of a few of their products. I hadn't realized that Forster had so many innovations. Next year (or sooner) I'll dig into the learning curve on Forster.

I went into the FIMS Manufacturing booth as a complete blank slate...


Here is FIMS components page : https://www.fimsfirearms.com/components/

The folks in the booth were helpful, but let's be honest... I still haven't built an AR. I load the ammo into the mag, insert the mag into the rifle, and the scary black gun beautiful Tool of Freedom goes pew pew pew.
I am confident that they shared good information, but the most striking part of their message was that their carbon fiber components do not get "slick" after being worn in. Due to the carbon fiber structure, they maintain the same grippy texture all the way through their service life.

There was a table of the carbon fiber parts on the table, and I was scratching my head about what to ask.
Send the milsurp guy into the carbon fiber AR booth!


The owner (Mike Facchini) is a good dude. I got to hear a few stories about life in NJ and in the cutthroat competitive nature of his work. I'm pretty sure that he'd be a solid neighbor. Good to see that there are good folks even in the political hellhole that NJ is.

FIMS does more than just firearms parts... Check out their FIMS MFG page here : http://www.fimsmfg.com/
If we'd have gotten into talking about shapers or CNC machining I wouldn't have felt so much the dummy. I must build an AR this year.

https://youtu.be/78J-UcBJklg