01-25-2020, 05:43 PM
The Athlon and PA 4-14x will both be destroyed by the AR-10, and will suffer the same fate with the Grendel but at a longer round count, unless we're talking Premium line made in Japan at the LOW factory.
My best advice for people who haven't shot long range and are investing serious time and money into it is don't show up to a course with a cheap optic.
Not only will you not have a good experience in the course, you will distract from the instructors being able to provide quality instruction and feedback to everyone else while they try to diagnose what your problems are when you aren't able to connect.
Over the past 25 years of shooting long range, we were initially used to people using top-end optics that were known to work. Then as the discipline got more popular, we started seeing people try to bring imitation/bottom basement scopes to courses and the repeatability of problems is predictable before we even start shooting, to the extent that I tell people right out of the gate to not even bother with that particular optic, here's a loaner rifle or carbine with a proven optic/mount that will make it through 100 courses without ever giving us trouble.
It's far more affordable to get the best optic you can buy in the long run, and will cost you less money overall.
Once you figure in gas, range fees, course fees, ammo, time before the course going to the range to confirm zero, it makes no sense to hinge the whole opportunity on a cheap optic that is a known failure point. At that point, it doesn't matter what the company's return policy is unless you arrive more than 1 day early to the course and they overnight you a new one.
We had a guy show up early to a 3-Day long range shooting event a number of years ago. He dropped his rifle off his truck's tailgate onto the asphalt in the parking lot at the motel, falling straight down onto the top of his elevation knob, smashing it. It was a Vortex Viper PST IIRC. I've seen the same thing happen to Leupolds, Schmidt & Benders, and Hensoldts on stages in a competition where you had to have your rifles sitting over on a table right next to you while you did TGT detection with binos through a firing port or barricade. One bump and the rifles love to fall scope-first onto the hardest objects they can find.
Anyway, he called Vortex and said it was totally his fault and was just wondering if he could buy a new one and have it next-day air-mailed to him (in a remote part of Northern Idaho). They had a replacement at the motel the next morning free of charge, told him to not worry about it and just have a good course. That's if you have the luxury of breaking the scope before the course starts.
Looking at that PA 4-14x and its price point, I can tell you it will not survive long. If you read one of the main reviews on it out there from The Truth About Guns, he mounted it on a .308 but gun and has updated the review from the initial 2012 post to 2014. A .308 bolt gun is nowhere near as hard on optics as even a .223 AR15. An AR-10 is one of the most devastating platforms to mount optics on that don't have epoxied glass element modules and robust construction because of the secondary and tertiary reciprocating mass effects when the bolt slams against the breech, and the carrier slams against the extension.
Those additional impact forces on the rifle are not present on bolt guns, and will send a resonant waveform through the rifle and mount into the optic, with the optic blossoming away from the mass of the rifle in a pattern that is extremely hard on glass. The scope tube acts like a parallel tuning fork, with the ends whipping around like a bow after it has driven an arrow. While it is in this dynamic resonant harmonic vibration, the BCG slams back into battery, sending another resonant waveform through the mount into the tube and components again.
You look through the cheap optic at that point and either the reticle is canted, the elevation and windage turrets don't work anymore, or the focal plane adjustment goes wonky on you.
The only more affordable scopes I've seen that don't suffer from this are the 1-4x and 1.5-6x Burris optics, but their reticles suck for LR.
My best advice for people who haven't shot long range and are investing serious time and money into it is don't show up to a course with a cheap optic.
Not only will you not have a good experience in the course, you will distract from the instructors being able to provide quality instruction and feedback to everyone else while they try to diagnose what your problems are when you aren't able to connect.
Over the past 25 years of shooting long range, we were initially used to people using top-end optics that were known to work. Then as the discipline got more popular, we started seeing people try to bring imitation/bottom basement scopes to courses and the repeatability of problems is predictable before we even start shooting, to the extent that I tell people right out of the gate to not even bother with that particular optic, here's a loaner rifle or carbine with a proven optic/mount that will make it through 100 courses without ever giving us trouble.
It's far more affordable to get the best optic you can buy in the long run, and will cost you less money overall.
Once you figure in gas, range fees, course fees, ammo, time before the course going to the range to confirm zero, it makes no sense to hinge the whole opportunity on a cheap optic that is a known failure point. At that point, it doesn't matter what the company's return policy is unless you arrive more than 1 day early to the course and they overnight you a new one.
We had a guy show up early to a 3-Day long range shooting event a number of years ago. He dropped his rifle off his truck's tailgate onto the asphalt in the parking lot at the motel, falling straight down onto the top of his elevation knob, smashing it. It was a Vortex Viper PST IIRC. I've seen the same thing happen to Leupolds, Schmidt & Benders, and Hensoldts on stages in a competition where you had to have your rifles sitting over on a table right next to you while you did TGT detection with binos through a firing port or barricade. One bump and the rifles love to fall scope-first onto the hardest objects they can find.
Anyway, he called Vortex and said it was totally his fault and was just wondering if he could buy a new one and have it next-day air-mailed to him (in a remote part of Northern Idaho). They had a replacement at the motel the next morning free of charge, told him to not worry about it and just have a good course. That's if you have the luxury of breaking the scope before the course starts.
Looking at that PA 4-14x and its price point, I can tell you it will not survive long. If you read one of the main reviews on it out there from The Truth About Guns, he mounted it on a .308 but gun and has updated the review from the initial 2012 post to 2014. A .308 bolt gun is nowhere near as hard on optics as even a .223 AR15. An AR-10 is one of the most devastating platforms to mount optics on that don't have epoxied glass element modules and robust construction because of the secondary and tertiary reciprocating mass effects when the bolt slams against the breech, and the carrier slams against the extension.
Those additional impact forces on the rifle are not present on bolt guns, and will send a resonant waveform through the rifle and mount into the optic, with the optic blossoming away from the mass of the rifle in a pattern that is extremely hard on glass. The scope tube acts like a parallel tuning fork, with the ends whipping around like a bow after it has driven an arrow. While it is in this dynamic resonant harmonic vibration, the BCG slams back into battery, sending another resonant waveform through the mount into the tube and components again.
You look through the cheap optic at that point and either the reticle is canted, the elevation and windage turrets don't work anymore, or the focal plane adjustment goes wonky on you.
The only more affordable scopes I've seen that don't suffer from this are the 1-4x and 1.5-6x Burris optics, but their reticles suck for LR.
NRA Basic, Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, RSO
CCW, CQM, DM, Long Range Rifle Instructor
6.5 Grendel Reloading Handbooks & chamber brushes can be found here:
www.AR15buildbox.com
CCW, CQM, DM, Long Range Rifle Instructor
6.5 Grendel Reloading Handbooks & chamber brushes can be found here:
www.AR15buildbox.com