Full Circle

By | September 22, 2013

Those of you that have been following along at home know that about a year ago I got an M&P15-22. Originally, I set it up as a .22 copy of my main AR. Pretty quickly after that, I made some modifications to my main AR and then tried to set up the M&P15-22 as an Appleseed Rifle.

That little venture failed spectactularly, so now the AR trainer is back to being an AR trainer. I finally bought a cheap UTAC red/green dot reflex sight and mounted it:

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Now, I haven’t had an opportunity to take this out to the range, so all my observations don’t take into account the actual operation while shooting. So there’s that.

More pictures and observations below the fold…

Your standard "I came from a random factory in China" packaging

Your standard “I came from a random factory in China” packaging

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Opening up the package shows us some rudimentary instructions, a tack cloth, the sight, and a couple of hex wrenches. The sight has a rubber cover for the lens, which I didn’t expect. The way it’s made, though, I suspect that it will rip after a few times taking it off and putting it back on.

Overall construction was better than I was expecting.

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When I took off the protective cover, I discovered that the lens has a reflective coating on the front.

Reflective side towards enemy. Tactical it ain't.

Reflective side towards enemy. Tactical it ain’t.

I mean really reflective.

I mean really reflective.

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In addition to the 3 red and 3 green settings, there are 4 reticles. The color and intensity are set by turning the wheel on top, and the reticle is selected via a lever on the bottom.

Now, the wheel also houses the CR2032 battery, and if you turn the top of the wheel counter-clockwise you’ll accidentally remove the battery. Kinda poor design, there.

Here are the 4 reticles in red:

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And here’s what green looks like:
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Incidentally, that’s the reticle I plan on using.

The ghost images of the reticles are due to the angle of my camera. They’re not visible when you look through the sight properly. EOTech it ain’t.

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Elevation and windage adjustments accomplished via these two hex screws. They appear to interfacing with a detent, but I can’t confirm that.

Anyway, like I said I haven’t taken this out to the range yet, but this cheap reflex sight seems like it might be worth the $30.

3 thoughts on “Full Circle

  1. Pingback: SayUncle » Gun Porn

  2. Phil K

    One thing that you may want to evaluate during your testing is how the sight maintains (or doesn’t) its zero when switching from one reticle to another. My “cheap” sight is quite difficult to zero in the first place, but will hold it pretty well as long as you don’t mess with the reticle setting.

    Reply

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