In December 2021 I put together what I considered at the time to be the ultimate general purpose carbine. 10.3" Colt-barreled suppressed SBR with a Nightforce NX8 and piggybacked RMR. It truly is a remarkable setup and does a lot of things well. In mid-February 2022 I decided to swap the barrel to an 11.5" Colt HRT barrel to gain a little velocity and I also like the heavier profile with a suppressor. It's being smoother shooting was a nice side benefit. I used this setup for drills, dryfire, and hunting until this week. It did pretty well in all of those roles.
At the end of May 2022, I took advantage of some Memorial Day sales and put together a new rifle based on a 14.5" Colt SOCOM barrel. I've had several rifles in the past years in this same configuration and missed having one in the stable. Initially I built it as a high-volume trainer with an Aimpoint T2. Well, 6 months later and it only has 56 rounds through it; essentially just sighting in the dot and irons and a few quick drills. The reality is I just don't shoot high volume carbine anymore.
So with these factors in mind, I began to think of how I could optimize my setups. A couple of use factors rose to the surface:
1. I was under-utilizing the capabilities of the Nightforce NX8. Due to the 1.54 mount height, the NX8 felt slow and difficult to get behind on 1X. That's why I added the RMR to begin with. At the same time, I almost never used the top end 8X on the 11.5" gun. I really ended up leaving the NX8 on 4X the vast majority of the time.
2. I was under-utilizing the capabilities of the 14.5" SOCOM barrel having just an Aimpoint on it. The previous versions of rifles I've had built around SOCOM barrels were all MOA or better shooters with my preferred 62gr Gold Dot load.
Based on these factors, I made the following changes:
1. Since I always kept the NX8 on 4X anyway, I got to thinking that an ACOG would be smaller, lighter, and cheaper than an NX8 as a 4X optic. I've had several TA11's in the past that I liked pretty well, but the fiber optic bloom was always an issue. When I sold my last TA11 I said if I ever went back to an ACOG it'd be a TA01 with crosshair and a piggybacked RMR; and that's exactly what I did here. So far I really dig it.
2. I did a bunch of reading on mount heights and a lot of folks recommended something in the 1.7-1.93 range. I picked up my rifle and shouldered it with my eyes closed and was actually surprised to see how high I naturally was above the scope. Since I was changing mounts, I also did some research into all the top condenders: Geissele, Badger, Scalarworks, Unity, etc. If I could save weight and not give up durability, I wanted to do that and in my research I came across the new Nightforce Ultramount, which was apparently developed for some secret squirrel organization and recently released to the civilian market. It was available in 1.93 height, so that's what I went with.
I got everything installed and torqued to spec and in dryfire handling, these setups are now both doing what I want very well. Not only is the NX8 now MUCH faster on 1X, it's clearer and less head-position-sensitive on 8X as well!
If you've tried an NX8 and didn't like it due to eyebox sensitivity, I'd strongly recommend trying it in a different height mount.
Gratuitous pics: