Swampfox Optics

[SwampfoxMike]

@SwampfoxMike - any idea on delivery date for the Sentinels? Also, any thoughts for future reticle options? 3 MOA is a bit smaller than I'd prefer on a micro-pistol; circle dot or 5-6 MOA is more my speed.

For the larger crew - any thoughts on "shake awake" manual adjustment versus always on auto-adjust for brightness?

1. There are a few slots left where guys will get their Sentinels shipped out next Monday, July 26th. If you don't get your order in time for that, the next ship date is August 3rd or so. It's all hands on deck for the factory to make more of these red dots without sacrificing QC, so other stuff like our precision scope lines are just sitting idle while all resources go to trying to keep up with red dot demand. "Build a thousand of these immediately I don't care what it takes" is the classic QC trap that has sunk many companies trying to claw their way out of start up status-- we can't let that happen, even while we know that we have to start building more of these things, faster. Quality needs to go up, not down, as volume increases, and that's the major challenge facing us at this time.

2. The reason why they are 3 MOA is because the high efficiency emitters available to us only come in 3 MOA and red. The emitter is what dictates your battery life-- we can do green emitters, reticles etc. in the older Kingslayers that aren't duty rated or intended for concealed carry, but once you step up to trying to get your scope into people's holsters all day every day, you need a battery life of at least one year (unless your product is the ACRO in which case most users have buckets of batteries paid for by Uncle Sam anyway). I'm personally hoping for a breakthrough that would get us green dots that meet the battery life need, but if we get to the point where we can do a 6 MOA dot without cutting the battery life in half, I think we would definitely do that and add additional SKUs to Liberty / Justice / Sentinel etc.

Holosun has the best emitters out there, they are really an emitter company. They make a ton of LED emitters for industrial applications like consumer electronics, appliances, etc. You probably have Holosun emitters in your house or in your car that have nothing to do with guns at all. Holosun doesn't know jack squat about building other types of scopes-- I doubt you'll ever see them do a 3x prism or a LPVO. But a red dot is basically an emitter throwing light up against a curved piece of reflective glass, it's so dirt simple that they can master that pretty easily. So, for the forseeable future Holosun will probably stay at the top of the emitter tech game. It's too bad they are such jerks, LOL.

3. For me personally, this is the first time I've ever preferred an auto-brightness optic to a manual brightness optic. I have a couple of YouTube videos I've made and can write more about that if anyone cares, but it's still just one guy's opinion at the end of the day.

[TicTacticalTimmy]

Thank you for having the balls to step in the middle of a discussion about your company on a publoc forum, Mike.

If you are interested in the opionions of potential consumers, I would love to see:
-A ring-type reticle, ala Holosun 407CO. Perhaps in a closed emitter optic and ideally with a green emitter.
-Optics that use the Acro or 509 mounting pattern, ideally that somehow fit a 2032 battery.
-Focus on durability, with respect to both drops and round count. The "Ironsides" on your website looks very nice, what if you coupled that with a sacrifical lens like on the ACRO?



By the way, your website does not work well on mobile for me (Android, Opera browser). I had to browse the site in Desktop mode on my phone, which worked great.

[Darth_Uno]

Well I just ordered a Trihawk, so I'll report back when I get it.

[SwampfoxMike]

Thank you for having the balls to step in the middle of a discussion about your company on a publoc forum, Mike.

If you are interested in the opionions of potential consumers, I would love to see:
-A ring-type reticle, ala Holosun 407CO. Perhaps in a closed emitter optic and ideally with a green emitter.
-Optics that use the Acro or 509 mounting pattern, ideally that somehow fit a 2032 battery.
-Focus on durability, with respect to both drops and round count. The "Ironsides" on your website looks very nice, what if you coupled that with a sacrifical lens like on the ACRO?

By the way, your website does not work well on mobile for me (Android, Opera browser). I had to browse the site in Desktop mode on my phone, which worked great.

1. The Kingslayer generation emitter can do a ring type reticle, but battery life will suck. The high efficiency emitters that give us improved battery life are only available in 3 MOA red, for now. As I wrote above I hope that changes. Maybe Holosun will sell us some of their 8 MOA ring emitters? (LOL no)

I'm not the worlds best pistol dot shooter but I'm very curious as to why people prefer the ring reticle. For the kind of pistol shooting I do, unless I'm sighting in from a bench rest, the reticle is never still enough for me to perceive the the target inside the "hole" in the ring. Maybe other shooters can hold more still than I do, but I basically never even see a crisp dot either, it's constantly wiggling and jiggling around, I think of it as a "paint brush". At the level of shooter I am, the game is to break my shot when the paint brush paints the part of the target that I want to hit within an acceptable margin of error. As distance increases the acceptable window gets smaller, so I have to shoot more slowly. Up close the acceptable window is larger, so I can shoot more quickly. Very very close I am basically point shooting with muscle memory and the sight picture becomes essentially a happy confirmation that everything else in this string of fire is going correctly. All of this is true whether I'm shooting drills in a class, shooting in competition, or (hopefully) shooting to save the day when ISIS attacks the local IHOP or whatever Walter Mitty CCW fantasy I want to make a scenario about. There's really no situation I can think of where, at my shooting level, I would hold the pistol still enough to perceive anything meaningful inside that ring, even taking shots at 50 yards (which I do practice). So for me the ring basically becomes a giant 8 MOA jiggly paintbrush and essentially I have all the disadvantages of an 8 MOA dot at that point. That's why I "don't get it" on this, but I am very much willing to listen to other shooters on what I'm missing out on.

2. We already have a huge emphasis on durability. The "Ironsides Shield" is basically a trap for the Aaron Cowans of the world who like to drop test stuff till it breaks, hit it with hammers, all that fun Demolition Ranch YouTube stuff. Ironsides Shield shifts the failure point of the optic to the screws-- if you smack the whole thing hard enough usually the screws shear right the heck off, and now you have to get your broken screw shafts drilled out of your pistol slide, but hey our optic still works fine so that's not our problem. Even without Ironsides, the latest gen of Liberty / Justice / Sentinel dots are already much tougher than the older Kingslayers-- part of that was moving from 6061 aluminum to 7075 aluminum, which costs us 40% more for raw materials and takes more machining time.

My philosophy on durability is simple--the product will speak for itself whether we want it to or not. If the scopes people buy today are still working on the same guns 2, 3, 4 years from now, those buyers will come back to us again and again, and tell their friends, and we will grow and succeed. If everything we make breaks after 3 months, then all the belly-slapping "bullshit Chinesium knock off crap" guys will be proven right, we will be out of business and I'll be looking for another job. That's reality-- there's no YouTube influencer I can buy who will fix that problem. (By the way none of the really big influencers are hawking us yet because I don't have the budget to get in the door with them. It's absolutely a pay to play game there, don't be bamboozled. The biggest guy we have right now is The Daily Shooter, who is exactly who he appears to be and who is not paid for his opinions, because I have no funding set aside to pay him with.) So durability is a huge priority if our company is to stand any chance at all, in my opinion.

3. The ACRO footprint optic ties into my point above about the screws shearing off. The screws really are the weak point on these things because we are asking them to do too much-- they must first exert clamping force in one direction to hold the optic firmly to the slide, and then we are asking the screws to ALSO deal with the violent back-and-forth motion of the slide rattling around. Any engineer worth his salt will tell you this is a huge problem. Never ask fasteners to cope with two force vectors at the same time. The ACRO footprint has a recoil lug built into it, so the screw comes in from the side and only has to exert side clamping force, it isn't responsible for bearing the optic's weight along the axis of slide movement. The ACRO footprint makes all the other footprints including the ones we are making scopes for now look antiquated and weak by comparison. So, are we developing a closed emitter "toaster" style optic with this kind of arrangement? Yes. But it's a long road with multiple prototype iterations and much testing and eval ahead.

4. Android Opera users are 1.6% of browser users in the USA. When it came time to configure our site to work with mobile functionality, we could not make it work for Opera AND for other browsers with much higher usage percentages. The choice was a no-brainer. Sorry.

[cornstalker]

I can't help but like this guy.

[RJ]

@SwampfoxMike, I think you are on the right track, with the right priorities. Good luck with your business.

EDIT Also, just noticed you are now a Site Supporter. BZ.

When the time comes for me to consider an optic for my Sig P365XL, I will give your product a good look.

+1 on what @TicTacticalTimmy said.

[TicTacticalTimmy]

Thank you for the rapid and detailed response Mike!

I am right there with you regarding the superiority of the ACRO mounting system. Im also right there with you in understanding the engineering challenges. I feel Aimpoint themselves did not adequately grasp those challenges and as a result released a product with a subpar battery life, for most end users. Clearly whatever company can release an optic with that improved mounting system that also has great durability and battery life stands to make a lot of sales.

Regarding the ring/CO reticle, it has three potential advantages. Note that I do a fair bit of longer range shooting with my handguns. For someone who shoots handguns exclusively 25yds and in these are much less important. However, I look at the pistol red dot as something that potentially extends the effective range of a handgun, and I value that while also recognizing I will almost certainly never "need" to take a shot at that longer effective range.
I dont yet have a 407CO, so these are based on extrapolating my experiences with shooting just the ring vs the dot on my 507C:

1. Astigmatism: I have an astigmatism in my dominant eye, and so red dots appear starbursted. The ring in my 507C does not get starbursted, its just very slightly wavy, basically only noticable if I am focusing on the reticle itself. I dont like shooting with the 507 ring because it is too big for precise shots and it seems slightly less bright vs just the dot. My hope is a smaller ring will allow the same precision of a dot, while also "covering up" my astigmatism. 8moa seems perfect as the inside of the circle is right at the mechanical capabilities of my handgun. To reiterate, this is only really important for precision shots, such as a 12" plate at 75-150yds.

2. Bdc reticle: my hope is that I can sight the reticle in for a 50yd 0, and it will be right on target out to 75yds. At 100yds, I should be able to place the circle on a targets head to get a high chest shot, and at 125-150 place the reticle just above the target to get general torso shots. Using just a dot to shoot 100yds and especially beyond becomes a bunch of guesswork due to bullet drop, and my hope is such a reticle could make hits at those extended ranges more consistent and intuitive. Like the above point, definitely only relevant for the few handgun shooters that care about hitting stuff at 100+yds.

3. Mo' bigger = mo' betta: It seems to me a bigger dot is easier to acquire, particularly from awkward or less practiced positions/angles. Obviously having a rock solid index makes this irrelevant in theory, but in practice I want every advantage I can get. My hope is an 8MOA ring will present like an 8MOA dot, while maintaining the above 2 advantages a huge dot would lack. Also, I would think battery consumption would be much less than an 8MOA dot.

In addition to the above, there are a bunch of shooters with an astigmatism, and if people are buying based off a demo in a store, I would bet they are way more likely to put their money down on the one optic that looks clear and crisp.

[SwampfoxMike]

I think Aimpoint knew exactly what they were doing with ACRO development. If you talk to these guys at trade shows and such, all their emphasis is on deep pocket worldwide military and law enforcement sales. They want that press release that the US Marine Corps has just signed a new tender for the latest improved "CCO" for $3.4 gazillion dollars over the next 11 years. That's where they make their living. Oh yeah, and if a few Joe Civilians are crazy enough to blow $600 on one for themselves? Hah, we'll take their money too, whatever. That's how their priorities are.

At SHOT Show this year I was chatting away with a guy from Surefire and I said, "hey I have one of your weapon lights on my 870 back home. These Beretta 1301's are super nice, you should make a light for them." And the guy was like, LOL no, Surefire will never make another shotgun weapon light. Unless the weapon system is in more than 75% of military or law enforcement armories in the USA we don't even start R&D, and police departments are moving away from shotguns. Nobody cares about shotguns but civilians now.

So, that's the mindset of the heavy hitters. Their "customers" get batteries by the bucket load paid for by Uncle Sam and our tax dollars. Talk to some shooters who have come back from recent trips to Iraq and Afghanistan recently, buy 'em a steak dinner and let them tell you war stories. They swap batteries all the time "just in case" anyway.

So, I think when Aimpoint was doing R&D on ACRO, I think they knew exactly what their battery life was like, how could they not? Are we supposed to think they forgot to check it? They decided battery life was irrelevant, and if you care about long battery life the ACRO is not really for you anyway. They won't say that out loud but the product says it for them.

[mrozowjj]

1. The Kingslayer generation emitter can do a ring type reticle, but battery life will suck. The high efficiency emitters that give us improved battery life are only available in 3 MOA red, for now. As I wrote above I hope that changes. Maybe Holosun will sell us some of their 8 MOA ring emitters? (LOL no)

I'm not the worlds best pistol dot shooter but I'm very curious as to why people prefer the ring reticle. For the kind of pistol shooting I do, unless I'm sighting in from a bench rest, the reticle is never still enough for me to perceive the the target inside the "hole" in the ring. Maybe other shooters can hold more still than I do, but I basically never even see a crisp dot either, it's constantly wiggling and jiggling around, I think of it as a "paint brush". At the level of shooter I am, the game is to break my shot when the paint brush paints the part of the target that I want to hit within an acceptable margin of error. As distance increases the acceptable window gets smaller, so I have to shoot more slowly. Up close the acceptable window is larger, so I can shoot more quickly. Very very close I am basically point shooting with muscle memory and the sight picture becomes essentially a happy confirmation that everything else in this string of fire is going correctly. All of this is true whether I'm shooting drills in a class, shooting in competition, or (hopefully) shooting to save the day when ISIS attacks the local IHOP or whatever Walter Mitty CCW fantasy I want to make a scenario about. There's really no situation I can think of where, at my shooting level, I would hold the pistol still enough to perceive anything meaningful inside that ring, even taking shots at 50 yards (which I do practice). So for me the ring basically becomes a giant 8 MOA jiggly paintbrush and essentially I have all the disadvantages of an 8 MOA dot at that point. That's why I "don't get it" on this, but I am very much willing to listen to other shooters on what I'm missing out on.

I got into why I prefer it on another post in another thread if you are curious:
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....l=1#post964325

To summarize, I have a mild astigmatism, smaller dots 2-4 MOA look like the star of Bethlehem to me; larger dots 6-8 MOA look crisper to me. Yes even with the giant starburst I see I can make the 2 MOA dots work in close on a pistol but it's not intuitive to my brain (It takes an extra 0.1 of a sec to process which when you are shooting 20-30 shots in a course of fire can add up) and further out is entirely useless so any precision others gain from the smaller dot goes out the window for me so on a rifle I have given up on red dots on anything I want to shoot "seriously."

Prior to the 8 MOA ring I was using a 6 MOA dot on a pistol and it worked well but if you were trying to shoot further out past 25 yards it was a bit more difficult. On a pistol I never really shoot past 25 yards so aces 6 MOA dots work perfectly. On a PCC though I sometimes like to shoot it at 100 yards and in that role the ring is like a cheat code because I can treat it like an giant dot in close and then when I want to shoot it at 100 yards I treat it like a peep sight and put my target inside the ring.

Until someone makes an etched reticle option that I can mount to a pistol slide I'm sticking with the big dots and/or 8 MOA for my pistols and PCCs.

[cornstalker]

1. There are a few slots left where guys will get their Sentinels shipped out next Monday, July 26th. If you don't get your order in time for that, the next ship date is August 3rd or so. It's all hands on deck for the factory to make more of these red dots without sacrificing QC, so other stuff like our precision scope lines are just sitting idle while all resources go to trying to keep up with red dot demand. "Build a thousand of these immediately I don't care what it takes" is the classic QC trap that has sunk many companies trying to claw their way out of start up status-- we can't let that happen, even while we know that we have to start building more of these things, faster. Quality needs to go up, not down, as volume increases, and that's the major challenge facing us at this time.

Any chance you could post a pic of the bottom of the Sentinel? Or maybe just tell me if it has two or four recesses for recoil bosses.