LPVOs in 2023 and beyond

[Default.mp3]

Please forgive a stupid question but what about the red dot in your scope?

I just remember “you have to have daylight bright reticle, be able to shoot occluded, use it as a red dot etc. etc.”
I have a cousin that runs 6.5-20 scopes on his AR’s and two years ago we had a good snow and while pig hunting, he found them bedded under cedar trees but getting that close he was handicapped with the 6.5-20. I rigged him up an offset red dot and it worked great for him.

I’m a coyote hunter and have never shot competitions with my AR just some pistol matches. I’m trying to see what all the fuss is over offset or piggyback vs just leaving the scope on 6X (I have a 1-6) and using the daylight bright dot in my scope. I know that shooting occluded will result in your shots being off the further you get but I’m just curious.

Post @Molon made about his experiences with using his ACOG as an OEG:

The Effects of Phoria When Using the ACOG as an Occluded-Eye Gunsight




Phoria: the visual effect that occurs when one eye is blocked from seeing the same view of a target as the other eye; the blocked eye does not get the same sensory input as the other eye and can begin to wonder off, usually to one side or the other.


In an attempt to make my Trijicon TA-11 ACOG more versatile at engaging close range targets, I installed a Progressive Machine and Tool flip-down front lens cover. With the lens cover in the up position (blocking the view through the scope) the ACOG can function as a nonmagnified occluded-eye gunsight. When the ACOG is functioning as an occluded-eye gunsight, the view of the target for the eye looking into the scope is blocked and the effect of phoria comes into play.























In order to determine just what the effects of phoria would be when using the ACOG TA-11 as an occluded-eye gunsight, I conducted a test comparing the accuracy and points of impact when shooting with the lens cover down (normal sighting) and the lens cover up (occluded-eye sighting.) Testing was conducted at a distance of 25 yards, the farthest distance that I would anticipate using the occluded eye-method of sighting.


Shooting off a sand bag, I zeroed the TA-11 for point of aim equals point of impact at 25 yards using the normal sighting method. I then fired a quick 10-shot group with the normal sighting method that formed a tidy group with an extreme spread of 0.56”.







Next, I placed the lens cover in the up position, transforming the ACOG into an occluded-eye gunsight. The left eye views the target, while the right eye views the reticle in the scope. The right eye is blocked (occluded) from seeing the target due to the lens cover. The impact of the initial shots using this method had such a large horizontal deviation to the left that they were off the targets that I originally was using. I had to change to a 24” wide target and aim at the far right side of the target to capture the impact of the rounds. The aiming point for this portion of the test was the numeral “7” on the target.


Using the occluded-eye method of sighting, I fired a 10-shot group. This group had an extreme spread of over 7” and the center of the group was 14” to the left of the aiming point!



Source: https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread...d-Eye-Gunsight


Sadly, the pictures are gone, but there was a huge difference in the group sizes. For some folks, BAC/OEG works fine; for others, it's non-viable. IIRC, @Failure2Stop has spoken about how in some of the classes he's taught, over half of the students were not able to get BAC to work in any meaningful way.

[stomridertx]

Please forgive a stupid question but what about the red dot in your scope?

I just remember “you have to have daylight bright reticle, be able to shoot occluded, use it as a red dot etc. etc.”
I have a cousin that runs 6.5-20 scopes on his AR’s and two years ago we had a good snow and while pig hunting, he found them bedded under cedar trees but getting that close he was handicapped with the 6.5-20. I rigged him up an offset red dot and it worked great for him.

I’m a coyote hunter and have never shot competitions with my AR just some pistol matches. I’m trying to see what all the fuss is over offset or piggyback vs just leaving the scope on 6X (I have a 1-6) and using the daylight bright dot in my scope. I know that shooting occluded will result in your shots being off the further you get but I’m just curious.

What I've determined is that if you have a true 1x with a daylight bright reticle, the offset dot is optional and not mandatory. However, you gain a lot with the optional. The 1x experience on the Razor Gen II 1-6 is top notch and gets used a lot. The offset gives an instant 1x if you are dialed up, but there are some less obvious benefits as well. Things like shooting on the move to the opposite side of your dominant hand, shooting past barricades on your off side, getting low on the hood of a vehicle, dead battery in your LPVO because they don't run as long, etc. Run some courses of fire with the offset or 12 o'clock dot and it endears itself to you over time.
The scopeswitch potentially can replace the "instant 1x" aspect and make the offset less desireable, but there are questions than need to be answered. Things like how resting the handguard for stability takes that capability away, how moving your support hand back and forth affects your shooting, how durable the system is over time. The cost is a factor as well at this point, that's a lot of scratch when you are already thousands into this deal. I don't think a lot of the budget LPVO crowd is going to get into the scopeswitch.

[Noah]

What I've determined is that if you have a true 1x with a daylight bright reticle, the offset dot is optional and not mandatory. However, you gain a lot with the optional. The 1x experience on the Razor Gen II 1-6 is top notch and gets used a lot. The offset gives an instant 1x if you are dialed up, but there are some less obvious benefits as well. Things like shooting on the move to the opposite side of your dominant hand, shooting past barricades on your off side, getting low on the hood of a vehicle, dead battery in your LPVO because they don't run as long, etc. Run some courses of fire with the offset or 12 o'clock dot and it endears itself to you over time.
The scopeswitch potentially can replace the "instant 1x" aspect and make the offset less desireable, but there are questions than need to be answered. Things like how resting the handguard for stability takes that capability away, how moving your support hand back and forth affects your shooting, how durable the system is over time. The cost is a factor as well at this point, that's a lot of scratch when you are already thousands into this deal. I don't think a lot of the budget LPVO crowd is going to get into the scopeswitch.

In 10 or 20 or 30 years, all LPVOs will have an integral powered zoom control, or we'll all be using digitalized optics with Zoom controlled by our thoughts via Tesla Neural link. Half joking, but the ScopeSwitch is just the first crude iteration of the future.

[TWR]

I know everyone is different, different eyes and different uses. I ran an ACOG until my eyes would no longer focus the reticle. The BAC worked very well for me but it was the TA33 I think. 3x and I shot it on 7” plates to 600 yards as well as shooting coyotes running in to eat me. It just didn’t bother me. I switched to 1-4 scopes and did not have a daylight bright reticle but even on 4x, close shots were not a problem. I finally got a daylight bright reticle in a 1-6 and it would seem by the conversation here that the red dot just replaced the daylight bright reticle in a LPVO.

I’ve ran my 1-6 against my 1-4 on a timer at 15 yard targets to prove to myself that the daylight bright dot is faster than a plain reticle. Now I have to run a similar drill on 1x vs 6X and see if it causes issues. I can see an offset or piggybacked red dot being beneficial with an 8x or 10x scope as the eye box gets finicky but I just can’t see it worth the arguments with a 1-4 or even a 1-6.

At what distances are you using the red dot and at what power scope?

[JCN]

In 10 or 20 or 30 years, all LPVOs will have an integral powered zoom control, or we'll all be using digitalized optics with Zoom controlled by our thoughts via Tesla Neural link. Half joking, but the ScopeSwitch is just the first crude iteration of the future.

Supposedly an electronic version is in the works.

I went to my range for a little and I think the scope switch has some real promise as a concept.

[mmc45414]

I can see an offset or piggybacked red dot being beneficial with an 8x or 10x scope as the eye box gets finicky but I just can’t see it worth the arguments with a 1-4 or even a 1-6.

After shooting three gun with a 1-6 for the past few years I am in the process of consolidating to just having one 5.56 gun with a 1-6, and I think I am going to add a set of 45deg offset peep sights. One thing that I think will (temporarily) take a scope or a red dot out of action is being occluded with rainwater. We shot a stage once where I had the unlucky timing of being hit by a deluge right before I had to shoot at some pretty distant small plates, and I couldn't see a damn thing through the optic. Not sure I woulda been able to hit the plates with iron sights, but I couldn't see anything except the dot through the sight.

Since I already have it in a LaRue mount and I already have a red dot in a LaRue mount, I might experiment with keeping them both zeroed, but I am pretty sure the dot will make its way onto something else.

[RhinoJM]

@RhinoJM

Maybe so I address things more specifically, can you spell out the following for me and I can use those targets and splits to see how the piggyback works?

Give me three target dimensions and distances and the splits / transition times you’d expect one to make and I can run them with piggyback and see if it works.

For an LPVO (say, 1-6) w/ 30degree RDS offset,

It's to your advantage to use the LPVO for all targets if no zoom is required.

If zoom is required, then that's where the offset comes in.

You'll find that it's simpler and quicker to use the offset for the target acquisition, then transitioning to pre-zoomed LPVO, and then blasting away.
This is especially true when you're transitioning between distant targets (where they're not both in your sight picture).
Same goes for transitioning from RDS to LPVO for close-distance to far-distance... and vice versa.

Idk what kind of range you have access to, but if you can shoot doubles at steel targets between 50yds and 150yds, you're gonna notice the strengths of the offset.
I'd say try this at 3x on LPVO, then again at whatever max magnification you have.

I guess you can describe me as more of a "practical shooter" in the sense that I have nothing geared for competition. My carry/duty guns are my competition guns.
So, perhaps competition-specific modifications (such as muzzle breaks) may provide more forgiveness w/o cheekweld than you otherwise may get.
Of course, I'm not going to discount your extensive training with this method, either.

[RhinoJM]

I know everyone is different, different eyes and different uses. I ran an ACOG until my eyes would no longer focus the reticle. The BAC worked very well for me but it was the TA33 I think. 3x and I shot it on 7” plates to 600 yards as well as shooting coyotes running in to eat me. It just didn’t bother me. I switched to 1-4 scopes and did not have a daylight bright reticle but even on 4x, close shots were not a problem. I finally got a daylight bright reticle in a 1-6 and it would seem by the conversation here that the red dot just replaced the daylight bright reticle in a LPVO.

I’ve ran my 1-6 against my 1-4 on a timer at 15 yard targets to prove to myself that the daylight bright dot is faster than a plain reticle. Now I have to run a similar drill on 1x vs 6X and see if it causes issues. I can see an offset or piggybacked red dot being beneficial with an 8x or 10x scope as the eye box gets finicky but I just can’t see it worth the arguments with a 1-4 or even a 1-6.

At what distances are you using the red dot and at what power scope?

I agree, use the 1x on your LPVO. Especially if it's something like the Razor 1-6 (what I use) or PA PLxC 1-8.

The offset RDS replaces whatever offset irons you'd have as backup optic.
Additionally, the offset RDS provides two crucial benefits:
1) Instantaneous 1x if you need a quick up-close shot and your LPVO magnification is maxxed out.
2) Very quick target acquisition and transition at distance via switching between offset RDS and pre-magnified LPVO.

In all of these situations, no points of contact are compromised whatsoever. Your head remains perfectly still relative to the gun.

Once you start using MPVOs (e.g. 2.5-10), then piggybacks become more feasible (vs. offset) due to the big side turrets on these scopes.

[littlejerry]

At what distances are you using the red dot and at what power scope?

The benefit of a red dot for me is position/barricade dependent:
Horizontal ports
Low ports
Shooting from within confined spaces like a vehicle, culvert, etc
Louvered windows
Sloped rooftops
Weak side barricades

Basically any situation that puts you in a less optimal position the red dot wins out for me.

This has been true for 1-6, 1-8, and 2.5-10 optics with a 12:00 piggyback

[Unobtanium]

SIG Tango 6 compared to Trijicon VCOG 1-8



Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

Years ago, when I was deciding between MK6 and VCOG 1-6, I spoke with a gent whose unit had 20 of each to T&E. 0 MK6's were deadlined. Issues were setting up the mounts, and losing the little allen wrench for the turrets. Some batteries died. VCOG was down by 4, I believe, when it was said and done. Moisture intrusion, and other "this shouldn't occur" type events. I am not exactly surprised the VCOG died in this T&E, as well.