Well look at that. Leupold is announcing that Redfield is back to being a USA company. We’ll watch to see how this develops and how the two companies are tied together or perhaps it is just the Redfield name on a new line of leupold scopes? It looks like their price point is on the lower end but still USA made. Sounds good to me….
MEL
Well, with the introduction of the M110 SASS to the US Army inventory it was never quite clear what the future was for the M24 and if the M110 was supposed to be a replacement or a complimentary system. Well, the US Army has just awarded a $11 million contract to Remington for more M24 SWS’s. I have also heard nothing about decommissioning the M24 so I will assume it still has some life left in her. 2008 does mark the 20th year of service for the M24, that isn’t too bad.
The .338 Lapua has always been an exceptional long range caliber but there has always only been a handful of rifles chambered in it. But we are starting to see that change with the recent availability (finally) of the Remington 700 MLR and now CZ has also announced they are going to offer a .338 Lapua rifle based on their 550 action.
Click on the photo to be taken to the product page
The price is listed at $3000 but will probably retail for less.
It is nice to see the Lapua gain some more following. We will be trying to get some of these 338’s in for review soon.
We have received our shipment of Falcon Optics scopes. We have the 4.5-18×56 as well as the 10×42’s in stock. We have both the MOA and Metric models. We also have some of the new illuminated reticle 4.5-18×56 models that we will be getting on the sight in the next day or two. The 4-14×44 FFP scopes are scheduled to be ready in August some time. To purchase, you can head here:
We regret to inform everyone that Falcon Optics has canceled all 4-14×44mm scope orders. Here is the official release from Falcon:
“We have been studying and testing them for faults since they got to us on Tuesday. We are now satisfied that the optical standard of these new models is consistently poorer than that of previous models. We estimate that around 95% of these units are not up to the standard of the previous models. Some are significantly poorer, most are slightly below average.
At the moment we are exploring the possibility of a major defect in the optical glass, or simply that the incorrect grade was used.
As of now we don’t have an ETA on when replacements will be ready, hopefully we should have some details by the start of next week.
We understand that you have pre-orders for this model, we are truly sorry for the inconvenience this is going to cause. In that sense it wasn’t an easy decision for us to make in stopping this batch from going on sale. Having said that, we would prefer to miss delivery dates than supply product that we know to be below our best quality. We simply cant supply equipment knowing that its not 100%.”
Yes, this is going to be an inconvenience to us, but I fully support Falcon’s decision in this matter as I would much rather they reject these scopes than to let an inferior quality product make it on to the market.
So what does this mean if you preordered a scope from us? First, we will be notifying all preorder customers via email of both this announcement as well as give them the option of receiving a refund of the preorder deposit or they can leave the deposit and wait until the proper quality scopes are finally released. Further more, we received the this information as well:
“We are really devastated, we cant meet any of our orders for this model.
I can tell you that any units that we can salvage will go to RWSnyder in Iowa. He was first to get his order in and he also pre-paid, we feel awful. So if you hear of some getting through then that’s why. Other than that nobody will get any at all, the numbers simply are not there.”
We also agree with this decision as well, since RWSnyder was not only first to place the order on this batch but they prepaid for all of their scopes, they certainly should get any of the available scopes, and if you are needing one of these scopes asap, we would recommend that you contact them and see if they have any available.
This is most unfortunate news as many people have been waiting for these scopes to be released again for several months now. I am just personally grateful Falcon was willing to swallow the pill and make the very difficult decision not to release this batch of scopes.
MEL
We have added some basic account administration ability to the SC membership accounts. Now, when you log into the membership area of the site, you will see a new link in the upper right hand corner for “Admin Your Account”. By clicking the link it will take you to your account page where it displays when your account will expire and your information. It also now allows you to change your password as well. This a starting point and more functionality will be added over time.
Over at military.com they have a nice little slide show of US Army Sniper School and a few other sniper pics. It is fairly interesting and probably worth the few minutes to watch.
http://images.military.com/slideshows/sniper.htm?ESRC=army.nl
MEL
SC was down for about an hour this morning (2/28/08). There was a memory problem which caused a server crash. There may be a few more shorter downtimes while the memory is tested and replaced. I apologize for any problems this may cause.
MEL
This past Saturday, 9 Feb 2008, I attended the funeral services of an old friend who passed away of natural causes last week. It was a nice ceremony at the church and then we headed out to the cemetery for the grave side services. Gordon server in the military, both National Guard and Active duty, back in the 1950’s & 1960’s and he was entitled to and received a military funeral. The local Missoula chapter of the VFW & Veterans group (I’m not sure of the exact title of the veterans group) performed the ceremony. It was a damp day with snow on the ground and I must commend these old veterans. They did an outstanding job with the ceremony. It was well rehearsed, well spoken, and very professional. I know that may not be the case everywhere, but this local chapter needs to be commended for a job well done with dignity and pride. Yes, there were slight mis-cues and mistakes, and perhaps everything was not perfect, but it was very inspiring none the less and to top it off, Taps was played beautifully without waver. Again, I just wanted to let everyone know these men are doing a great service and if you are in a position to participate and help out, please do so, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to find veterans to perform these services.
Well, we ordered as many of the 4-14×44 scopes as we could, and they still sold out very fast. But the really bad news is that Falcon has ran into a supply problem with the Reticles and the 4-14’s will not be available again until around May 2008. This is terrible news, but instead of going with a different, less quality provided, they are going to stick it out with their current supplier.
The 4.5-18×56’s are on schedule and should be here in mid February.