GA Precision in K.C. recently delivered my first ever AR rifle (an M4 carbine). They did an absolutely incredible job on it, too. My shooting buddies are green with envy. The thing is, the specs - as with any true custom firearm - were my own. And I ordered things such that the rifle would accept multiple sighting implements simultaneously. Nonetheless, I've come to discover that not just any combination of sights/optics will fit. Specifically, this rifle was built with a Wilson Combat rear flip-up peep sight and a DPMS tri-rail, front-post sight. These work beautifully in tandem with an EOTech 556/A65 holo-sight (co-witness one another perfectly) or Leupold red-dot sight. Unfortunately, neither of the two telescopic sights I've tried (ELCAN Specter OS 3.0; Leupold CQB scope) are compatible with the iron sights. The eye relief (or lack thereof) in both scopes demands they be mounted at the very rear-end of the flat-top rail before the sight picture materializes. But this can't be done as long as that Wilson Combat flip-up sight is mounted there.
So I started making some phone calls, just for my own edification, to find out why all these top-of-line, short-range scopes - all ostensibly designed for AR, FN, Sig, and HK rifles/carbines - have so little eye relief, preventing them from being mounted simultaneously on rifles with iron sights. Of course, the answer was always the same: most of these scopes are meant to be dedicated sights, rather than a complement to other sighting implements, just like it is on high-power, bolt-rifles.
At length, I got to brooding about whether, if I could have one of two exactly identical rifles/carbines, I would choose the one with the combination of iron sights and a holo-sight or red-dot sight, or the one with just a variable power scope (for our purposes, a variable 1-4x US Optics SN-4 or an ELCAN Specter). And I couldn't come up with a definite answer for myself. So, I would hereby like to submit the question to you, gentlemen.
Which would you choose?
So I started making some phone calls, just for my own edification, to find out why all these top-of-line, short-range scopes - all ostensibly designed for AR, FN, Sig, and HK rifles/carbines - have so little eye relief, preventing them from being mounted simultaneously on rifles with iron sights. Of course, the answer was always the same: most of these scopes are meant to be dedicated sights, rather than a complement to other sighting implements, just like it is on high-power, bolt-rifles.
At length, I got to brooding about whether, if I could have one of two exactly identical rifles/carbines, I would choose the one with the combination of iron sights and a holo-sight or red-dot sight, or the one with just a variable power scope (for our purposes, a variable 1-4x US Optics SN-4 or an ELCAN Specter). And I couldn't come up with a definite answer for myself. So, I would hereby like to submit the question to you, gentlemen.
Which would you choose?
