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Primary Arms is very proud to announce our new Gen III 1-6x24 Second Focal Plane scope! Our previous 1-6x was a flagship optic for us and we knew it would be tough act to follow, so we worked hard to make incremental but real improvements to the Gen III. What’s different?

•             Lifetime Warranty (Gen II was 3 years)

•             Improved ACSS reticle using chevron center instead of dot

•             18mm shorter than Gen II

•             1.88 ounces lighter than Gen II

•             10 MOA increase in internal windage/elevation adjustment (50 MOA total)

•             Slightly wider field of view than Gen II



LINK TO BUY, $289.99







We believe the patented Advanced Combined Sighting System reticle is the most advanced reticle in the world. Here’s what it looks like in the Gen III 1-6x. It’s a laser etched reticle so it works fine with illumination off, but when you twist the knob to one of the 11 brightness settings, the center section turns red as shown, powered by a standard CR2032 battery. Illumination is daylight bright at the highest settings.







We upgraded the Gen III reticle to a chevron center aiming point, replacing the dot in the center of the Gen II. If you make a center dot large for fast acquisition, it covers up the exact part of the target you are trying to hit, especially at longer distances. You can gain precision by making the dot smaller, but then the dot quickly becomes more difficult for the eye to find. Using the tip of the chevron gives you an infinitely small point of aim that doesn’t obscure the target, while the size of the chevron itself can be large enough for your eye to pick up quickly.

We surround the chevron with a thick horseshoe for snap shooting up close at 1x or low power. If you’re at short distances and time is paramount, simply frame the target with the horseshoe and let fly.







Underneath the chevron is the bullet drop compensation ladder, reaching out to 800 yards, as explained in blue on the diagram. Next to the BDC are wind hold dots calibrated for a 5mph wind. Two large dots on each side of the horseshoe are moving target leads, calibrated for a target moving perpendicular to you at 8.6mph.





Having the BDC there is great if you know your distance to the target. If range to target is unknown, you need to figure that out first, and quick! ACSS has two types of ranging built in. What looks like a flag on the right is a ranging scale calibrated for 5’10” tall targets. Line up the target bottom at the base of the “flag” as shown in green on the diagram, and estimate distance based on the line matching the top of the target. If the target fits best between the bottom of the flag and the second line from the top of the flag, then it is about 500 yards away from you. That is “vertical ranging.”

What if you can’t see the bottom of the target because of tall grass, for example? We also incorporated “horizontal ranging” in the flag and also on the BDC. An 18” wide target facing you squarely will fit into the width of those hash marks at the correct range. Incorporating this into our BDC gives the ACSS an awesome “auto ranging” function that no other reticle offers—if your 18” wide target fits nicely in the “500” hash on the BDC ladder, then it is 500 yards away and you are already on target and ready to fire.









The Gen III 1-6x24 is a second focal plane scope, so the ACSS reticle will stay the same size regardless of what magnification the optic is set to. The BDC, wind holds, and range estimation are calibrated to work properly at 6x power, since those features are most useful at long distances where you are more likely to want maximum magnification anyway. The Gen III features a quick adjust ocular to keep the reticle sharp at all times, 0.5 MOA clicks with finger-adjustable resettable zero turrets, and a 30mm main tube size.







Primary Arms is proud to offer our Limited Lifetime Warranty with this scope while keeping the price down at just $289.99. They are in stock now and ready to purchase at THIS LINK.

Might be great to cerakote for our monthly shop build.

Should send one our way!

It's shorter.  The old heavier looking caps are tougher but yes they took more pressure to open and that often caused them to pop off.

Eye relief on this one is 3.3in - 3.5in.

Exit pupil is 9mm at 1x, tapering to 4mm at 6x. Exit pupil isn't EXACTLY the same as eyebox of course, but it's something that can be quantified at least. At 1x it is pretty darn fast to acquire, in my opinion. At 6x you'll want to have a consistent cheekweld, but it isn't a picky annoying scope where you are constantly fighting shadows trying to get a clean image all around. I hate that.

I wish there was a way to quantify eyebox and put a number on it that manufacturers could print on the side of the box. It's so important, but so misunderstood too.

FDE will be one of the colors offered later in the year, along with a "Wolf Grey" that we really like. Our R&D team is working on perfecting the color, choosing an FDE hue to match FDE products from other manufacturers is really problematic.

Correct no change to illumination technology. In sun bright enough to wash out the illumination best to just turn it off and use the black reticle. I only use the illumination at 1X no matter what the ambient lighting.

Click value is 0.5 MOA per click which is the same as the Gen II. Most of our low powered variables and scopes with capped turrets are 0.5 MOA, while most of our precision optics with exposed target turrets are MIL/MIL with 0.1 Mils per click, as a general rule.

I think we arranged the turrets in a smart way for this application, which is a BDC application where most shooters will adjust the turrets primarily when zeroing their optic/rifle/ammo combination at 100 yards, and then will put the turret caps on and use the BDC and wind holds as holdovers for distance shooting. There's really no reason to count 25 clicks down (or whatever) when shooting at 600 yards to use the center aiming point, and then have to keep track of that adjustment when you go back to 100 yards. The reticle handles all that for you, so the intended application is a "set it and forget it" type deal, relying on ACSS to score hits rather than adjusting the internals of the scope for a firing solution. That being said, with the caps removed the turrets are finger adjustable and pretty darn tight, they aren't going to move on accident.

One detail that we don't really advertise, but I put in the user manual, is that the dial indicators are zero resettable. Once you have your firearm zeroed you can use a fingernail, pocket knife, etc. to drag the interior of the dial around until the "0" lines up with the appropriate mark on the scope. From there, the other numbers on the dial indicate MOA. For example on the pic below, turning to the "8" will shift your point of impact 8 MOA to the right. This is more useful for elevation than windage changes, but handy enough we put them on both turrets. You can also see the spare CR2032 battery hidden in the windage cap, you actually get two batteries with your scope.    

Hope this helps.

Don't have any good pics, as the production versions have not arrived yet. Here is a video from SHOT Show featuring the prototype that we brought there.

No.

Yes the 300BO is the Gen III body and latest reticle. Also Lifetime warranty

Yes. Same scope except the reticle

The .300 Blackout version uses a large chevron instead of the smaller chevron plus donut of the 5.56 reticle. Sorry but I don't have a lead time on FDE units yet. Here's our reticle tutorial for the .300 Blackout reticle showing how to use it with supers vs subsonics, ranging, etc.

On the product page (see link below) you can pull up a PDF of the manual. It shows how to adjust you zero for multiple rounds and barrel length. Any standard AR height scope mount will be fine.


Take a look and if we need more detail I will ask Dimiti the designer to join the thread.

http://www.primaryarms.com/pa1-6x24sfp-acss-5-56

About 250 hrs. remember it is not a red dot you don;t need the illumination to see the reticle.

China

Not picking a fight or anything, but I do want to point out that Chinese glass and manufacturing competency has increased exponentially just in the past five years. There was a time when I would have agreed with you, that anything past 200-300 yards with a sub-$300 optic would be difficult to pull off. You could pull it off if conditions were right, but could you do it every time, consistently?

Fast forward to 2017 and a lot has changed. For example, here's one of my favorite videos of our products, this is the guys from Insane Accuracy running an M1a with one of our 4-14x44 FFP 308 scopes mounted. They start at a thousand yards and work their way down to 250 yards without ever touching a turret or counting clicks, just using the BDC and holdovers. That's a scope we have in stock right now for $279.99 and it'll survive indefinitely on that .308.



Obviously I'm not even remotely trying to be unbiased here. I mostly just enjoy sharing this old video when I get the chance. :)