Still a work in progress, but getting there.  The heart of this build is the barrel, Navy SEAL Crane spec original Lilja recon profile 16" stainless 1:8 twist, Wylde.

Otherwise, it is a more modern, but consistent to theme, choice of rail, furniture, trigger, BCG, and optics.  Not intended to be a clone, but rather what Crane might do today with a 16" barrel.

Remaining to be done is collar mount and suppressor.

I like it a LOT.  How do you like the ACS?  Have you been shooting with it yet?  Need a range report on that one.  Is that a VX-R.  I think I asked in another thread, so I apologize if you responded there.  I don't remember where that was.

Yep, ACS and VX-R Patrol, mil/mil.  It's a matter of personal preference with stocks, but ACS gives me really nice cheek weld.

Still working up handloads.  This is a typical 5 shot group right now - four in 1/2 MOA (actually .4) and one stretching it to about .9 MOA because I'm 66 years old and not as good behind the trigger as I used to be.  Need to work on breathing and heartbeat, as the rifle is 1/2 MOA capable, but I'm not!  Trigger is SSA-E, so I can't blame it.

Shot yesterday at 100 yards.  52 grain Bergers over H4895. Squares are 1".  In fairness, I use a 6-24x50 QD scope with 1/8 MOA crosshairs cranked up to 24x for load development.  The Firedot in the VX-R is .3 mils or about 1 MOA, so it would have completely covered this group.  Great for its intended purpose, but I go to a target scope when working up loads.

Might not want to wait too long dude. Vortex is discontinuing the 2.5-10x32 FFP PST.

All dependent upon VW to get their shit together and buy back my damn TDi. Still waiting on the offer letter.

I note the popularity of the 2.5-10x32 ffp, but don't understand ffp at 10x and lower or why only 32mm objective at 10x with only 3.2mm exit pupil.  

I've used scopes in that power range for decades, but alway crank the scope to 10x for any shot beyond 300 yards.  At 10x I've needed at least a 40mm objective to have decent eyebox and to avoid the scope dimming out in low light.  My best performing 2.5-10x scope has a 45mm objective and none have objectives below 40mm unless lower magnification.  Some have 50mm objectives, but they are heavier and bulkier.  My best 2-7x scope, a Kahles Helia CL, has a 36mm objective , still bigger than a 2.5-10x32, so I have a bit over 5mm exit pupil at 7x.  I guess this is because I hunt a lot and I put a premium on performance in low light, and need that reticle to be prominent at all power settings.

I'm always wanting to learn more, so, I'm not critical, but rather curious about what I am missing.  Help me understand the attraction so many have to the 32mm scope and ffp at 10x and lower.
There's got to be some good reasons I'm overlooking.

Because at a glance it looks like the clone-correct 2.5-8x36 Leupold TS-30A2.  

Wrap a little burlap around it, nobody's the wiser.  


ETA:  by your rationale, the Nightforce 2.5-10x24 is a totally worthless optic for anything but broad daylight.  You might want to let NSWC know they're doing it all wrong.

Hint:  maybe it's not just the objective diameter that determines ability to see the target.   PST glass is incredibly impressive.  I'd be willing to bet that god-awful 3.2mm exit pupil (yeah i've seen that phrase on websites before too) has a much clearer and brighter sight picture than the 42mm buckmaster i've got on a rimfire.

Illuminated, awesome glass (better than the 2.5-10x44 PST), perfect magnification range for 5.56 (IMO), zero-stop turrets, Vortex warranty, and I got it for $650.

And it looks badass on my Mk12

Good shooting!!!  Must feel like cheating on 24x though.  LOL.  Actually that's too much for me.  Every little tiny movement looks like an avalanche at 100 yards on 24.  I actually don't remember when I was shooting with something with super high magnification.  But that's how it is through my spotting scope.  One tiny movement feels like Mt. Vesuvius is blowing on the highest magnification.  I think 10X is probably about all I'd like to stand.  Well at least at 100 yards.

Guess I can put this in here too. The Leupold on my seal recce has been bothering me, really want a 2.5-10x24 nxs :(
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Dunno if that's true or not, but I can't seem to get any interest in mine. And yeah...I found out about the mil/LE pricing the hard way too...

You can't deny two hard, rigid laws of physics:

1.  In low light our pupils open up to about 5mm, some lucky guys to 6mm.  Any scope, regardless of brand, must have an exit pupil at least the size of your own pupil in low light or many of the rods and cones in your eye are not activated and the image grows dimmer and color turns brownish.  This happens regardless of glass quality, although really good glass will help - somewhat.

2.  Exit pupils in the 3mm range are extremely unforgiving of head position, even the slightest lateral movement and the image goes black.  A 2mm exit pupil is much worse.  No glass quality can alter this optical fact.

I have some really nice glass in Kahles and Zeiss Victory scopes and one Leupold with Schott glass.  While great glass is something I truly appreciate, and it really does extend low light performance compared to cheap glass, it does nothing to address the hard reality that the exit pupil of the scope is physically incapable of activating a high percentage of the rods and cones of the retina.

Take the best scope you can find optically with 10x and a 32mm objective.  I don't care the source.  Watch a distant woods line at dusk.  Start with the magnification at 5x (5mm exit pupil).  Then zoom to 10x and watch that image darken and contrast fade and color go brownish.  And try moving your head even a tiny bit.

If these scope are to be effective in low light, magnification must be dialed back to get you at least a 4mm, preferably 5mm exit pupil.  The Leupold 2.5-8x36 has an exit pupil at max magnification of over 4mm, almost 5mm.  Beats the hell out of 3.2.

Forgive me for a seeming thread jack.  Not my intention but optics are a part of a Recce build and I'm still not seeing the rationale for the 32mm objective or ffp at 10x and lower, regardless of what Crane may have been thinking.  Wouldn't be the first time military brass and procurement made a mistake.

I was hoping something would make sense to me.  FFP would let you still range and have accurate reticle suspensions at distance in low light when you dial magnification back to 5x or 6x brighten up the image, but would it not be better to be able to see the target clearly at dusk against similarly colored background at full magnification and not have to dial back?

That's why something topping out at 9x or 10x (perfect for Recce) is plenty for all but true precision shooting or very long range.  That 6-24x50 is also very long and unweildy.  But, it is useful where reaching accuracy porential of barrel and ammo.  

95% of the time the rifle has the 3-9x40mm, as it should.

Important info to know for any scope buyer.

1. At what point in any of my posts have i said anything about shooting this rifle in low light? It's a .223. I have a 7-08 bolt gun that's far more accurate for hunting.

2. Then don't fuck up your head placement. If anything, this helps train consistency.

But by all means continue to tell us all how we're wrong and you're right and everyone needs a hunting scope on their range toy.

Maybe head to the hunting forum if you want to talk about hunting scopes and deer on the woodline at dusk. That's not what these rifles are for. Kthxbai.

Gen 1 redi mag for the win.  It's for a clone build but till that's done I'm liking this.  

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That's hot

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A bit touchy?  Wouldn't want to confuse you with the facts.  Maybe some Recce shooters actually do use their rifles in low light.  One should not assume that the "us" one claims to speak for are all of "us" and are only broad daylight fair weather range toy shooters with no concerns about eyebox.  That deer in the edge of the woods at dusk could just as easily be an armed two legged combatant with bad intensions and taking aim at you.

The information I supplied is accurate.  Some may find it useful.  Others may not.  That's cool.  No offense intended, none taken.

Your comments were directed at me.  I responded to them as they applied to me.  If you read anything else into that, it's on you and your inability to utilize context clues like a normal adult.  But continue your temper tantrum for all you want.  I won't see any more of it.  :)

So how bout them bears?  

I have to admit, most of what MS556 went right over my head.  I wouldn't know good glass if someone hit me upside the head with it.  I do understand that some glass will help you see better in low light.  And what he said sort of makes sense.  And I also understand that some scopes are more generous in the amount of eye relief.  In two different ways.  WHERE the sweet spot is, and HOW BIG the sweet spot is.  I didn't know that the diameter of the objective had anything to do with that.  The scope I know most is my Leupy VX-1 2-7 because it's what I look through the most.  The only thing I notice is that on 7x the eye relief isn't as generous as on 2x.  But not enough for it to be a big problem.  Well not at the bench at least.  I've never shot at anything moving with it on 7x.  Or myself moving.  I notice that on 7x the sweet spot of the eye relief, ALMOST seems to shift just a hair in comparison to the sweet spot on 2x.  But here again, very little.  All in all I like that scope for the recce, except that there is not BDC or target turrets.  And the VX-1 doesn't have click adjustments.  Blaaaaaah.  I would run into problems if I was shooting past 400-500 yards much.  So I'm kind of wanting something different.  I'm half temped to send it back to them and just get a different reticle with some kind of hash marks on it.  

OR, get a 1-4 with some kind of BDC or target turrets or both.  The one downside of any magnification is the scope jumping when shooting.  If you're shooting off hand.  I guess I'm not that good to not have some muzzle jump and when shooting up close, no magnification sort of allows you to track the targets better.  So I'm thinking about going to a 1-4.  

But Armed Ferret, if you go back and read his statement about the 2.5-10 FFP, it did sound like a genuine question about what he was missing and why they're popular.  It didn't seem inflammatory to me.  Not trying to irritate you, but you seem a little salty about this.  

The issue is, he's spreading misinformation by making it look like objective diameter determines eyebox and eye relief.  It contributes, yes, but a bushnell 40mm objective at say 6x, compared against a leupold and a vortex and a nikon......all of them will be different.  Every last one of them.  There's a lot more that goes into those two things (box and relief) than just objective size.  But of course by his assertion we should all have 72mm objectives on our riflescopes, that way we can see at night (and have 7 feet of eye relief)!!  

Somebody please get me up to speed.      I've been out for a while.  Last I knew, there was like 1 known photo of a recce in the wild.   I come back to see a ton.   What happened?   Did more photos happen to be found, or the recce concept just took off in the SOF communities?

I've had a carbine I put together for a few years now and was looking over this 'Recce' thread when I decided to follow the Wiki link posted to see the barrel dimensions. Turns out the CMMG 'Modified HBAR' upper I bought has a barrel that is exactly to the Recce profile (.98, .85, .75, .725) but is not true Recce because it is a middy and is in 1:7. Still, it is a sweet shooter. I'm using IMI 77 gr with it now which is the most accurate I have tried in this carbine.

OK.  That makes sense.  Like I said, it all went over my head.  LOL.  I'll have to look through the 3 different, no 4 different scopes I have and see what differences I can tell.  Although I still took his comments to mean that this was his understanding of it, and he seemed to be asking what he was missing.  Which you kind of just answered to me.  It does make sense that each scope is going to have different performance, for whatever reason being that people might build scopes just a bit differently and use different components / dimensions and such.  Wouldn't the size of the tube also play a role.  1" compared to 30mm.  And then we have these bigger things now too.  34, 35mm, Elcans, etc....

Doesn't it matter why?  I'm guessing you saw the pics on page 300, correct?  As with anything, as more time passed, things got learned.  At least that's how I see it.  I don't think it took off any more than it had been.  I guess if I was going to have an explanation, which may or may not be correct.  But maybe one contributor is that some of the guys that might have used them, posted pics.  Or the pics of guys with them aren't as guarded as they used to be.  Or guys like Defoor who may have used them are no longer in the service and talk about what they used.  I don't know...  Time passed.  More info and pics are out there.  It's a good thing right?  It's still relatively obscure compared to all the other clones being built on ARFcom.

Here's mine. Custom lower (sucks being a 07/02),  16" medium profile mid gas premium stainess PSA barrel, MI 12" ff gen 2 rail, Geissle SSA, Vortrx Viper PST 1-4, Saker K.

The target is at 100 yds. Shoots ok.


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Nice shooting.  What's yours weigh in at?  It looks like it would be lighter than some recce type set ups......  Although I know vortex scopes aren't usually very light.

Never weighed it until now.

10 lbs even with a loaded mag of MK262mod1 and the can on it.

Not as light as it feels.

Regrettably, what I said has not been understood or is being misapplied.  Exit pupil is an absolute law of physics phenomenon.  It is actual objective lens diameter divided by actual magnification.  The problem is that you can't simply say top magnification is a true 9x on a 3-9x scope.  You must check the manufacturer's specs.  It will be somewhat different.  You must hope the manufacturer is being honest about objective lens diameter, the actual part of the lens capable of transmitting light, and not the part behind any frame or other structure.  Most manufacturers do publish this, but you can actually measure this.

Exit pupil absolutely determines the size of the image your retina is capable of receiving and directly correlates to the amount of lateral head movement you can have before losing the image.  Because it is magnification dependent, that is why you have much more lateral eye movement capability at lower power.  40 divided by 10x equals a 4mm exit pupil, but 40 divided by 5x is a much larger 8mm exit pupil.  I can say this and will say it again:  Every scope with a true 40mm objective lens at a true 10x will have exactly a 4mm exit pupil by definition.  Any variation between scopes is only because the objective lens size is not being reported accurately, or the magnification is not being labeled accurately.

A similar phenomenon is going on with the fore and aft aspect of the so-called "eye box".  This is eye relief, the distance at which you get a full image in the scope's eyepiece.  This is highly dependent on individual scope design.  It tends to lessen as magnification increases, but some manufacturers, with good design can keep eye relief to within the usually desirable 3.5'- 4" range through out the entire zoom.  Some scopes are intentionally designed to have very long eye relief (scout scopes and pistol scopes) where the image fills the eyepiece only at arms length, while most assume that the typical shooter wants to mount the scope directly over the receiver or in a position that comports with the cheek weld of the typical stock design.  This usually works out to that 3.5" - 4" range.

It is inaccurate and indeed, misleading, to suggest that I support 72mm objective lens on riflescopes.  I do support the notion that it is very beneficial to have an exit pupil on the scope that is at least as large as the pupil of your own eye in low light, if you plan to use the scope under those conditions, or if you want to have what is commonly called a "more forgiving eye box".  You can achieve a 5mm exit pupil with only a 20mm objective lens, if you keep magnification to no more than 4x (5x4=20), but if you want to have a 10x scope on top end, it will take a 50mm objective to do that.  9x will get you close with a 40mm objective (40 divided by 9 = about 4.5mm).  It is not uncommon for European hunters to use 56mm objective lens scopes because they can hunt earlier and later than in the US.  In virtually pitch back light pupils might open a mm or so more than the dusk and dawn type of low light shooting we have to contend with.

It is for this reason that I questioned whether there might be some other reason to consider a variable scope with a 10x top end that has only a 32mm exit pupil.  It does not need 72mm objective.  It would help enormously, by my way of thinking for it to be in the 40-45mm range to take advantage of the, yes, I'll say it again, larger exit pupil to match the size of the actual pupil of the shooter's eye in low light or to provide for more later head movement.  That is all I'm trying to say, but I'm trying to say it from an optical science perspective.

In the context of Recce builds, I questioned why even Navy Crane would intentionally handicap Navy SEALS in low light with that 32mm objective unless this was perhaps a procurement issue rather than a fact driven choice, or there is some other reason that I did not know about.

Tube diameter does, but not to as much of an extent as coatings and glass quality do.  Given a 1" scope and a 30mm with exactly the same glass with exactly the same coatings, yes, the 30mm would appear a bit brighter at the extremes.  The more frequently-tagged benefit is the erector travel allowed by a larger tube diameter.  As longer-range shooting has become more popular, so have optics with larger tube diameters.  Not primarily due to light transmission (i hate when people say "gathering"--the scope doesn't go around putting light in its pocket to bring home ) but because of the ability to dial in more windage and elevation to make longer shots.  Yes, additional transmission is a part of it.  Let it not be said I made claims to the contrary.  

Different gun but as I'm reading about all this, this photo keeps popping in my head.  That scope is gigantic.  

I love those three in the order they are shown from front to back.

1/4 TSP Tan 1/16th-ish TSP Cocoa brown in 10 cups of water for 2:45min.
Worked out really well. Except now I'm switching back to black as I'm getting that rifle cerakoted patriot brown.

Main tube diameter (1" versus 30mm versus 34mm) plays no role in exit pupil size, eye relief or the misnomer "light gathering" of a scope.  The beam traveling through the main tube is far smaller than 1".  As correctly observed above, larger tube diameter can be used to increase the adjustment range of the erector system, a benefit when shooting beyond 600-700 yards.  It also generally means a thicker and stronger main tube, making it more rugged.

A change in main tube diameter will not make a 32mm objective lens scope any brighter at 10x or at any other magnification.

Double tap.

Forgot about that one.

Got something in the safe that may need to turn into one.

Big objectives make ar15's top heavy and impractical for general purpose use, imo.

I had a recce-ish setup with a trijicon 3-9x40 (light scope) and it seemed unbalanced and poorly suited to shooting except for strictly on the bench

My hit probability is higher with an ACOG, even 4x vs 9x.

I think this is the real crux of the matter. With the quality of quick change mounts and the availability of thermal and night vision optics today, light gathering ability is perhaps not as critical as it once was, although the general trend to 30mm tubes is clear. I think the tube size has much more to do with the usability of the scope, although the discussion on pupil size was interesting, even if it got a bit heated. What's the best scope? The one you have on your weapon at the time... LOL.

I do agree with the statement about the bigger objective scope.  I get my recce all set up with my 2x7 or 3x9 and I'm just like, it's so front heavy when shouldering.  It's all great for shooting off the bench or prone, but if I'm moving around and such, I feel like I want to go back to my M4gery.  So either it's going to stay a bench gun, or I'm going to put a different optic or irons on it when it's in my GP rifle mode.  An ACOG would be ideal, but I don't have the funds for that.  

Another thing is that if you shoot ntch and use an offset mount of some sort.  Either a Larue or or recce rail, that just makes it even more front heavy.  But I always figure I'm just being a wuss.  Because I bust out my M1A with scope on it and talk about front heavy.  Makes a recce with a 3x9 feel like an M-1 Carbine.

Oh! Do tell, and by tell I mean show.

Silky's chopped FF RAS that looks like an MRE.

I don't want another 14.5", so that pic of a 16" MRE-cce looks promising.

Yea I agree, you should do this

I second this notion

My mini-recce (13.7 with pinned YHM mount) gets even worse when i put the can on.  

Buuuut....if i'm taking the time to shoot suppressed, odds are i'm not running and gunning.  And I have a 10.3" upper if I really need to do something like that.

It's all a trade off really.  If weight concerns me I have a 4.5(ish) pound build I can always turn to.  That sucka is LOUD though.....

Just to revisit and add info, it looks like they're only discontinuing because there's a gen 2 coming out.


Apparently it will be inferior to a tasco with a 50mm objective though, so IDK which I should get yet.  

Now that's sig line worthy!