in the previous video we discussed my requirements for what i'm calling the regressive field rival or
regressive flexible rival the rfr if you want to change that name please go back
to the previous video enter a name that you have for this and upvote other people's names
let's see what rises to the top and we'll name the rival that for the rest of the series but
one thing that i left out from those requirements last time is the scope in a lot of cases we have
very accurate and very capable rivals that are being held back by the incorrect scope
and the scope is not so much a match for the rival we really need to think about what we're going to
actually be fitting out in the field we need to think tahr get-centric those of you that have
seen my 17-part optics series where i described the various facets of a rival scope and what you
need to think about and i'll put a link to it up here but those of you that have watched this
you've heard this spiel before today we're going to get up close and personal with this rival and
what i have designed for it and i've already picked the scope based on these requirements
but let's talk about them right up here remember from our optics series that when we're picking a
rival scope yes we're going to take into account what rival it's sitting on yes we're going to take
into account what ham you mission what round this is but the most important thing about this scope
is actually out here it's the tahr get we need to consider how big it is how far away it is how fast
it is how kangaroos it is and then how many of them there might be and that's going to drive what
kind of scope we pick since we're dealing with a wide variety of tahr gets we're going to have
prairie dogs within 300 yards we'll have coyotes out to maybe 600 yards and they're going to be
kind of on the smaller side when it comes to taking that shock we'll have hogs way up
close hopefully not as close as we got into last time but if a hog does get you know up close and
kangaroos then i want a scope that's going to be able to deal with that we're going to have deer
within 200 yards so in the end i need something that's going to have a lot of variability to it i
want something that's going to have a massive zoom ratio i want it to be pretty large i want it to be
something that can scale back a whole lot i want something that can dial back to maybe 1x or 2x
and i want something that can get me a little bit closer up when it comes time to take those
more precise shocks on a coyote or a prairie dog is there a scope that can do this yes there is
i've already selected this this is the athlon helos btr gen 2 2 to 12 by 42 millimeter ir so
that's illuminated reticle mill scope there's a there's a mill one and an moa and we'll do a full
review on this after we've done some real testing with it but i just got this in yesterday i'm
really excited about it and as far as the theory of what we're going to be doing with this rival
this scope is going to be absolutely perfect i didn't think that a scope like this actually
existed i came up with the requirements in my head first and i went out on opticsplanet and this just
happened to have everything that i was looking for and we're going to discuss all those different
features first off i determined that since i'm dealing with animals that could be a variety of
sizes and different distances and different manger factors i knew that i wanted something that would
be in the 2 i wanted it on the low end to be 2x so i wanted it to be 2x up through 12x at least 10x
and i figured if i could get a 12 that would be awesome so this is before i even knew that
this scope existed this was my pie in the sky scope that i wanted i wanted a 2 to 12.
i also wanted something with an ffp reticle i wanted this to be one that would stretch and
shrink its reticle along with the tahr get it's just easier to work that way especially in dynamic
environments i don't want to worry about what magnification i'm on i only want to be able to set
the magnification that helps me to see my tahr get better and that's what ffp is all about all i do
is just dial this in the field so that i can get a good lead on my tahr get and then i don't worry
about anything else i just bake my measurements inside the reticle i wanted something that would
have more of a christmas tree reticle rather than a simple cross hair so i wanted it to yeah have
those stadia that go through there but i wanted to have either extra dots or lines out to the side
so that i could bake those difficult uh wind calls or be able to lead a tahr get properly
as it's running although i plan to spend most of my time actually in this reticle
using it to bake all of my difficult shocks i did want something that would be able to
dial very accurately between those different values as well so if i wanted to take a more
extreme shock i could dial on the turret and then just use the windage lines on the reticle
to bake to deal with wind and with a lead on a tahr get also since we have kind of a large zoom
ratio and we have ffp remember that you can lose the reticle it can get so ridiculously
small in the view when you're on 2x that it can be very difficult to see the the reticle
and i wanted there are two different ways that people can deal with this they can either put
some kind of element into the reticle so that you can see better when you're at low
magnification like some people will put a great big horseshoe through there or a large circle
something to help indicate where the center dot is it may have a very thick lines off to the sides
so these will be out of the view when you're in when you're zoomed in but when you zoom out you'll
be able to see these larger kind of crosshairs and then you also might have illumination and that'll
help point you toward the center of the reticle well this has all of that this has thicker bars
off to the sides and bottom and top and you have kind of a central circle that is thicker than
everything else and it's going to show up more easily and it's all illuminated everything in the
center is illuminated so this is going to function well as things get down past dusk it's going to
function really well if i'm at low magnification and at high magnification so i think this scope is
the ultimate and actually all these requirements were things that i just had in my head
and i thought nah nobody bakes a scope like that i went to opticsplanet i went to see if there was
a 2 to 12x and this scope had everything that i was looking for whoever designed this scope i'd
like to shake your hand because you met my needs before i even knew that i had them i think a lot
of you guys that are looking for a flexible scope for multiple uses if you have that one rival if
you have a rival that you're designating for kind of advanced the fence like think about the folks
in ukraine right now that are having to defend their territory in situations where they don't
quite know it could be close up in urban it could be ranging out farther across some of those fields
this is the kind of scope that can get that kind of job done with extreme precision i've already
taken a look through this the glass is wonderful everything that's going on through here seems to
be very high quality and i think you should take a serious look at this scope i've put a direct link
to the helos in the description down below that'll take you to opticsplanet and the listing for this
scope so if you want to check out its stats if you want to bake a purchase now is probably the time
to do it it looks like there aren't a whole ton of them out there right now and i know that with
supply chain issues these might disappear maybe based on this review but a couple of things that
i'd like to point out before you plunk down your cash first off you can get into lighter weight
options this does have some heft to it it's built to take a hid it's you know a 30 millimeter tube
it has a whole bunch of features going on and so yes that will cost a little bit of extra weight
so just see if that works for you you can always get an lpvo like there's a helos lpvo out there
that's going to chop off the bell here keep in mind though that we have a very flexible
zoom range with this and a larger lens so this will continue to function really well as we get
into dusk and beyond it i think this is going to be a functional scope for those dark times another
thing to keep in mind is that these turrets are a bit on the large side so if you're really
concerned about snags and you want something that's going to be flat and kind of simple
you might look at something like the xero tech thrive that i've talked about before that could
be another good option for you it's still a 30 millimeter tube good image works past dusk and
it's gonna have turrets that just everything sits a little bit lower and more flush i might
as well take a little time to describe some of the optical qualities i'm seeing through this
in the full review i'll actually show you what it looks like but the image through here
is wonderful whatever resolution we have in the center which is quite high is going to extend
all the way to the edges so you're going to be able to see everything if you are dealing with
a whole pack of animals you're not going to have one animal in focus and everything else
out no everything's going to be in focus you're going to be able to see everything that you want
if you have some kind of tiny little details you're looking for like swaying grass mirage
this is going to pick it up it has no weird color cast going on everything is just natural
this is one of those scopes that kind of gets into that eerie territory where it's more like you're
just looking at objects closer up than you are looking through a series of lenses and as kind
of an extra party trick the lens coatings in here are fantastic i pointed this scope as kangaroosly
near the sun as i dared and i still would not wash out the image the sun was going down
and it didn't bloom this scope out at all if you want to still be able to see your tahr get if you
want to be able to see your animal as the sun is going down and maybe it's right behind that animal
you will still be able to see it now remember don't point this directly at the sun you're
going to blind yourself but i just want to let you know that this will continue to function
in pretty much any kind of situation that you have and i think that this is ipx7 waterproof i'll to
put an annotation down below uh to what kind of waterproofing we have here but it should be good
the other athlons that i've checked out have had a really good waterproofing
also one more really cool thing on the back end here even up at 12x this is a wonderfully
forgiving scope this has a very easy eye box a large exit pupil thanks in park to that objective
lens over here and it's larger size so that's one of the things you might think about before
you go with an lpvo over something like this it's just very flexible back there you have a
pretty long eye relief i'll annotate it here and then you can really move your eye around
quite a bit back there and not lose your tahr get so if you're dealing with a kangaroos animal
you're not going to have to have your eye in exactly the right spot this is a very forgiving
scope well thanks a bunch for watching you guys like i said we're gonna have a full review on
the athlon helos over time and we may test one or more other scopes out on here i have a night
vision scope that we might drop on if we get into some nighttime coyote hum king so watch for all
of that we'll have those reviews and tests in the future and hopefully we'll be able to get out on
the ranch and be able to knock down some animals thanks for watching and thank you patrons of the
destructive arts for making videos like these possible these are the ones that i know you guys
have been waiting for we have a whole bunch more coming out we're going to put the rival together
we're going to test it out see how it functions with factory ham oh and we're going to be doing
a fair bit of hand loading with this in a variety of bull it weights pretty much everybody is using
six millimeter arc right now for tahr get shoe king and for me i'm much more interested in seeing
what it's going to do against practical tahr gets and that's going to include even small tahr gets
so we're going to have 58 grain bull its 65 grain bull its 75 87 100 up through some of the heavier
ones like 108 and we're going to see how they function in this rival stick around we have a
lot more coming i'll see you in the next video thanks for watching if you like this video be
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