EarlR from United States, VA Public Profile

I bought the 18" Criterion barrel for my AR-10, to replace the Ballistic Advantage 20" heavy barrel I had originally used for the build. The BA barrel would occasionally print ~1-MOA, five shot groups, even managing .8 MOA on a couple of occasions, but it was more common to shoot 1.25-1.5 MOA, even with match ammo. I had heard lots of great things about the Criterion barrels, so decided to give one a try in the hopes of building a consistent 1-MOA rifle. So far, I haven't been blown away. The best 5-shot groups from this barrel so far have been with Black Hills 175gr OTMs, with two groups (on different days) going 1-1/8" and 1-3/16". More common is ~1-1/2", with all other ammo, including M118LR, Federal GMM 175gr SMK, Hornady Match 168gr, IMI 175gr OTM, Ammo Inc 168gr BTHP, and a few others. The barrel currently resides in a Ballistic Advantage receiver/bcg set, with a 6-24 Arken scope in a Midwest Industries Mount, and Geiselle SSA-E trigger, so I don't think there is anything in the build holding it back. I haven't tried handloading for this rifle yet, so will try that next, but as of now I just can't give this barrel higher than 3 stars. On the plus side, reliability has been 100%, in fact I just recently added a stronger buffer spring and H2 buffer as the barrel seems to be gassed on the hot side, and it still runs perfectly.

I was wondering how anyone could make a 10x scope work with no parallax adjustment, and if this example is any indication, they can't. Even at 100 yards, which is supposed to be the pre-set parallax range, I can't get both the reticle and target in focus. At longer ranges it only gets worse. I do plan to contact Sig to see if they will take the scope back and see if there is a problem with mine, and if so and they can rectify the issue I will change my rating. As of now, though, this is easily the worst scope I own, and do own a few lower-end scopes (Vortex Strike Eagle, Bushnell AR Optics, Vortex Diamondback) so that is not saying much.

I have limited experience with spotting scopes, but quite a bit with other optics so feel comfortable in saying that this is a great little spotting scope given its price. They did save on the accessories; the tripod is okay but isn't going to take a lot of abuse, the hard case is the same although I was impressed to get any kind of hard case for what I paid. The optics are as good as you would expect from any $150 scope these days, which is to say pretty good. I've only used it once so far, but it performed perfectly on that occasion. I would say if you are looking for an inexpensive spotting scope you aren't going to do much better.