Sunday, July 24, 2011

The wait is over: The OBR has landed

In my previous cryptic post, I mentioned something was supposed to arrive and something was gonna happen with something. Or something. It has, in fact, happened: on Friday afternoon, my Larue Tactical OBR was delivered. It was a happy, happy day.

There's a little more to the story, though. Here's the back story.

I got the notification that my rifle was shipping and was to arrive on Wednesday, the 20th. It only takes a couple days to go from LRT to ATS, so I was expecting to have it Wednesday afternoon. While watching the tracking info, I was dismayed to see that the package had an intercept and return request on it. I knew that could be done, but I'd never seen it before. After running though a number of scenarios that didn't make a lot of sense, I called Larue and asked them. By this time, it's fairly late in the day, and everyone in the shipping department had left for the day. The sales guy who took my call, though, promised to research it first thing in the morning and call me back.

Oh, look! Sub-back story! It's like Dennis Miller is writing this article. I'm the admin of the Lightfighter forum, which is most definitely a pro-LRT place, and has been for a very long time. Because of that history, Mark Larue offered a special rifle to the moderators of said forum. My rifle originally came with UDE furniture, but my buddy Joe wanted that color furniture for a project, so he swapped me black for UDE. Somewhere in this post I've got a photo or photos of the logo that LRT applied for these guns.

LRT did, in fact, get right back to me. Turns out that after my rifle had shipped, mark saw the logo on another receiver and wasn't happy with it. He had it recalled and fixed. Mark's known to be a perfectionist; it showed in this case. So, they fixed that logo and still got the rifle back out to me to arrive by Friday. How cool is that? No wonder so many think so highly of  Larue. Here's the end version of the logo:


I took it out and got it on paper after the IDPA match on Saturday. It was bloody hot again, and there's no overhead cover on the rifle half of the range. The upper and lower fit so tightly that I gave up on boresighting. I did get 'em apart when I got home, but I was already baking trying to get 'em apart at the range, and decided to just shoot it. I don't have a precise zero because I didn't have the precise distance. It was so dang hot that I wasn't as concerned about that as I was about being close enough to only adjust a little when I did zero "for real". I plan to dope with 168's, but had 150's to get close with. Pretty darn pleased overall, though, even with sweat running into my eyes.

As to the specifics of the rifle: its an 18" barrel, with collapsing Magpul CTR stock, with the LRT RISR. Trigger is a two stage Geisselle match unit. It's awesome. The bipod is the Harris BRM-S with the Larue LT130 QD mount, and the scope mount is the Larue LT111 OBR QD mount. The rifle came with a Magpul 7.62, 20 round magazine, but so far I've only used the two LRT mags. They worked flawlessly.



The scope is the new Weaver Tactical 4-20X50, 30 mm tube. It's FFP (first focal plane; the reticle gets larger with magnification) and has side focus, a very handy feature. It's MOA adjustments with a mil-dot reticle. The glass is as clear as some much more expensive scopes; the clarity is outstanding. I haven't tested the tracking yet, but reviews say that it tracks excellently. They retail about $750 and are a very good buy.
Also of note: the iron sights are the Dueck Defense 1 o'clock offset units, available through Surefire and their authorized dealers. They're a set of A2 sights set up to allow addressing close range targets without changing magnification of the scope or some variation of point shooting. All you have to do is lift the elbow. I borrowed these from a friend from Surefire. I've fooled around with it a bit, but I really wanted to work 'em out and give 'em a good going over.
I couldn't be happier, Larue Tactical rules, and everybody needs one o' these bad boys!

Friday, July 22, 2011

The waiting is the hardest part

I have a new toy on it's way to me...or something. I shoulda had it a couple days ago, but there are interesting reasons why I don't. So, instead of making several posts that don't have the whole saga, I'm gonna wait a bit and write one post to cover it all. I know that's horribly cryptic, but it'll make sense once it's in hand.

I will say this: normally, when stuff doesn't show up, it's because somebody dropped the ball. That's not the case this time. I think you'll be impressed with the steps taken.