my personal opinion on illumination is that TOO much emphasis is placed on its small advantage.
take for instance: you're on the line, ready to go, the buzzer goes off, you throw the rifle to your shoulder, and you illum. isn't on, what is the first thing you do?? stop, and turn it on, remount the gun, its still not on, check to see why?? and then realize you can still shoot because there is a black dot or cross inside your scope that tells you where the bullets will land, so you get back on the gun and finish the CoF. How much time did you WASTE fiddling with your illum.??????....3secs., 5 secs.????
Use illum. when you can't see your crosshairs or dot, do not rely on it to shoot. How many times have you seen an Open pistol shooter have to turn on the dot when the target was 10yds or closer??? At that distance you should be able to look thru the scope and hit your target w/o illum. i would recommend that if you are a open pistol shooter that you practice that.
Now back to rifle, with electronics its not IF they will fail its WHEN, normally its when you're not ready. The biggest thing I see shooters do with an illum. scope is they practice shooting close stuff with the illum. they say its faster, well is it faster because of the illum. or is it faster because you practice it???? I would bet that if they practiced w/o the illum. they would see just how fast they can really be, illum. or not.
So, your original query, I think illum. is highly overrated!!!
trapr
I've tinkered with Tony's M223 and it was nice. I'm not a huge fan of the 1" tube, though.
