Seeing as Form's thread about the LHT eval has been closed, might as well add this here ...
In that thread, someone posted something along the lines that 'Vortex was a marketing company'. Like many, I had a chuckle ... but then wondered if that was a little unfair. After all, Form (and others of us here) have had good luck with the Fury 5000 ABs. Many of us here aren't that interested in brands, just what works.
However, I just accidentally stumbled upon Vortex's podcast. I listened to a few episodes, and one from March 2020, about "Choosing the right riflescope", stood out. Apart from the endless mentioning of Vortex's scope offerings (understandable to a point, but still unsufferable as a listener), I think this gave a few key insights into some of Vortex's thinking (more for us as hunters, so this is a slight thead derailment, but looks like we're already headed there
).
At 80 mins, I wouldn't recommend listening to it all. But two quick things stood out - one was a discussion about why they didn't want to make a first focal plane reticle for scopes of about 15 x max magnification (which they called 'modest magnification'):
"The first focal plane in this case - let's just say we made one for the shooters out there that say 'It's gotta be first' - if you were to turn that reticle down, because those reticles scale, the centre point - even though this is illuminated - would grow infinitely tiny ... For a lot of the shooters out there arguing that a riflescope like this should be first focal plane, imagine us at the drawing board trying to make a usable reticle at 15x 'cause we have to start there and get smaller ... imagine what that reticle would look like with the illuminated component. It would be huge; it would be like a dinnerplate in the middle of your reticle. And when we scaled down to 1x, or 3x in this case, it would be useable. I think a lot of folks would be off-put by the lack of quote 'precision feature' in that reticle ... "
Huh? I've had three FFP scopes in that mag range from three different companies that all had useable reticles at min and max magnification (Nightforce NXS 3-15, SWFA, Bushnell LRTS).
But here's the kicker: they then discussed how they used to have an FFP 4-16, but hunters didn't like it because they couldn't see the reticle ... but this was interpreted as being an issue with FFPs at this so-labelled 'modest magnification', rather than the reticle they hadn't designed well for that platform.
More importantly was this quote about what was most important in a scope:
"Where I put my precedence is always optical quality ... more than anything else. More than any dial, lever, illuminating component or bell or whistle. Optical quality will always win out for me."
Yep, no mention about reliability.
Oh, and there was the old chestnut about not wanting exposed elevation turrets on a hunting scope, as they might get bumped ...
All up, while the podcast now feels like an hour and a half of my life I won't get back, it did help me understand some of the context for why Vortex - and, to be fair, probably other optics companies - keeps having the issues that we keep documenting.