Vortex Crossfire® Red Dot 2 MOA CF-RD2

Quick run down by BCT

Obviously the box!

This model has a 2 minutes of angle dot. The battery longevity is rated at 50,000hr? I find this hard to believe??? That's a whooping 5 years if used at medium brightness!

What's included?

Low profile Picatinny rail mount; Torx type star key (for locking the the Red Dot to the Picatinny rail of your rifle/pistol; battery; instruction book; screws; 2 dust caps and a microfibre cloth (see below).

Just in case you forget, the type of battery is listed upon the side of the main housing! This Red Dot comes already mounted to a high platform. The battery is housed within the illumination knob (a coin can be used to access this port).

Why did I choose the Vortex Crossfire Red Dot scope?

Unfortunately I'm not 25 years old anymore, I'd love to be!

I also work primarily as a scientific and wildlife filmmaker and as an ex research scientist with a strong background in Neuroscience and applied physics I had to use constantly numerous forms of imaging equipment and still do. 

As a consequence of "getting old" (heck what is that????) one's eyesight gets weaker generally with age and I found that I must keep both eyes open using electronic viewfinders for video cameras (that's a good thing anyway, in order to know what's happening with the wild life on one's periphery). 

Why not close one yes?, everyone else does? Well I found that the eye which was closed for maybe some minutes at a time, when reopened it took sometime to be able to refocus again. What do I mean by "some time"?  I mean like 5 minutes or more! That's way too long in my view. Making a choice for a standard rifle optic where generally one eye is closed would just make shooting a bit more of an unnecessary stress for my eyes. Yes, one could probably do the 2 eyes open thing but a rifle scope is not intended to be used like this.

The alternative was to go Red Dot or holographic (out of my budget unfortunately). Also for my intended purpose, my range to target would never be more than 50m, I believe I can "get away" with using a red dot. But where to start looking? There are so many choices!

I'm looking for durability and warranty

Warranties are a big thing for me when it comes to camera optics and no reason why it is not important for  rifle optics.

Vortex offers some crazy warranty, the device is weather resistant and it has, according to the instruction booklet good battery life. Plus I did watch a rather convincing YouTube video where the You  Tuber poured water all over one , and then belted it against some fake doors and then fired off many rounds of his AR15?

Anyway I don't suffer from astigmatism, so I should be ok with this red dot, time will tell.

Instruction book and microfibre cloth. The cloth did not come in a plastic sleeve, so be careful if u buy one of these sights, the cloth can accidentally fall out on the floor or ground and trust me, you are then better off chucking it out as small dust and abrasive dirt particles will ruin your outer optics if u decide to use that cloth!

Using the Vortex Crossfire Red Dot

The large dial adjusts the dot brightness and you can see the top of the windage and elevation knobs. Two rubber dust caps are included and joined together by a sort of rubber band (not visible in this image). The windage and elevation dials move in distinct "clicks"and the booklet says that each "click" is equivalent to 1 minute of angle. There are detailed enough instructions for zeroing although the instructions seem a little funny as they suggest to use either the "raised bar" to turn the knobs or a coin???? presumably they mean use 2 coins either side of the bar in order to move them?? I don't know. I think my finger strength will be more than good enough??? 

Ok I will now explain it properly! Covering the windage and elevation controls are dust caps which are sealed with an O-ring. The seal is not a typical O-ring seal in that the inside body of the cap comes down over the )-ring but rather the base of the cap simply squashes the O-ring. This I feel, if one was to really crank down hard these seals, will quickly damage the O-ring/s.

One these caps have been removed to change the windage and elevation one needs to use either a flat headed screwdriver and or a "coin" as they suggest in order to achieve this. This is I guess  feature to prevent accidental movement of these controls should they get bumped (which is impossible, even if the cap is left off because the controls are recessed below the body of the Red Dot scope.

Sighting In

They suggest to use a "bore sighter" in order to properly site in the Crossfire. Or to visually sight it in via the bore, because this scope has been designed for use on a rifle and not a PCP, so  guess these steps would have to be skipped as it is not possible to easily sight down a PCP barrel, just do it the regular way for a PCP, ie some target shooting to check for zero alignment at whatever one is going to shoot at. Me personally, I'll be sighting in at less than 100m (50m) or 100m, we shall see.

The crazy thing is that is an Unlimited and Unconditional warranty with the Vortex Crossfire Red Dot; weather proofed, and shock proof as I have already stated.

Vortex is a USA company but for the price (approx 150-180 USD depending upon where one looks these days) of this RED DOT, we find it is made of course in China. Let's hope it is indeed made to a high standard. 

Stay tuned for a proper field test.

Here is a video summary and I discuss some of the things i like and don't like about this Red Dot

BCT