[Bart B.]

Old Roper comments on some sights used on Palma rifles:

They have lens in the front sight can't have them in the rear sights think is 5x on front lens.

Current NRA high power rifle rules do not allow magnifying iron sight lens elements; it takes 2 lenses to magnify the target. Nor have such sights been allowed in any Palma match I know or shot in. Some smallbore matches allow magnifying metallic sights.

Those Rightsight +.25, +.5, and +.75 diopter corrective lenses and other makes and diopters only corrrect for the shooters vision so the target appears sharper when their aiming eye's reasonably focused on the front sight. Some folks use lenses in rear sights to make the front sight sharper. And some rear sight adustable apertures have adjustable diopter settings.

A diopter is a way of expessing a lens' focal length. 1 diopter equals 1000 millimeters (one meter); 1 divided by the diopter number equals the lens' focal length. A +.25 diopter lens has a focal length of 4 meters. A 2 diopter lens has a focal length of half a meter; 500mm.

And also the following:

When Palma made the 308 rifle to be used in 30 cal that end any competition on anything else being used.

Since it has no competition who's to say it's better? If it was the best why didn't US Palma scope the 308. Myself you put a lens which is available in power magnification in the front sight might as well scope the rifle then you add one of these
http://www.sinclairintl.com/optics/s...prod44975.aspx

The reason the Palma rifle cartridge was limited to the .308 was to be the same as other country's rifles used in International Palma Matches; an expansion of the British Commonwealth's use of only the 7.62 NATO round. This was hoped to get more folks used to shooting that cartridge at 800 through 1000 yards.

Sinclair's AOS Microsight front sight device is not allowed in Palma matches if it magnifies the target. As it has " two tiny, internal lenses" I think that disqualifies it as the NRA high power rules only allows one lens to be used.

And in respons to the following:

I think Bart was talking about F-Class rifles and no bearing on the real world of shooting. When they open the F-Class sure didn't see a rush to scope 308 so that got to tell you something.

I've never been to, much less fired a round, in any F-class match. I have used F-class shooting positions to test rifles and ammo for accuracy. Lots of folks did that decades before F-class was established as a competitive discipline. I was referring to NRA high power match rifle shooting where no rests are allowed and all's done shooting standing, sitting or kneeling and prone holding the rifle to ones shoulder. That's the closest competitive shooting discipline to the real world of shooting. . .to me, that is.

That lack of a rush to scope 308 tells me folks wanted to use some other cartridge and some of the 600-yard benchrest favorites were popular. I've no idea what they thought the accuracy of a .308 Win. might be when fired in the positions they used. But they probably didn't think it was all that great. Most "group" shooters have no idea whatsoever that "score" shooters' hardware will equal theirs when tested under the same conditions; that's beyond their comprehension and understandably so. I've never held that against them; it's pretty much human nature in my opinion.