I've been an Athlon dealer pretty since they came on the market, and aside from the big 34mm tube Cronus, some of their earliest scopes weren't the sort of optics I wanted to sell to my friends. But the guys who started up the company were originally working for Bushnell, and they knew their stuff - it just took them a couple of years to get the chinese up to speed when it came to making the sort of quality that serious shooters were going to be satisfied with. Every year after, they've made strides in bringing better quality scopes to the market. I'm plenty satisfied with various ffp scopes I use on the custom rifles that I've built for myself, including four Vudoo repeaters (mostly equipped with the big Cronus scopes), Midas TAC scopes on a couple of CZ457s that I barreled with Shilen ratchets, and several Howa Mini-based CF customs. I've also got Gen II Ares BTRs on a couple of Zermatt Origin custom action rifles. Not ashamed to sell these more current scopes to any of my friends, as Athlon has upped their designs & quality to the point that I'm g-t-g using them in competition on my own rifles.
I think it's been a couple of years since Athlon announced the HERAS line of 1" SFP scopes, and I want to try one of them on a 22RF rifle, but haven't gotten around to it, as the ocular on the ones I've looked at online are rather large - no way they're going to work on something like a M52 unless you go with very high rings. They would probably work well on something like a CZ457 which has a 60* bolt throw, but as mentioned, I've already got good Midas TAC 30mm scopes on my CZs. For the most part, I've gone to eBay to search for used Leupolds like the VXII 6-18x40 & VXIII 4.5-14x40 scopes for the classier 22RF sporters like Anschutz, Cooper, Kimber, & Sako - but they're getting more expensive as time goes on.
