00:00:11
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today, we are at Loophold did a little factory tour. We’re here with Bruce the CEO of Loophold, Tim Lester, the VP of product in Marketing, my good buddy Dirk Durham, and we’re gonna talk about some new product launches, what’s in the future for Loophold, kind of what your guys’ focus is, and some stuff for everybody to get excited about to hit the market. So, yeah, I got to hunt with Bruce this year, a little trip to Utah. Good buddy, Luke Combs and Bruce and we had a great time. Everybody killed killed good bowls. And yeah, did you get to use any of the new stuff on that hunt? Were you testing it before I had it?
00:00:47
Speaker 2: I had a version of the b X six, So it’s it’s incredible, And you know you gotta first of all, before we start, I just want to say thanks for your partnership and what you guys have done, because you know, it’s been a long term and it’s been a great partnership and watched you really build the company and all the things that you’ve done. So congrats on that.
00:01:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, And likewise, like thanks for believing in us and allowing us a chance to help you guys out. So it’s been it’s been awesome. And it’s like, you know, in my backyard, close to home and really enjoyed everything we used. And a little backstory like growing up, you know, like I’m not gonna lie, there were some other scopes on the cheap rifles, but when you know, Grandpa and Dad all got loopholds on them back in the day, and it was like that right of pass. It’s like, once you’re good enough hunter, you’ll buy your own VX, you know, the old school VX twos and threes and so like to be able to work with you guys like not to kick it too far back, is like, wow, we’re here and get a chance to work with you guys in the industry, and it’s been awesome.
00:01:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it’s been.
00:01:42
Speaker 3: It’s been the same for us.
00:01:43
Speaker 2: It’s cool when you get you know, I talk about our pro team a lot that we just have we don’t you know, it’s not like we recruit or anything. It’s just we end up with people that are kind of like us. You know, we’re all kind of like minded and passionate about the outdoors and the stuff we do and it just works out and this is one of the best partnerships.
00:02:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. But so yeah, that that utahunt was great. Luke got his first bowl ever and I think all three of us ended up killing very quality bowls and it was just it was a good a good week together and uh and had a blast. And then Tim it sounds like he’s the luckiest tag drawer in the in the company.
00:02:16
Speaker 3: I’ve been on a good streak. I think I’ve used up the entire lifetime before before three years ago and from here going forward.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: He knows why everyone’s pissed at it.
00:02:24
Speaker 3: He drank draw again. That’s incredible.
00:02:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, big orange sheep tags, ELK tags.
00:02:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, the think about Tim when he draws, he actually makes it happen too, So that’s the good thing.
00:02:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we’ve already kind of touched on that b X six. Let’s uh, let’s get right into it, Like, what’s the why on the b X six. You know, how long has it been in development? What kicked off the idea? I know, I hunted what was it twenty nineteen, Dirk. We hunted with Michael when he was testing the optical side of what I think ended up being the b X six. So it’s been in development for a long time. But give us a little history of that b XX development. What’s the why why it needed to be in that loophole product line.
00:03:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean the why is we needed hands down the best range finding binocultar on the market period. And really, what you’re trying to do there is accomplish a binocultar your primary glassing optic that is unaffected by having that rangefinder in it, and that’s really hard to do, and so we weren’t going to release it until we got that right and nailed it and got it perfect and candidly, the display technology wasn’t there so you know, until recently, so you would have some degradation on those optics and you’re trying to reflect an image back to your eye and that creates a color shift. And if you’re going to sit there in glass all day, and for this to be a professional quality piece of gear, you need to be able to glass all day, ten to fourteen hours a day. And so that’s the why. The why is there are users that need that that have that use case they’re going to sit in glass all day on the hunting side. On the shooting side, you look at things like an NL hunter match or something where the matches are timed, they’re difficult, they’re highly competitive, targets are hidden, ye, now you need to be able to find that target, range it, get full ballistics engage without missing all of that on the clock, and move forward. And so both of those are really pro level user requirements and we set this up for both.
00:04:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know, like my my function in the woods like binocular spot it switched to my rangefinder, go to my ballistic app like that was so awesome. On the Two Hunts site, you know my Montana antelope for both my antelope and then my wife and son had deer tags. And then to use that in New Mexico, like it was so nice, just one click of the button, like no go into my phone now, going to the rangefinders, doing the calculation and then being able to trust in that solution was awesome. So when you guys go to develop it, like was there a top priority or was like there multiple like glass quality range finding shooter solution like or did all those boxes did you checked on this one?
00:04:52
Speaker 3: Did you look at my notes in order that you kind of nailed that right, So optics needed to be first and and so, and we’ve accomplished that. And you do that through great displays and managing that light all the way through. That had to be step one. Then best ranging, so we needed to be lightning, fast, seamless, all those things, and then ultimately getting ballistics, whether it’s for rifles, for long range shooters, for hunters, for bows, again seamless and easy on board, and then adding in pinning of course, being able to use this as a wavefinder as well, So drop a waypoint exactly where you’re looking that really brings everything together, where this is a this is something that really up levels your capability.
00:05:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that’s what I thought, like the one solution for great glass ranging, ballistic solution pinning, Like it’s all in one now, Like there’s no need to carry the you know, a separate rangefinder that did in the past. You know it was it checked all those boxes for me as a hunter. You know, glass quality, I can sit behind it all day, no I fatigue, clear edge to edge, ballistic solutions I could trust. Now. It took me a little bit to build the trust. You know, I wasn’t applied ballistics guy I’ve used Hornity’s app before kind of applied ballistics. But once I, you know, entered all the data into the app, I was super confident that, all right, that bowls at three hundred and fifty dial my muzzleloader, you know, I had. I had a ballistic solution for my forty five outcast. I had a bullistic solution for my three hundred PIRC and not only on paper and then also in the field, like trust at least through those two weapons that like this is act you know, accurate, you know, no longer you know, uploading environmental from my phone, you know, have to hit the button so that it it takes a barometer, like it’s all in the binocay. The only thing you have to figure out is win with some you know X. That’s the only thing that doesn’t calculate for you is like what’s your wind hold going to be while you’re out there?
00:06:47
Speaker 3: And it was, yeah, just doesn’t know the wind speed. You kind of have to tell it that, yeah, yeah, yeah. From from a nice easy CDs type solution to a long range, precision full onboard four degrees of freedom, right, the Hornity fod off, which is the best ballistics calculator out there. It’s set up for different what we would call use cases, or you look at personas and how people would use that. If I’m going to be hunting and I’m going to take my shots four hundred, five hundred and six hundred yards and under, I need something quick, Just give me the yardage compensate for that, and I’m going to use my CDs style. If you’re trying to stretch it farther and where the barometric pressure and altitude and temperature and all those conditions start mattering even half hour from one half hour to the next, that’s where the onboard sensors come on and they’re calculating that for you as you’re going through, making sure that it’s tried and trude for that exact rifle or muzzleoder or whatever. It is down to archery when you look at archery, even when you can add those sensors into the the bino now we know. Let’s just say that you zeroed here and set up your site tape here at two hundred feet above sea level. Normally you go back out to Utah on your at eight thousand and it’s warmer or whatever it is, your sit tape is not going to be right on because you zeroed in forty degrees sea level and now you’re at you know, eighty five hundred feet and it’s ninety degrees. That arrow is going to travel different. You’re getting different energy, you’re getting in dumb This will account for that. Those onboard sensors say you zeroed here, now you’re here, I’m going to readjust that distance to match your site.
00:08:15
Speaker 4: Take it.
00:08:16
Speaker 3: There’s a lot of thought that went into this and burying it in the background. So just work, Just work. When I need you to work, I want to be fumbling over how to get there.
00:08:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s my biggest frustration. You know, I live at three hundred feet sea level. Right. You go to Colorado and you get out, you’re like, I’m high. You typically high at higher elevation, and then you go to Kansas and like, what the heck’s going on now? And so it would be nice to just like let the range finder calculated in and make those adjustments, you know, and out to range will be nice. So you know this, it sounds like it was a long, a long process, but it’s because you guys wanted to get this right, Like, were there challenges, you know, glass quality. Was there challenges in there?
00:08:52
Speaker 2: I’m sure there were lots of I mean, if you knew how many times that Tim and I have I have heard when are you coming out with your and find a binocular over the last ten years.
00:09:03
Speaker 1: I would be fifty, when are we going to get this thing online?
00:09:07
Speaker 2: And you can put about three zeros behind that for all the people, you know, it’s been I think for us, this one was one of the hardest projects we worked on because of the fact that what we required to do optically and we weren’t willing to settle. We always have one hoop to go through, which is the ruggedness that people expect out of a loophole. That’s just part of the deal. I mean, I know with some competitors, they don’t expect that, so they just well, I’ll just get another one or whatever. But with us, it’s like, we guarantee these things and we’re going to make sure that they work and they perform, not just replace. And so the process of going through and I think this is unique thing for us, particularly as an American company, is you know, an optical design team that we use that our team to go through and make sure this thing is.
00:09:52
Speaker 3: Next level from an optical standpoint, and then.
00:09:55
Speaker 2: We have an internal you know, electrical that works on all of our electro optics and dealing with that piece of it and how we do with that, and then going to our design engineers and this this whole process of working through and making this thing happen literally through manufacturing has really just been a huge, huge lift, and it’s taken a long time. The good news is when you’re a company like ours and you’ve been around one hundred and eighteen years, you have some patients, right. I don’t always have patience, Tim can tell you that, but but sometimes it takes this to get there. And I am so proud of our team, Tim and his team and what they’ve been able to get across the line here, because this thing is stunning, you know, in terms of what it can actually do.
00:10:40
Speaker 1: So I want to give kudos. We got to do a factory too a little bit ago, and the engineering team was the funniest, the nicest, the smartest. The engineers are just great.
00:10:49
Speaker 2: Don’t never say that again.
00:10:50
Speaker 1: Engineers are just Dirk even a lot of times, that’s how nice.
00:10:53
Speaker 3: I think we’re a little biased.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: Oh I’m that’s what it is.
00:10:58
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean those guys were great.
00:11:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, those guys, that group of engineers.
00:11:03
Speaker 3: The rest of the engineers, you know, another engineer I know may not be.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: Those. I got to try to give like us engineers a little step up when I can. So we talked about clarity a little bit. Is one of the main checklists, like without mentioning competitors, Like we all know that there’s some high end glass out there, Like how do you guys stack up? Like what was the goal there? Like you know things that I look at, you know, chromatic aberration at the edges like edge to edge, clarity like color, you know, how does the color pop? Like can you give us a little bit on like what you guys were after? And then where you kind of stack up and you’re you know, I’ve been able to look behind you know, Swirrel, I’m just gonna mention like swirl but you know eel ranges, swarws BTX, my camera guy carries a COWI spotter, so like I just I just love to compare so that when I recommend the BX six, like I can fully put my name behind it. You know, those are just some optic companies that I think people agree like they do make good glass, Like where does the b X six kind of stack up in glass comparison? Because in my opinion it was very very well done, like I have no complaints, edge clarity, like bright crystal clear light transmission, like all of the things you know that I need, Like where, what was your goal? And how does that stack up?
00:12:15
Speaker 3: It’s really easy on this one. That’s that’s part of why it took so long and why with if you look at Bruce and I butting heads over the last decade on this, it was so I could answer this question and I could do it with my own personal brand behind it, because that means a lot to me. Yes, the company, everything, but I needed to be able to say I already know the answer that it’s the best period I’ve gone through. I wouldn’t be comfortable saying that if it wasn’t. But part of my previous background, just to give you a little insight on that, I guided hunters for years in Wyoming, lots of glassing, but part of that was in the summer and we were literally on the glass because we were guiding preye dog hunters and you need to see trace on every single shot because the wind changes in every single shot. You need to be ranging for every single shot. I would be on glass twelve to fifteen hours a day, almost two hundred days a year, Like there were times that it was one hundred and eighty hundred and ninety days a year. So I am confident when I look through a pair of binoculars that I know what I’m looking at. I’ve used all of them. I’ve used all of them for weeks, months, years on end because I didn’t always work here and these are there, and that was the job one was being able to answer that question. It’s the best, and they are. Yeah, I know, it up against any laser range finding my know ever.
00:13:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, you know as much as I hate getting on rockslide at times, Like there was a post, you know, from your Guys’ Shot Show introduction about that you know, and it’s it’s like where does it stack up? And I’m like, man, I don’t. I don’t own you know, those other products, but like I get to look through them back and forth, and like from my perspective, like there’s nothing missing, Like everything seems to be there and as good or better than everything I’ve ever looked through, and so like that’s that’s my testament to like I got to look at you know, through my set and can’t you guys had some limited sets to and yeah, and then I really like one of the things is like how fine the focus seems to be. Like I don’t know if that was built in like finer threads, but like my focus is like you can really get dialed in for like extended I relief, like you get it close and I can glass it long. But this like seems to be really really fine tuned and it almost just helps like for long term glassing. You when you’re trying to pick up and brush country or you’re behind them for ten hours a day meal you’re hunting.
00:14:22
Speaker 3: It matters, right, and so so all those little details come together. And focus wheel one hundred percent was one of the things on the list. So I think we’ve all felt that, especially with a spotting scale, it’s easier to kind of kind of see it there. As you glass farther and farther, the amount of motion that you need on that focus wheel gets less and less and less. It also becomes more and more critical to have it actually perfectly focused when you’re looking two miles or whatever. And so yeah, we need to go through and say are we a hunting company or a birding company? And so what you end up with is we’re going to make this move really fast so that if I can focus on that wall and look at a butterfly, right, it’s different use cases. If I want to focus on that wall or a bird that’s at twenty yards to look for a little feather, that makes it a different species. I want that focus to go fast. If I’m a hunter who’s going to be looking long distance and I need perfect focus at distance, I want it to go slow. And so those types of things really matter. And knowing who you’re building this for, which is hunters, affects that. And so the design intent is from top to bottom was made four hunters.
00:15:26
Speaker 1: And then you guys elected to We’ve talked about ford Off a little bit, but you guys also we kind of preluded into that, like the persist and cut archery solutions, and talk about how you guys landed on that, and then I think there’s a story and I don’t know if we want to talk about yardage where Pedro used it overseas to like get a very good calculation where if he wouldn’t have I believe he would have been fifteen twenty yards off. I don’t know if we want to get into ranges or expose that, but I that was one of the stories we heard, and if that needs to be cut, let me know. But let’s talk about presision cut archery. Like that’s one of the features I haven’t been able to use, and because I haven’t had the need for it, but like you know why we use that and what it does for the shooter and then being able to trust in that solution.
00:16:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in terms of the details for pedro story, I think that’s his story to share it, Yeah, and so we’ll let him do that. But I can tell you that without that system, that hunt doesn’t come together. And that’s a really expensive arrow. It needs to hit meet right in the vitals, right, I mean, that is a very expensive arrow. We’ve all been there and it went well. So the need with precision cut artery is as our gear, whether it’s long range shooting or with rifles or with bows, arrows, other stuff. The gear is getting so much better that out there at the distance where very small changes in temperature, pressure, angle make huge differences. Right thirty yards if you’re off by half a yard, It doesn’t matter if you’re at one hundred and eighty yards, being off by half a yard is a complete miss, right, or so those details start to matter, and that’s we’re always pushing that and trying to get the most accurate solution again for hunters. And so what precision cut archy brings to this is one that what we would call the zero location or zero range and when you get in and zero it, what were those conditions and then where are you now? And how do I compare those two? But you would look at really high angle archery shooting and people would start making their own cut charts on top of it. Right, even once angle and other things were accounted for, Hey, if it was really steep and we’re pushing longer and longer shots, which you see at toil archery challenges for example, people were Okay, why is there the small little turkey target at one hundred yards? And not like why was there only one target at one hundred yards?
00:17:38
Speaker 2: Right?
00:17:39
Speaker 3: It needs to be on and it needs to be able to travel with you. Look at what you do. You don’t just hunt here. You’re all over the place, and you’re busy and you don’t have time to cut, you know, set a new sight tape, do all the other stuff. So when we go and look at that, really the big driving motivational factor was steep angle at long distances in a different set of environmentals than use year old. That is a mountain to climb and try to tackle it. And that’s the type of thing we thrive on. All these engineers that you met and that you saw, that is the home court advantage. They all hunt, they all shoot, they’re out doing this stuff. They live it all day. So we’re not trying to explain to them what the problem is. There are already three steps ahead of us saying, do you know what happens to the wax on your string? The impact that has to velocity at twelve thousand feet and like let’s add that into the right. Like those things matter, and when you live it all day every day, it comes through. And so we’re just we need it for us, Right, That’s the biggest thing is what would we what do we need?
00:18:34
Speaker 1: What we Yeah? Yeah, what does every hunter want in this product? It makes it easy if you ask those questions what you need to put into it? Yeah, And then we talked a little bit about environmental sensors. So walk us through like what the binoculars will do versus what you have to do externally to get your solution.
00:18:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there are sensors on board for tempical what’s sensor that kind of does all of this, but pressure, humidity, temperature, and those are the big ones as you’re going through. Right, temperature, for example, if you leave the binyl laying in the sun, or if we’re hiking hard uphill, you need that to change quickly, and so I don’t want it to be body temperature when it’s time to take that shot. So how do you keep something completely waterproof, drop proof, freeze proof, all of those things and then still give a chamber in there that allows access to these sensors. That was a bit of a challenge and one of the things that we absolutely had to get right. We did, and with all of that on board, the amount of time it takes you to bring it out range do everything that you would need to do. There’s day animals, it will be it will have recalibrated and so it’ll be the actual outside air temperature, not your binylight temperature. Right. If there’s any doubt to that, you can very quickly with the app. You can get in there and say, look, I’m a sweaty guy, right, yeah, yeah, it is what it is. And you can say I want you to use the most current local weather station. Off of the app. We can there’s ways to set this up to your preference. All of it very simple. Again, in the background, it’s set up for the most effective way for most people, and then you can go in and tune it. Having those sensors on board are massive so that you’re not like, oh, wait a minute, warmed up, Now I need to readjust now it cooled down. Okay, Now there’s a there’s a cold front coming in, or there’s a pressure system coming in. It’s just all live, real time on board. So you just essentially say the wind is coming from here at this speed, this and I’m going to shoot. We just want you to focus on punching that tag.
00:20:36
Speaker 1: My old solution was like, try to pick an average elevation, an average temperature, you think, an average humidity, and then hope that when you run into an animal and things get in the heat of the moment, you don’t have to change or it doesn’t you know, we’re you know this year carrying it like you know, got my puffy on over it, trying to keep it warm. But then I’m like, you know, so I was able to just go in and use it over I like, I don’t know if this is in the transition like quickly going from seventy to thirty two. I know it’s frozen outside. Override thirty two and you used to override that temperature because I didn’t you know, it’s not that I didn’t trust it, but I don’t know how quickly that’s like ramping back down to thirty two. So it’s like easy confident for me that all right, at least grab the elevation and the barometric pressure temperature. I don’t know, let’s override it. Gives me a solution, and you know, quick quick changes, and that’s that’s all of the things. Like all right, if I’m I do truck hunt, you know, you jump out of the truck at seventy five because you’re freezing, Like how quick is this? You know? And there’s a buck off throat on public like just a quick.
00:21:31
Speaker 3: Over it’s a matter of seconds ye for that. But so we know because we can plug in and watch, right, so I can watch that or I can breathe on it. Watch the humidity go up, watch the temperature go up. So we we know the times on all of those. Realistically, if you’re not baking the housing on the dashboard or you know whatever, so that you’ve got the metal housing, which is that whole chassis is heated up, then any airflow through there should be good. And so one quick thing you could do is take it out of that harness and just wave it twice because it’s measuring the air that’s in there. So you do it, I mean just a couple and then go. It’s a matter of seconds, so generally you won’t be set up and ready sooner than it will be.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then within that the top left corner has an arrow indicator, right, so I love being able to like preset my wind if I’m hunting a direction or no, like for the day, Like, all right, we got like a seven degree win entered in and then that gives me when you range right, that will give you your hold on wind based on the wind direction. So that was like another huge thing where yeah, it might not be perfect, but it gives me a pretty good, very quick solution that all right, if the wind is still at my right and at seven miles an hour, then this needs to be my wind hold. And that was huge for me because now we don’t got to go in and like you know, drag the wheel around, do any of this. Like, it’s a much quicker solution. So it was nice to have that built into the upper left display that we had you know, wind in this direction and this would be your hold based on that wind.
00:22:50
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and there’s there’s one step for so one of the beautiful things about getting the hardware right and planning for future revs on this, which is not easy to do all the time. But what do we need to what do we need to account for in the future, and so some things that are coming that will even make that easier is essentially which way is the wind going? So I’ve got you know, as a hunter, yes, we get used to turning our face into the wind. We kind of feel that, but as an archer, you know you’re checking with wind check like which way is it actually going? You’ll be able to just point down, hit that wind check down. You know the wind is going that way, it’s marked in there, it’s done. That rangefinder knows that, and now wherever you point, it’s accounting for that wind at that speed at that so.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: It based on that you can mark us. It knows what direction the way locks it in.
00:23:38
Speaker 3: And then and then so you’re not needing to even do what you were doing. It’ll just lock that in.
00:23:42
Speaker 1: It’s awesome. Yeah, and that’s one of the beautiful everythings about the firmware updates and the way that this technology was built with the app that future updates. You know, as long as the firm as long as it allows the hardware allows, like you got to be able to make updates and this will be like a continuous updates.
00:23:57
Speaker 3: Push those out right, and that’s coming real soon.
00:23:59
Speaker 1: That’s awesome. Let’s get into pinning because the RX five thousand was kind of where you guys released that technology and now it’s made its way into the b X. Derek, you want to take the pinning questions here, they’re awful silent. I’m gonna hand this over. People want to the people want to hear your following along the whole time.
00:24:18
Speaker 3: I just thought you’d talk the people.
00:24:21
Speaker 1: The people want. I want you talking about lunch.
00:24:24
Speaker 3: It was really good.
00:24:27
Speaker 1: That’s why I’m I’ve seen you. I’m trying to wake you up.
00:24:32
Speaker 4: So the pinning on the GPS walk us through why that’s such a big deal in real real world situations.
00:24:40
Speaker 3: So the the idea of pinning is that when when I’m looking at something through my handheld rangefinder or in this case through the through the bino, I can mark that exact location on my map, right, and so that’s good for spot and stock. That’s good for are those elk on public or private? What is that fence line?
00:24:58
Speaker 1: Like?
00:24:58
Speaker 3: If I can if I know that, I you can go boop and drop a pin on exactly what I’m looking at and then look at it on a map and it’s in the exact same spot. I can do a lot of things with that in the elk or here, How far away is that rock?
00:25:09
Speaker 1: Oh?
00:25:09
Speaker 3: Those are that far apart. If I can get to that rock, then my SHOT’s going to be forty yards, you know whatever. It is very handy for spot in stock on deer right, you’re up in the morning, you get up high, you find one, you put it to bed, pin it, and then you’ve got all day, hopefully to go get into position and not set up one hundred yards downwind of the wrong tree or the wrong rock or the wrong whatever. It is right. So the idea of pinning is very beneficial, but really only if you get it right. So you know, if you’re unting white tail and you take a shot and it goes right across the green field and that was the last place you saw it, you can pin that. You now it’s going to be dark very very soon. You know, you can walk to that pin and look for blood, right, those types of things, But it has to be accurate when you do that. It can’t be in that general direction. That works great if you’re in the Alps or the Rockies or somethinghere it’s very very vertical and it’s going to hit some but if there’s any flatness to that, if you’re off by a little bit, you can be in the wrong zip code. So when we get to the GPS component and magnetism, that’s why we need to be we’re less than two degrees on that accuracy, generally about half of that. Some of the other solutions are ten degrees plus. So now if you look at what that means in real time with us, if you look at something a thousand yards away and drop the pin, you will be less than twenty five yards left to right total distance away from that you can just walk right to that pin twenty five yards per thousand and you’re going to be right there. That’s worst case scenario, and that comes from the process of getting everything calibrated appropriately. One thing I would mention on this is there are hidden gotches. So binocular arnises with magnets are pinning out of a truck guilty, we would do that. You look at stuff if you’re surrounded by a Ferris metal, a magnet, a magnetic walk enclosure. There’s a lot of coenclosures that are magnetic. You just want to be careful with having that. They just want to get that Ferris metal away from it. But that is a really big advantage when you’re that accurate. You know, you figure you’re within ten twelve yards in any direction per thousand, so you’re out there well over a mile and you’re with an archery range of it every time perfectly. That is a huge advantage and can be used more as a wayfinding tool than anything else. And so a lot of work went into getting that exactly right, not just hey, you’re on it’s that way and then just here, look on your map and pick a spot. Oh yeah, that’s right about there. We’ve all been doing that. Anyway, I need to hit the button into exactly where it was.
00:27:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a few stories cused your hunting with meat Eater, one of your competitors, like he was invited on the hunt and I was testing the pinning and the RX five thousand, and he shot accused here, And anybody’s been cused you hunt knows that sometimes you shoot him in a pile of brush like they were going to bed. We found him, shot him, and there was a lot of arguments over where the deer had died. Well, I didn’t tell everybody that I had pinned the deer before we walked around the canyon. So I let these other two guys that I was with just go on, all right, where do you guys think the deer? I got to look like the superhero because I went and stood by the deer and let them walk around for fifteen minutes and then said, hey, guys, it’s over here, so like you know, in a brush area that all looks the same same time with my meal deer this year, I used the RX five thousand pinned it because you were just going to burn and once you got over to that side, it’s the same slope, same burn forever. One thing I do like to add to the pinning is take a picture with my with my phone. I pinned, but I also took a picture, and then it helps like oh there was a log here and a broken off and then between the pinning, and that at least gets you, like you said, within the twenty five yards, and now I’ve got a picture that says this is where the deer, you know, was shot. And then I use those in combination. And then this year in Montana, my boys buck within ten yards of a BLM line private versus public. You know, that was one where I had to throw my I have an FAHF with magnet, had to throw it because it was given, you know, it was messing with my reading, got rid of it, finally separated the binos, pinned it and said, yeah, the deer is five yards on public according to this and is walking into public. Let’s go, versus if it would have been further into private, we had to wait. And so you know, good good uses for it for recovery, for figuring out where you’re at on on X, and then we also use it for when we’re rifle wanting, like our approach like pinned to here, like because sometimes you get down in these canyons, like I don’t I want to be on this ring. And if I missed this ridge because I’m down on the bottom, like is that the right ridge? Like, oh, well, on X says I need to be on you know, now says I need to be on this rail. So we use it a lot for our pursuit to either shooting locations or to re engage in animal or whatever. So we use it, and that quite a bit as well.
00:29:43
Speaker 2: When we were developing this, we it wasn’t done yet, and I went on a hunt and I was in Utah hunting right on the Utah Woming border and literally in the snow, and it was cold, it was miserable, it was wet, you know, it was it was one of those days and I we couldn’t tell whether the buck was actually in Wyoming or was actually you know, in Utah. And so we sat there for hours, hours, you know, until finally I had to estimate. But I had I had to let him come back, you know. So the hunt lasted a lot longer, which was okay, except the conditions were pretty rough. But I was at that point I was like sold. I remember calling Tim, I wish I had I wish I had the you know, the new pinning technology with me right now, because it would have helped a ton.
00:30:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could have shot him four hours ahead of time.
00:30:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have been a lot more confident because there’s not one None of us want that mossete. Yeah, you know, and you can’t afford to take that chance. So luckily he came back toward me, which I knew was going to be in the right spot, but he could have easily gone the other way. So there’s just so many uses for it. And you know, it’s the other thing it’s cool, is just like we’re talking to like fishing guides and you know, other people in law enforcement and stuff and things that have the application for this kind of thing to use. I think what we’re going to find with the b X six and the pinning and all of this, people are going to use it for a bunch of different things because you know, you know, here in the Northwest, you’re salmon fishing, and these guys are killing it right over here. It’s like I might see a pin of that I want to go to.
00:31:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there’s a lot of good uses.
00:31:13
Speaker 2: For it that are that are out there now.
00:31:15
Speaker 4: In case our listeners don’t know, we talked about pinning. Jason didn’t mention on X how does the penning work? How does it it? It blittooth to your phone and then makes a mark on your on X.
00:31:27
Speaker 3: Correct. Yes, So we can pin to several different mapping softwares. On X is the probably you know, hands down the most popular of those. But you can pin to Apple Maps, can pin to do your cast, there’s several hunt stand But the idea is there’s a loophole control app and it’s named that for a reason. We’re not trying to push anything other than you can control your products with it. You can control the RX five. That was really easy to use, and so that that was the That was the mandate, right was when you when you nobody wants another app, let’s just let’s just call it what it is. Nobody wants that extra app. But if you’re trying to figure something like a BX six range to you as a hunter or you as a rifle hunter, you as a bow hunter, and me as an NRL hunter, competition set up. Trying to do that with a couple buttons is going to be painful, so being able to just quickly go through intuitively pootpoot, boot, poop, done, put it away, be done with It doesn’t change until later. The control app part of that is for pinning, So what you would be doing is every time I arrange, I’m not just dropping pins all over my map. I can go back and say, hey, I want that last one. But most likely what it is is, Okay, we’re in a spot, there’s a bowl that I want to take a shot at, or they just went over that hill and I want to fall in behind him, whatever the he just bedded down. I want to pin. The next time I push this, I want to pin that. So you just pin the next one. You range it and it throws. It goes directly to your mapping. So we’ll go with on X. On X opens automatically it drops a pin on that exact location. So if my laser was a string, wherever the end of that string was, it drops a pin right there. It has a loophold logo icon on it, so it will stand out. It’s a different color, different everything than the other ones. But then you can edit it do all the same things. You want to take that picture and embedded in there like you’re used to turn it red, green, blue, an x, you know, a buck symbol, a bowl symbol, whatever. But initially it starts out as a loophol symbol, so you can find it right away, but you’re not going to just spam it all over your map. Every time you range you tell it, hey, I want to know where that is, and then and then it’ll drop right on there.
00:33:28
Speaker 1: So what was the display like brightness? Why did we choose it low light? You know, fast paced tons? Like what does the display look like? Can you kind of without getting into too much detail, like what information do we given? How do we confirm that everything’s right? And then you know kind of what lives in that display?
00:33:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is a display that we developed called an acuview display. Again, optics were job one, right, and so the display is the reason that a lot of range finding optics may have some degradation to the optical performance. So what we’ve done is we’ve chosen a red color that’s relaxing to the eye. That’s what people are used to, and that There’s two ways to do display as in a range finder. One is you look through it and that cuts out a ton of light. The other is to project it up in there, so think heads up display on when you’re driving in your car, you can see the spedometer reflected off your windshield. That is the more popular way of doing it because it doesn’t cut down on light transmission. What it does do is whatever color we want that display to be, in this case red, you need to reflect that off of the lens. So just like it reflects off your windshield. You know, if you’re driving and your spentometer is shining up like this, it bounces off comes back to your eye. Same things happening. That little display is sitting down here and it’s bouncing off and back to your eye. Well, all the light that’s coming in through the front of that channel that is that same wavelength is going to bounce back off and go the other way. So we managed it down to we only want to do one very narrow band of wavelengths that are that exact color. So now you need to have a really good display that’s only going to be that color because we don’t want to cut out reds that gives you a blue worldview when you look through it. I think we’ve seen that with red dot optics or cheaper range finders. You look through them and everything’s blue. It’s blue because they’re trying to reflect red and use very little battery. Well, with less expensive displays, you get a broader band of red. This display maybe this color. That one’s that color. So now I need to block out all of these. This whole chunk of red has to go away. With a really good display, you say, they’re all going to be right here, and I’m only cutting that one little narrow band of wavelengths out. Why that matters. If you look on a color wheel, red is on one side, blue is directly opposite. Guard hairs and animals are red. Like when you start looking at it, there’s a lot of red in gritters. We don’t want to cut that all out, and so that’s the display technology. Honestly was one of the biggest limitters on getting this to market because it would degrade the optics. And we finally got to a place where you cannot degrade the optics and get the right battery life and have full pixel display, not just the segments. I think we’ve all got our complaints about the ones that are segmented. What does that say? This is like a TV display, So it’ll give you full instructions when you’re looking through it, very fine aiming points for your radical so you know exactly where you’re hitting. All of those things were The display was the kind of the missing lynch pin.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: Gotcha? And you mentioned better your life. I haven’t used mine enough to get there, like do you guys haven’t anticipated.
00:36:18
Speaker 3: Like years years, year, years and years?
00:36:21
Speaker 1: Gotcha? And and that pop up display or projection display, if I remember right, it’s only in the right eye. Correct, it’s in that right eye of that, but it tricks your brain while you’re looking through it that it’s in both but it’s really on that right eye. And you know, alignment is a little bit important, right if you get out of whack too far, you’re glass and weird at a weird angle. So like alignment, you know, is is a little bit important, but it’s it’s pretty forgiving, you know, left, right, up and down. But there were times where I could like skew the display, but it was my fault holding it.
00:36:49
Speaker 3: But oh if you were, yeah, you got to be.
00:36:52
Speaker 1: Pretty aligned with the biniacular, but it wasn’t I noticed, like you could get it to skew off. But for the most part, it was super bright and and you guys had multiple brightness levels. Whether it was early in the morning, maybe you didn’t want to be blinded if you’re trying to make a shot early and real quick changes to you know, even on the binocular, like the menu is really intuitive, like hey man, I’m getting blinded. Let’s let’s crank this down a little bit, and the in the middle of the day you have to crank it back up. But yeah, so we’ve.
00:37:16
Speaker 3: Got a full kind of kind of five button just so you can you’re not just using two buttons to get through the menu. So you can go down through the menu, you can go over, you get full textual explanations if you need it. And the reason that’s on there is in case something happens to your phone, right, so full backup, I don’t want I don’t have the app, don’t want to use the app, broke my phone, phone died, whatever it was. You have full access to everything. But that eyebox sensitivity is something that is a kind of a trademark hallmark but probably a better way of saying that for us, you want those clear optics. But whether it’s a rifle scope, a binocular spotting scope, it needs to work for you, and you need to be in awkward positions, right, So forgiving eyebox is something that you can design into an optic, into a good optic, and we have done that before.
00:37:58
Speaker 1: I forget about it. One of the features I really like and it it seems like something that’s maybe so simple, but you guys got it right on this were the I cups, Like the little bit of an angled rubber like that was one of my like when the BX five originally came out, and like me personally, like, man, they’re pretty square, they’re pretty hard. Where this this b X six has got the I don’t even know what you guys call it, like angled rubber, but man, it’s just comfortable once again, comfort all day sitting behind binos, Like these things are just comfortable and soft. I didn’t even I think it came with a couple extra sets. I don’t know if that’s going to be in the production. I’m like, no, that heck was that whatever? You guys sent stock on them. We’re money and I just went with them.
00:38:32
Speaker 2: Now you can definitely find I cups there. They’re gonna fit you because we’re all different, right, yeah, comfortable.
00:38:37
Speaker 3: With different things.
00:38:38
Speaker 2: It’s it’s a huge feature.
00:38:40
Speaker 3: We’re doing a lot of more monoculars.
00:38:41
Speaker 1: Now, very very comfortable. So this is a you know, it doesn’t have the gold ring on it per se, but like, what is the warranty on this BX six going to be? Like, uh, what is you know, the loop world warranty behind a product like this with both range finding and optics.
00:38:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, so lifetime warranty on the optical components, five year electronics warranty on the electronics, and that is generally a function of how long are those available, So we always will strive to take care if we’ve got that component and it still is available, we’re going to take care of that consumer. We do all the service right here. So that is a massive advantage over needing to send them to a different continent waiting months and months to get them back, because it is a tool. It’s a tool that we need to be successful. When I guided, I had backups for guides, right, and so if somebody’s optic went down, I had to send them another one while I waited eight months to get that one back. And you can’t go without a truck, right, So you can’t go without your binos and So that’s a lifetime on the optics, five year on the electronics, and that’s mostly related to can we get the sensor we need because we’ll do all the service right here, normal turn around time.
00:39:47
Speaker 1: That’s awesome. So at the end of is there anything else we want to talk about the or anything we didn’t cover? I’m stoked because as a guy that hunts, you know, out west long glassing, like I love, as much as I love elk hunting, it’s not necessarily as glass intensive like sitting behind the glass meal deer hunting, you know, antalope punting and looking at stuff like I love that and and in my opinion, like these binoculars are there, like as good as I’d ever want, glass quality everything I want in the Blitz soclutions. But there’snything we didn’t talk about that people need to know about the b X six. Anything we left off the table, I don’t think so.
00:40:29
Speaker 2: I think you guys covered it pretty thoroughly. I mean I think that you know it’s we we take new products seriously, and this is literally worked for years on this. This isn’t this isn’t something that we bought off the shelf or we tried to do. This is the years in the making with a really talented design team based right here in Beaverton, Oregon. You know, so it’s a it’s definitely a more than just a new product for us. This one is a little bit of the labor I love because I know how much, how much kind of pain and that we went through to get this to where we wanted it. So we’re we’re really proud.
00:41:00
Speaker 3: That’s awesome.
00:41:02
Speaker 4: Here’s some grumblings about a VX Forgen two. Yeah, what’s that all about?
00:41:07
Speaker 1: You know?
00:41:07
Speaker 2: I mean one of the things that you know, every rifle scope, in fact, any optic that you put and mount on and you’re going to actually use to you know, make something happen, is anything we sell has made in this factory here in Beaverton, and what you guys saw. So we’ve we’re really proud.
00:41:22
Speaker 3: Of what we do here.
00:41:24
Speaker 2: And you know, the gold ring line of rifle scopes. We think, you know, when you start with the VX six is the absolute best hunting scope in the market, and I think a lot of people agree with that when we look at the numbers and kind of data out there of how many people own those.
00:41:38
Speaker 3: But but you know, as you go down.
00:41:40
Speaker 2: We also want to make sure that you know, we’re building you know, incredible premium optics at every kind of price point, all the way down through to the beginning to our freedom. And we saw, you know, where our line is when you go V six VX five, and then there was a honestly a space there that we wanted to be able to make sure that we you know, kind of right under one thousand dollars had another great performance scope. And so the engineering and product team really map that out. And it’s a hard task, man, because you know, you’re trying to go, you know, you’re kind of here’s your VX five and it’s really good, it’s done very well for us in the market, and then how do we kind of make this this spot work and make sense. And I think the team really did a great job of developing another optic that is incredible optic quality, it’s going to work great in low light, and it’s it’s you know, gonna be the best value I think out there. If you get a VX four and you’re doing it right under a thousand bucks there, right at that point, you’re getting a world class optic at under one thousand dollars. And so it’s I think it’s going to be a huge home run for us. So we’re we’re it’s out there, we’re making them right now, and we’re getting them out there, and we’ll be full production here before you know, in the next couple of weeks really, So it’s it’s exciting.
00:42:53
Speaker 4: One thing that really impressed me. And I don’t know, I know not all scope manufacturers do this. You guys have your heat test. You had one hundred and fifty degrees for how long? It’s quite a lot.
00:43:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well you have to remember that a lot of our product ends up going overseas and sitting in storage connects before it goes to war, right, and so those tests are derived from operational requirements from mill standards. You look at the normal eight ten h eight ten testing and it’s a hybrid of all that. So you’ll the storage temperatures, the operational temperatures. When you’re looking at operational temperature and needs to do that definitely, right, and so storage temperatures are going to be even higher and going to be longer. But those operational temperatures you think it’s a black or a brown optic in the sun in the desert, they get hundreds of degrees well, and that sun is beaten on them. So we need to test for all of that, and then it needs to be able to come out of a you know, an airplane at thirty thousand feet and then open in a tropical environment after just a minute or so. There’s a lot of testing that goes on here, and it actually cross pollinates. Four wheelers are really tough one and stuff, and so swimming out of a you know, a torpedo tube.
00:44:03
Speaker 2: It’s a great point. I mean that that’s the thing that I don’t think a lot of people realize is because of the fact that we’ve been determined to make every single rifle scope here that if you’re literally what we sell to the most elite units in the world and what they use. We do the same test on everything in our hunting lines, starting with the VX Freedom. But like this VX four we’re talking about, which is like I said, it’s gonna be a great value just under a thousand dollars, incredible performance. It goes through the same rigor that we put on something that you know a unit’s going to have that is you know, out there kind of every day.
00:44:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s what blew me away because they were testing some of the Freedom scopes, the same type of mill Spec type testing the Mark five’s take and it’s like, it’s amazing to me.
00:44:55
Speaker 3: I don’t think everybody does that.
00:44:56
Speaker 2: I don’t know if they do or not. My guess is they probably don’t when we test the product and look at which we do. But we do, and that’s part of what you get when you buy a loople.
00:45:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did want to offer Dirk services. You guys have that big recoil tester down there, but Dirk is more than willing to shoot the five pound fifty b MG to test all your scopes thousands of times. That guy, yeah, he’s that. He’s that tough that he’ll test a five pounds fifty with all of your guys scopes if you want to add that to your testing regin.
00:45:26
Speaker 2: I remember we had a he’s no longer here, but we had a When I first got here, I was talking to one of the guys that ran that machine down there, and I’m like like, so, like, what what is that? Like like that kind of recall and he goes knock you out and you’re out cold. So we’re not gonna let Dirk te.
00:45:44
Speaker 1: Fun. I would I will sign the all sign all the waivers you yeah, I’ll sign him for him. That will take on the liability. Just a just a video of that fame.
00:45:55
Speaker 3: It has to be one round.
00:45:56
Speaker 1: Yeah at a five pound, Yeah, it would be. But I do I don’t know. Are you guys accepting any job offerings for that? Like just shooting in a tunnel and doing that like that seemed like the coolest job on the face, it’s pretty cool, you know.
00:46:08
Speaker 2: You got to really hand it to the to the Louppold and Stephens family for finding this location. So when they bought this property, I think it was sixty eight, it was farm land out here, you know, and Nike didn’t wasn’t over there, and Columbia wasn’t over there, I think it was. And one of the reasons that they chose this property is because at that time it wasn’t a problem to put a shooting tunnel under our parking lot like we have. And it’s just it’s such a great thing for our team product testing, you know, because you know everybody, you know, they always send in the scope and it’s always the scope’s fall, of course, and most of the time we find out it’s the AMMO.
00:46:42
Speaker 3: I’m joking, but it’s.
00:46:45
Speaker 2: It’s usually mount through the AMMO or there’s all kinds of things that go on with somebody when they’re but we can we can take it and we can look at it and say and test it. And you know, in some cases if we find something there that we go to work, we go to work on making it better and fixing it. And the other benefit it is we have a ton as you know, I mean, this team hunts. This team is out in the field, they shoot PRS, matches all the time, and they’re doing all kinds of things, and so we we give our team access to that, you know, and they can go in before season, you see guys going down there and zero their rifles and getting them ready to go and and uh so product testing doing that. We have a we have a shooting facility out in Madress, organ which I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to go. Yeah, yeah, we got to get out there. It’s it’s phenomenal that we do a lot of get our engineering team out there and we can shoot for you know, long long long ways on what’s our what’s the longest.
00:47:31
Speaker 3: We know we can get to a couple of thousand meters.
00:47:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it’s it’s pretty awesome. So we do that as well. But just having this right here in this spot, it’s it’s it’s neat.
00:47:42
Speaker 1: So I know, you guys got other meetings to go to. Is there anything else like on the observation side, or like where’s loop hold going in the future, like knew this new that anything we can talk about, or just kind of like what’s the next big product We’ve.
00:47:53
Speaker 2: We’ve got a lot of stuff coming and you know, we we set out and our product and engineering team we have a five year roadmap on on new product and we’re we’re constantly innovative. One of the things that you know, our vision is is to be the dominant performance optics company in the world. And part of that we’re not there. And part of that that that mantra that we have is to to never stop kind of improving, never stop making better product for our customers out there. And so it just requires us to have this this this new product development cycle continue to go on.
00:48:25
Speaker 3: It’s a lot of work.
00:48:26
Speaker 2: And I think we’ve got about seventy five engineers in this building and so they’re not all designing product, but but of various disciplines, right, and so it’s it’s it’s just an ongoing thing and we’ve got some really cool stuff coming and uh, you know later this year in terms of what we’re doing on on some carbing side, which is think is gonna be cool, It’s gonna gonna really do well. We’re can continue to work on observation every day, so all of these these core areas for us, whether it’s magnified rifle scopes, red dots, what we do in terms of you know, spotters, got another I got a killer spot coming this year. We’re really close to getting that done. So that’ll have a lot of application, particularly on the military side in terms of what we do. So just keep keep keep tuned.
00:49:07
Speaker 1: Man, We got we got stuff counts awesome. Well, we we can’t thank you guys enough for the partnership, the friendship as well, not just the partnership, and uh, you know, just Leopold’s generosity to let us come down through the factory and just be a part of what you guys are doing. And uh, one thing I love is you guys accept feedback from us. You know a lot of times, you know, some people don’t want to hear the feedback, but it seems like you and your team like, hey, this is you know, we’re out there testing it and it’s nice to like, you know, hey, somebody’s taking the feedback or working with us, and uh, yeah, it’s it’s great. And uh, I can’t thank you guys enough.
00:49:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you guys are the best, So thanks for you know you’re we love hanging out with you too. So having to beer with you guys is great too. And so anytime, anytime, you’re welcome here, anytime, All right, perfect, I’m coming.
00:49:50
Speaker 1: For coffee tomorrow. Alright, No, thanks a lot, guys. Yeah, go check out this will be this will launch after the b X six is officially launched on the eleventh, right, So go check it out. Go. Uh look at the specs, look at the details, like at the videos, everything that’s out there on them, and uh, like I say, I I was fortunate to have serial number seventeen, so I was one of the few that got to hunt with it, and uh, very very impressed. And the confidence that I was able to to take away from that on shooting solutions, glassing, all of the above. Is it met all the criteria for me for a for a Western you know optics. So very excited.
00:50:29
Speaker 3: Yeh.
00:50:29
Speaker 2: Should be able to find them a loophole dot com when it’ll list what retailers have them and so far.
00:50:33
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys. Thanks a lot, Yeah, take care of Thanks guys,
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