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Message: <blockquote data-quote="etudiant" data-source="post: 3595712" data-attributes="member: 48052">Hi Henning,Thank you for the good wishes!The trip was an week long visit to SE Arizona and adjacent New Mexico, spectacular scenery, good weather, a lovely Western Diamondback rattlesnake, tarantula, black bear, javelina and even a puma briefly seen first by our group's very sharp eyed Dutch birding couple.  Spotted Owl, 5 Striped Sparrow, Costa's Hummingbird and Elegant Trogons were birding highlights.Re your provider, I feel your pain. Competition is a much more effective spur to providing good service than regulation, which is why everyone in the electronics/communications industry hates it and works hard to make it illegal.I still have my Nikon serial number on the initial warranty card, but it is not visible on the actual unit. That said, I entirely agree with your assessment, they make good glass and sell it at a good price. Too bad their management structure is so weak. Their inability to do more for their 100th anniversary than to produce a video and pre-announce a future camera speaks volumes.At least Nikon Sport Optics, probably the least significant Nikon branch, saved the company's honor with their spectacular WX binoculars.Holger Merlitz reviewed these at length here: (<a href="http://www.juelich-bonn.com/jForum/read.php?9,434337,434337#msg-434337" target="_blank">http://www.juelich-bonn.com/jForum/read.php?9,434337,434337#msg-434337</a>) and his summary was that in comparison 'all other binoculars appear second rate'.  That kind of excellence is really what Nikon is all about imho.Re the Red Dot approach, I'm still not a convert, because I'm now used to my ED-50 enough that I can point it pretty accurately at 13x. If a closer look is possible, the zoom comes into play. As the ED-50 is slung over my shoulder dedicated to my use, the Red Dot advantage of easy sharing does not come into play. I like the idea and would love for it to be an industry standard, but don't see how.The mounting rail on the Vortex is not the answer imho, it would be like a tail fin on other scopes. My guess is that the eye piece will need to smarten up considerably more, to allow some sort of near zero magnification view to put the scope on target prior to actually observing.</blockquote>

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