I was hooked.
I've never done cocaine, but from what I hear, it's as addictive as cocaine or meth.
Happy New Year and welcome to episode 13, lucky 13 of the frugal firearms podcast.
The podcast designed to help you get the most for your money.
And today we're going to be talking about maybe spending a little more money than you
planned.
But first I'm going to bring on my cohost Ken, Ken, happy new year to you.
Hope you had an outstanding holiday season.
Indeed I did.
And this is going to be an exciting podcast.
We're going to get to talk about some really cool technology that we probably all seen
and probably all want.
So let's go ahead.
Yeah.
Did you get anything for Christmas, Ken, that was firearms related?
Well, no, but I did part with one of my two 1967 Pontiac GTOs.
I figured I had too many of them and I had to park with them.
Two is too many of a car then.
Two is too many.
I have too many projects, so I now am somewhat flush with cash to spend down other things
that are smaller and much more fun.
Yeah.
My single little gift I got for myself, I just didn't give it to myself until after Christmas.
I gave myself a speed loader for my LCR, but I picked a company that's really popular and
I won't say the name of it, but it's colored blue if you look at it.
And it didn't work well at all because it pinched the rounds and wouldn't let anything
go into the cylinder.
So just today, you can hear me rattling the rounds in the background.
I got one from Five Star Firearms, which is, I guess, a smaller known company.
So they're getting a free plug here because this is, I mean, I'm a mechanical engineer,
as I've said many times, and this is a beautiful piece of engineering.
I mean, I'm just sitting here admiring how nicely this thing is machined.
So cost the same as the big name thing and works a whole lot better.
So anyway, hey, it's 2025.
Time to remind people what the show is about.
It's about the value proposition of firearms ownership.
It's about, as I mentioned earlier, saving money and getting the most for your firearms
dollar.
But there's a lot of things the show is not.
We don't disparage companies by name online of things that we don't like.
And there are things that we don't like, but we're not going to mention them.
We aren't lawyers.
Are you a lawyer, Ken?
No, although I've always had an interest in constitutional law.
Yeah, but constitutional law doesn't mean that we know a darn thing about your state
or your municipalities.
I can talk.
Your municipalities.
Wow, that was hard.
It was the fourth attempt.
Your municipalities laws, or for that matter, federal law.
So nothing herein is legal advice.
If you have a legal question, who do you talk to, Ken?
You talk to a lawyer from your state, hopefully.
Definitely.
Yep.
Exactly.
But we do like to give opinions and we like to get feedback on those opinions to us, of
course, at our frugal firearms podcast at gmail.com address.
We also now have a standalone website, which we did not have before.
Very simple, frugalfirearmspodcast.com, where it has links to all our social media, has
links to every show, and this show included, of course, and has also a link to our email
address.
So today we're bringing on ATN.
Now I'm going to give you a little background on why did I pursue ATN to get on this show.
For some time, I've been aware of ATN's products, which are in the digital and thermal optics
arena.
And years ago, when I used to go to the SHOT Show, they had a presence and I kind of looked
at the stuff.
And to tell you the truth, I thought this is interesting and maybe someday it'll mature,
but it wasn't really something that I was interested in at the time.
Well, the last time I went, I was exposed to a new product for them, which was the XSITE
5 series, which is a 4K digital scope.
And if you've ever been to SHOT or if you have any idea how big SHOT is, it's a ridiculously
large show.
It takes multiple days to walk through the show and see everything, if you're inclined
to try to do that.
And every year I do that.
And to me, this product that you can't see it, but I'm holding it, was just about the
best of SHOT.
In fact, in my opinion, it probably was the best of SHOT.
And to say that about SHOT is a big deal because I think that they completely turned the tables
when they went to a 4K imager of being able to get the most out of this technology and
do it at a price point that makes sense.
That's what we're all about.
We're all about the price point, you know?
That's right.
Bring it that value.
And AT&T did not send me this scope.
I bought this out of my own funds.
And then I said, you know what, this is a value company now and I want to bring them
on.
They did supply as a sample, just to discuss on the show, another new product for them,
which is the Blaze Seeker Thermal Scope.
So Ken and I reviewed that, both very favorably, and we're going to get into talking about
that.
So on the show, as our guest today, we have Ryan.
And Ryan, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell them how you got associated
with AT&T.
And I understand you're not actually an AT&T employee, which is interesting because you're
the first guest we've had who's not a paid employee of a company, but just believes in
the product.
You're like a power user.
Exactly.
So Ryan, the floor is yours, sir.
Sure.
My name is Ryan Marino.
I work with AT&T's Pro Staff.
I am by trade a 30-year law enforcement officer.
I won't name the agency I work for, but I work in Louisiana.
I work for a sheriff's office and I run a marine enforcement unit.
So my day job, I'm on a boat every day running sonar, doing port security, dive operations,
search and rescue, 30 years now.
I started with AT&T and believe it or not, I've always been interested and I've always
been an outdoorsy guy.
So being a boat operator, a coast guard captain, I was a bow fishing guy, also teach diving.
And there's a local fire department that I was teaching how to scuba dive.
And they were very short on or not short on funding, but they asked me if I could give
them a deal.
And I said, absolutely.
And their team leader said, hey man, I'll sweeten the pot.
How about I take you thermal hulk hunting while you're here teaching this class?
And I was like, okay, that sounds interesting.
I'd heard of it, never did it.
And we go out in the first night, I don't remember, I think we killed eight or nine
hogs, a couple of coyotes.
And I told him, I said, I will be on Pro Staff.
I will do this just like you're doing it.
And he kind of laughed.
He said, yeah, everybody says that.
I said, no, you don't know my personality.
And I fell in love with it.
I was hooked.
I've never done cocaine, but from what I hear, it's as addictive as cocaine or meth.
And I use that analogy, but here we are five years later, I hunt three to five nights a
week.
I'm a licensed guide.
I kill hogs, I kill coyotes.
We even do some other nuisance like in Louisiana, we have nutra, which are like a small kind
of muskrat.
They destroy the marshes here in Louisiana.
And we use thermal to eradicate those upwards of a thousand a year sometimes.
And so that's how I got started.
And I started like everybody else, worried about the price point.
Can I afford it?
Is my wife going to be upset when I buy this?
And like everyone else, I at the time was trying to be very frugal.
And so I started like everybody else with a 4K Pro, which is the predecessor to the
X5 that you have.
And I learned very quickly, it was a great day night optic.
It did what I wanted, but once I realized how good thermal was, I had to have it.
And one of the things I liked about ATN is their price point was a lot better than some
of their competitors.
And that's how I got started in this.
So that being the case now, you said, cause when we first talked on the phone a while
back and you just repeated the same thing.
So you're being consistent, but you said you hunt three to five nights a week.
And you're going after nutria, which by the way, if we have any environmentalists in the
audience, let me tell you that nutria has done more to kill off the value of the Delta
than just about anything else out there.
So it's a gargantuan rat basically.
And so I guess what you're telling me is that the laws in Louisiana do allow for night hunting
or allow hunting with thermal or a low light scope.
I guess not every state is like that.
I don't know if you're familiar with the laws.
So every state is different.
I hunt multiple states.
I hunt Texas, Missouri.
Missouri, for instance, only has, I think February and March is the only time you can
use thermal or digital night vision or night vision to hunt coyotes or hogs.
Louisiana, we have year round nighttime hunting for the five outlaw quadrupeds, which for
Louisiana are hogs, coyotes, beavers, armadillos and nutria.
So those are the five things we can kill year round, no limits, no season at night.
Do they still give you what used to be six bucks a tail for a nutria?
So Louisiana does have a nutria reward program and it is $6 a tail and we kill a bunch.
The downside is you have to lots of times tromp through the marsh to try to recover
the tails and that's easier said than done.
Yeah, for six bucks.
For six bucks and then you have to bring them to wildlife and at the end of the year, they
send you a 10.99 because they want their taxes on what they paid you.
And honestly, I'd rather just kill a bunch of them.
I bring customers, we have a good time, they enjoy it.
And at the same time, we're helping our landowners who these nutria are destroying their saltwater
and freshwater marshes.
I think a logical question, and actually it's still a question in my mind, is maybe state
laws are explicit on this, but perhaps they're not.
Is there a, it's kind of a two-part question in two dimensions.
One is thermal thought of as differently than low light for the purposes of night hunting?
Let's just put that question out there.
Do you get a pass on thermal where you wouldn't on low light or the other way around?
It's state by state dependent, but in my experience, most states treat them the same for night
time hunting.
Digital night vision thermal are both treated, at least in Louisiana, they are treated the
same for nighttime hunting.
Then that being the case, is there a clear definition of when night occurs?
In other words, it's within a certain number of minutes of sundown, it's in a certain
luminosity.
So most states give you 30 minutes after true sunset.
I know in Louisiana, if you were deer hunting in Louisiana, you can legally kill deer 30
minutes before legal daylight and 30 minutes after legal sunset.
And that's just because of the light that is still available and you can still see anything
after that is considered nighttime hunting.
So anything 30 minutes after legal sunset to 30 minutes before legal sunrise.
Okay.
Now, I don't know if I've mentioned this before.
I don't hunt and I have absolutely no problem with anybody who does.
It is not a moral issue.
It's just not something I do.
I didn't grow up with it.
Yeah, I just didn't grow up with it.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, my scope is more of a personal protection thing because I could imagine that there might
be scenarios where I don't have a tag to handle criminals.
Don't think I need one.
Right, but if there is a situation where I needed something a little light, the thing
that really impressed the hell out of me on the X-Sight 5 was its ability to manage contrast.
Because in high contrast situations, I mean, not only a low light, but sometimes in high
contrast situations, a passive and I mean traditional glass lens only scope is just,
you know, the image sharpness might be great, but you still can't pick out the thing in
the shadow.
Exactly.
And as the light starts to dim, you know, even though I don't know what class of, how
did they used to say that there are certain classes of night vision scopes?
I don't know.
So that was a military.
Gen 1, Gen 2, yeah.
Right.
And that is true, you know, night vision, not digital.
That is, you know, your PVS and 14s, 31s, stuff like that.
That is true or military type night vision.
Whereas the X-5 is a digital night vision.
So it doesn't fall into any of those classifications, but as such, I mean, I showed it to, in fact,
by the way, I just made the AT&T sale today, I think, because I have a friend who I showed
it to, who's prior military, and he became enamored with the scope and now it looks like
he's going to buy one.
So you know, that's the purpose here, right?
We're helping out each other.
But if you were to talk to someone who is a skeptic, because, you know, gun people tend
to be really skeptical people, I think.
Traditional, they kind of stick with what they know.
If you're talking to a person who is just like, you know, nope, I ain't doing it.
I'm not spending my money that way.
I have the perfect scenario.
So one of my coworkers is an avid hunter, deer hunter, duck hunter.
His little girl, I think she's 10.
He was having not a problem, but she would shoot and of course, on paper, he can see
what she's doing.
But on a live animal, she would hit deer.
And I recommended AT&T X-5.
And I said, listen, you can record what she's doing.
You can see what she's doing.
I said, you can even stream it to your phone and see what she sees as she's seeing it in
real time.
And so that was a great tool for him to help teach her rifle shooting.
Now in Louisiana, going back to our, what we were talking about prior, in Louisiana,
the X-site is not allowed for even for daytime deer hunting because the law says you cannot
use a digital or electronic optic designed for night vision is illegal to shoot deer.
It doesn't matter if it's noon on a bright sunny day.
By definition, I recently just found that out by speaking to one of our local game wardens.
There is a law, an older law, which I think was probably designed for true like starlight
night vision optics.
But it really needs to be updated because if I'm hunting at noon, all the X-site is
an optic that can record my shot.
It's not doing anything in the evenings.
I have to have an IR illuminator if I was trying to illegally kill deer at night with
it.
And that's probably the big difference going back to the true night vision or the classes
of night vision versus digital.
Is that digital optic without an IR illuminator is not real great in low light situations.
But the other benefits that I think to the ATN, the capability to go from day to night
with just the addition of an illuminator, and more importantly is the price point.
It's the easiest way to get into nighttime predator hunting, hogs, coyotes.
You can get the high end, the 5x25 X-site 5 for I think 900 bucks.
I mean, don't quote me on exact price.
Without the LRF.
Yeah.
Without the LRF, it's under a thousand bucks.
So a guy who wants to coyote hunt, wants to shoot hogs at night, can get into the game
for under a thousand bucks.
And we talk about frugal.
I mean, that compared to thermal where your lower end thermals can run two to five to
as high as 12 grand, depending on what you're buying.
For some guys, that's the quickest and easiest way to get into the nighttime hunting game.
I would say that that's still, you know, considering what thermals used to cost and what the quality
used to be.
I mean, we're going to talk about the Blaze series here, not quite yet, but we're going
to get to that.
Well, some of the more, the feature rich set in this X-site 5, I mean, it does elevation
and depression angles.
It has a compass built into it.
As you mentioned, it can record to an SD card.
It can also stream at the same time.
Ballistic compensator.
Yeah, the ballistic compensator.
And the ability to customize reticles.
I mean, it sounds like, well, of course that's obvious as a digital device, but I mean, how
many people have thought about, well, I can switch this from MOA to mil dot to BDC to
just a circle and a dot and I can do that on the fly.
And by the way, if I don't like, I think it's seven different versions that are loaded in
the thing.
You can modify them how you want them, man.
See, I'm not an artistic guy, so I stick with what comes on it.
But some of our other pro staff I have seen and am very jealous of some of the reticles
these guys have designed.
I look at them like, man, you put hours into these amazing reticles and have actually poached
a few from some of the guys because that's not my personality.
I'm not a very artistic type guy, but those guys have made some amazing reticles.
And according to them, it's pretty easy to do.
You know, actually, I don't think that ATN supports this, but it'd be kind of interesting
if they had like a community webpage where people could post a reticle and then someone
could download it and then upload it into their scope.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
That's just a suggestion, you know, but it seems like, you know, that'd be kind of fun.
And I mean, the geek factor in this thing is nuts.
But the optical quality is there too.
And when I kept going back, it was one of the only booths that I visited multiple times
it shot because you don't have the time.
And I just kept picking it up and they're on these little, not quite a whole rifle stock.
And I still would point it at the ceiling.
I wouldn't flag people even though it's not a gun.
And I'd look up into the rafters and the rafters is an area which is black.
It has white lights on it, of course, which for any other scope is a disaster.
And this thing was able to pick up details in amongst the dark areas that a regular scope,
no matter what the quality was, could not do.
When did they bring 4K technology into the game?
Because I remember, like I said before, it was kind of so resolution before.
Now it's right.
We had the 4K Pro.
I'm not sure the exact year.
Again, we resort back to your prior statement.
I'm not an ATN employee.
I'm an ATN Pro staff.
But it's been a few years.
The Excite 4K Pro has been out.
And I tell you, a game changer.
I had one of the original ATN Excites and just the clarity when they came out with the
4K blew me away.
And now with the Excite 5 being even crisper, cleaner, clearer, excellent technology, I
think, in my opinion.
But it sounds like from what you said before, you'd sort of weigh on the side of the thermals
just for maybe your use case.
Correct.
Not a lot of city lights are out in the Delta.
Well, I'll tell you the big difference for me, because I'm traditionally hunting for
farmers and ranchers.
We're primarily targeting coyotes and hogs.
If I was going out to shoot one coyote, Digital Night Vision is perfect.
And I kill a lot of hogs.
I have the whole game, but I run the Excite.
I run the Thor thermals.
But I also get on a lot of pigs.
And a single pig or a single coyote with Night Vision with IR is not bad.
But follow-up shots can be very hard to find those animals very quickly.
Where with thermal, because they stand out so well, follow-up shots with thermal are
a heck of a lot easier.
So when you got 20 pigs and you're trying to kill as many of them as quickly as you
can, it's way easier to pick those running pigs up through thermal than it is through
a digital night vision with an IR illuminator on it.
And that's why for me, thermal.
Now again, I have the Excite.
I use it.
It's a good introductory option for a lot of people.
And so I keep those.
I use those.
I loan them to people.
I have guys that, hey man, what's the difference in thermal and night vision?
Well, here you go.
Let's go shoot them and I'll show you the difference.
When we were using the Blaze Seeker, we had an opportunity to go out into not perfectly
dark because this is Southern California and you get really dark, you got to go really
far out.
But we were using the Blaze Seeker and I was blown away.
I mean, I had not closely looked at thermal or any of the night vision technology in a
long time because to me it had always been like, eh, it's going to be too expensive.
You can't afford it.
And man, it was unreal.
I'm just sitting there astounded at it.
And I happen to have a cabin up in the mountains near Big Bear, which is a popular here.
And I'm absolutely going to be saving up here and buying at least one of the thermal monoculars
here because we have mountain lion, we have, I'm not going to be shooting them in the neighborhood
as it were, but it's nice to be able to avoid them.
No, they're there.
And no, they're there.
We got bears, we got raccoons, we've got big horn sheep.
We have all of these things that go wandering around and you hear things and you're not
exactly sure what the heck it is.
And this is just a total game changer.
I mean, I was just so floored not only by the quality of what we were able to see, but,
and I'm asking, well, how much is this?
And it's like, really?
Really?
You know, I mean, I think the list price is like, you know, 530 bucks or something.
And I'm just like, this is astounding what it's able to do.
Yeah.
The, the, the, the specific one that, um, yeah.
I've had that all the time.
You know, this is not a hangover from the holidays guys.
It was just like my ability to talk in 2025 seems to be challenged.
I have to relearn it or something.
Um, the, the, the, the unit that's on loan from ATN was the blaze seeker, uh, 1.5 to
12 X, which is the model two 56.
And, um, and again, without just because we don't disparage of the company's products,
I will not name, I had access to another competitor's product, a few years older.
So I have to take that into account that it's not a new, new, new device.
So it might not be on a parallel in terms of price point, but there, I will tell you
that their current offering the price point is a great deal higher.
And um, honestly, the blaze was better.
Feature set, feature set was better.
Uh, the field of vision was better.
The presented image was a lot larger, uh, to the eye and the form factor.
You guys can't see this, but this is, I'm just guessing this is about a six and a half
inch cylinder.
So it's very nicely in the hand.
It's so small and compact.
Very light.
I love mine.
I have that exact same model.
Uh, I let customers use it all the time.
It's so light, so easy.
And it's the size of a, you know, a men's deodorant can at best or, or a small can of
hairspray.
It's tiny.
Yeah.
I don't, don't use hairspray, but I could say maybe an antiperspirant can, but yeah,
exactly.
Yeah, there you go.
And the other thing that I found though was that, and maybe you can speak to this too,
Ryan, there are practical applications of thermal scopes beyond hunting and beyond your,
you know, is the Mexican cartel coming over the border to attack me or something like
that.
I used it for detection of a water leak in a house where there was, um, hot water escaping
from an underground pipe and the heat was going up into the wall and the insurance company
didn't believe it until I sent them images that I was able to capture off of it and say,
well, yeah, here's the proof.
And all of a sudden there was a reconstruction project going on.
There's all kinds of other, I mean, maybe you have a couple of examples because you've
been exposed to this more than I have, but, but what are some other examples, why someone
would not want a thermal scope and specifically maybe not a rifle mounted scope, but just
a handheld binocular?
Yeah.
And Ryan, before you try me, let me, let me just say, I mean, I was using it just to locate
where the studs were in the wall of the side of the house.
It was unbelievable, you know, you sit there and, and, and obviously the house is warm.
It's cooler outside and you hold up the thermal script and you go, my God, there's all of
the, all of the studs, all of the blocking, you know, the fire blocking you might have
there.
You're basically, it's like an X-ray of the house.
It's, it's, it's astounding.
Um, so yeah.
And since Mike, I have a cabin, as I say, up in the mountains and my cabin is a hundred
years old.
It was built in 1924.
And it's, it's been enhanced and modified many times over the years.
And I know there are parts of the cabinet leak like a sieve.
And this particular tool is just unbelievable about finding out the leakiest parts of the
cabin.
And, and anyway, just, just amazed at the technology.
Well, some of the uses I, I personally, so my, we, we live in a rural area.
We're not far 10, 12 miles outside of the nearest town and we have neighbors, but there
are times I'm out hunting.
My wife may be home by herself.
She'll hear something.
She steps out on the porch.
She has her own thermal monocular and she'll step out and scan our yard.
We have a couple acres.
She'll scan, scan the yard, see what it is.
So for some people, especially the blaze seeker being so, so cheap, so small, it's really
easy for people to use for personal protection.
What finding what goes bump in the night looking, you know, what is it, where is it and being
able to see it in my job, we do search and rescue.
We're on the Gulf of Mexico.
I've used my, my thermals at work before we get called out at two in the morning, looking
for a stranded boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico or out in the ship channel.
It's real easy to see a boat or a ship or stranded people.
There's honestly the applications.
I have one former that I hunt for and he can, he hunted with me a few nights, used a monocular.
He's like, this is the greatest thing ever.
So he buys one and I asked him, I said, Hey, have you been hunting hogs?
He goes, Oh no, I use it to check my diesel tanks.
He said, I don't have to crawl up four flights of stairs because he can see the fuel levels
in those tanks because of the, the temperature variances.
So he'll drive by, look at a 500 gallon bulk tank and say, Oh, it's about time to fill
it up.
And so the applications are really strictly up to the user.
If it involves temperature variances, I've heard of people using them to find faulty
electrical outlets because they're arcing and causing heat.
Like you said, I've seen people use them as stud finders.
It's really only up to your imagination.
But for me, personal protection around our house, out in the country, search and rescue.
I'll tell you police and fire departments that do search and rescue.
You get in a wooded area and you have a child, an elderly person, especially an elderly person
with dementia.
They have a tendency, they hunker down.
Thermal is a game changer when you're trying to scan an area for a missing person.
And we use them quite a bit at our agency.
I will tell you that when you're talking to about, you mentioned the fluid level indicator.
I had never thought of that, but that would absolutely work.
The stud finder thing Ken and I have both experienced looking for outlets and things
like that that are generating heat in the house.
Looking for heat loss if you have a bad insulation is a good use.
But the amount of difference, I don't think people appreciate this.
The amount of difference it takes for this thing to show an image is, I don't know, maybe
you don't know either one.
It's fractions of a degree.
Yeah, it's not much.
If you walk across a lawn, and I've done this experiment, or down a sidewalk or something,
you can see the person's footsteps.
Oh, absolutely.
Not for long.
For a short time after.
I used it to find my dog.
We have a slope behind my house and he's dark brown.
This is Southern California, so dark brown is kind of a common color.
I can't see him.
And all of a sudden, oh, there he is.
Well the other thing people don't realize, and it's a common misconception, is you can
use thermal during the daytime.
So people say that all the time.
They're like, wait a few years and thermal during the daytime to shoot pigs?
Like, yeah, it's monitoring the thermal variances.
So is it a little different if it's a hundred degree day and everything is hot?
Sure.
But man, just like you said, there's times I can scan the woods and see animals in the
woods even though it's 10 o'clock in the morning and I'm trying to find coyotes or pigs.
I can scan the tree line and see them sometimes tucked in the woods where I normally would
have never seen them.
Well, and something else that people don't always realize is the item that you're looking
for with a thermal scope does not have to be the hottest thing in the scene.
It might actually be cooler than the background.
And then it still shows up just great because as you pointed out correctly, it's looking
at the thermal difference.
That's right.
Not just an absolute temperature range.
Okay.
So getting into the quality of the product and things like that, you offhandedly mentioned
that there are competitors out there.
Why would someone choose ATN versus, I don't know, perhaps a cheaper import or something
like that?
You know, I think the number one thing is our customer service.
You have issues with an ATN product, you reach out to our customer service, and they're going
to repair it or replace it for you.
Even though I'm on pro staff, I've had an occasional issue.
I use my optics, my monoculars with customers.
I've had them drop a monocular and scratch and gouge the lens, reach out to ATN and get
it taken care of.
And so probably for me, our biggest thing is our customer service.
On top of that is our products are made in Florida.
For the most part, all our products are made here.
And there may be products I'm not aware of that aren't made here, but for the most part,
our products are assembled here in the United States.
And so you're getting an American made product, not a knockoff from another country that if
you have an issue with it, you can never get it fixed or repaired.
Probably warranties cost things.
Every company sets their warranties according to their expectation of getting things back
because it's part of the price and everyone knows that.
So Ryan, the follow-up question then would be, how does ATN know that a product is ready
for the street?
And there's going to be durability issues.
And I think that there's a lot of, I mean, I have these suspicions myself that it's not
only optics, but it's a bunch of digital stuff going on inside this little package that might
be exposed to bad environments.
Lots of things can go wrong.
And I'm not saying that you can't have things go wrong in traditional glass scope.
Of course you can because they're fragile too.
But how does ATN know that their products are ready for the real world?
You know, Craig, guys like myself, our pro staff, we have a large group of pro staffers
across the, not only the United States, but across Europe.
And we're using these optics on a daily basis.
I can give you a personal example.
Like I said, I take customers out, they use these optics, they're not there.
So we all know when something's not yours, you don't take real good care of it.
I have customers, they throw them in the back seat of the truck.
They throw them on the floorboard.
Don't you take care of a rental car just as if it was your own?
Yeah, exactly.
Come on now.
And so honestly, the way that about durability, because when I first got into the night vision
and thermal game, I babied my very first thermal.
I paid, you know, $4,000 for it.
I babied it.
I made sure.
And after all these years with customers just throwing them around, they're a lot more rugged
than people realize.
They're designed to be weather resistant.
They hold up.
They put a lot of testing to make sure it's kind of like your cell phone in your pocket.
Do you think about your cell phone, how much it gets banged around and thrown on a table?
Our technology now is just so much more advanced than it was five years ago, 10 years ago,
that these optics are just a lot more durable than people give them credit for.
And like I said, the process and testers and folks like that put them through a lot of
rigorous work.
Right.
I mean, as part of being frugal and stuff, I totally understand.
If I invest in something, I will baby it.
I will take care of it.
I will keep the original box if I'm not using it.
Whatever it might be, I mean, it will be cared for.
Now, one of the things that I could talk about, maybe you know a little bit about, is the
internal rechargeable battery.
Yes.
I could point about it because I mean, battery technology has been evolving wildly over the
last, and we've seen it in cell phones where, you know, the original cell phones, it lasts,
battery lasts three, four hours.
You got to stick it back in the charger.
Now you get a couple days.
Yeah, several days.
And if an internal battery goes bad or needs to be replaced in three or five years from
now, is ATN going to be able to help us with that?
Yeah, absolutely.
I can tell you though, I have optics that are six, five years old, that still, I'll
give you the example of Thor 4 thermal, which is the predecessor to Thor 5.
I get 18 hours of battery life on that thing.
I think six years old, it's the very first scope, first thermal I bought.
I still have my original Thor 4 384, and that thing is still a go getter.
I can charge it and customers use that gun all the time.
But if you were to have an issue, the battery does, on those optics, does have to be replaced
at the factory.
You contact customer service, get with them, and I'm sure they'll get you taken care of,
Ken.
I know about, maybe you're not the guy on the inside to answer this question, but stemming
off all the improvements and things like that, do you know what's in the pipeline that you
can talk about?
I do not.
I'm as excited about Shot Show as everybody else.
I'm hoping it's something new and outstanding.
And I really, I wish I knew, but I don't know what's coming down the pipeline, Greg.
Well then I got a perfect follow up for you, which is ATN has something called an upgrade
program.
Yes.
Tell me about that if you can.
Sure.
So that ATN upgrade program, if you buy your optic new from ATN and you buy that optic,
and let's say four months down the line, you realize, man, I really wish I had bought a
640 thermal.
Just an example, you bought a 384.
If you contact ATN, they will give you that cost of that optic towards your new optic.
So basically, we'll just ballpark it.
The 384 you bought costs three grand and the optic you want's five grand.
Depending on how long you've had it, they'll give you that amount towards your new optic.
And so really you're not losing a whole bunch.
And again, don't quote me on how much they give you, but I know that I have two friends
who personally, I told them, hey, get the 640.
They were very adamant about getting the 384.
Then they would shoot a 640 and they said, hey man, I want to upgrade it.
A friend of mine, Eric, a very good friend of mine, when he upgraded his, they gave him
a hundred percent of what he paid for towards his new 640.
And that was only, I think he only had it two or three months.
So I think it really depends on how long you've had it.
After a year, it may be less or whatever, but yes, they do offer you an upgrade incentive,
so to say, to upgrade your optic.
Well, I mean, how many companies do that at all?
And it's a small list, I'm telling you.
Brand loyalty right there.
That's good.
Yeah, exactly.
You know what?
I failed to mention earlier, a feature I just thought about was the one shot zero.
My absolute favorite thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
Frugal people, frugal.
Tell us how a one shot zero goes.
It's so easy.
A caveman can do it.
And I actually did.
And this is not a Geico commercial.
No, it's not, not at all.
Honestly.
So we'll use the Thor 5.
I'll shoot.
I'll see my impact point.
You put the crosshairs where you were originally aiming.
You go into our one shot zero function.
You move the, and when you hit the one shot zero, it brings up a second set of crosshairs.
You move those, you hold on your original point of aim.
You move the crosshairs where you're around impacted and hit save and it drags and adjust
it and you're there.
So what I traditionally do is I'll start at say a hundred yards as far out as the zoom
is.
So let's say we're shooting a base magnification of four and I get it there.
Well, you can tighten that group up quite a bit because at four power, your minute of
angle is pretty big as you zoom in.
So let's say it's a four by 32 thermal, I can zoom in and get in pretty tight and it's
making smaller minute of angle adjustments.
The more you zoom in.
So I can get it really close at four power and then I can zoom into, let's say 20 power
and get it even tighter and you can just tighten it up as much as you want.
But to just one shot, get it in the X, so to say it literally is a one shot zero.
How much ammo are you saving there guys?
With the cost of ammo, it all adds up.
And again, I know we don't talk about other kind of, I have some glass optics that I absolutely
love also.
And sometimes it takes me five, six, eight shots.
Well, depending on what rifle I'm shooting, you might look at two dollars a round where
I can make maybe two or three shots with the one shot zero and beyond.
It adds up really quick.
It does.
You got any funny stories, other little anecdotes, things like that you want to share with our
listeners as we're getting toward the end here?
You know, talking about thermal and what you see through thermal, there's crazy stuff you
see when you're riding around two, three, four in the morning looking for hogs and coyotes.
And one of my forums we pulled up scanning and we see a guy taking batteries out of a
tractor.
We've seen other people where they think they're in the middle of a cornfield in a vehicle
or outside of a vehicle and they think they're all alone in the middle of a cornfield visiting.
We'll leave it at that.
And you're like, oh, wow, am I really seeing what I think I'm seeing?
So you see crazy stuff out at night through thermal that otherwise you might not see.
See there's your reason right there.
You wouldn't want to have it maybe mounted on a weapon while you're observing people.
Monoculars.
Because if you had a flinch response that might just not go very well.
Anything else you want to share about websites where, you know, if you're doing, if you or
ATN is doing any events that people should be aware of or social media accounts they
should look at all that stuff.
Right.
So I tell everybody, of course, if you're on Facebook, there's ATN.
ATN Core, if you go to our website, which is ATNcore.com, you can check us out.
If you have, if you're a new ATN owner, you can actually sign up for the ATN University
and they do a free class where they walk you through the X site and the Thor 5 and they
teach you how to effectively use it.
We found over the years that people are like, oh, it's a piece of junk.
Well, what do they do?
Like most guys, they don't read the book or try to find anything.
They just go try to use it.
And with a little bit of help, it makes the product so much more productive.
And so Facebook, we have an ATN Smart HD group that you can come in.
A lot of the pro staff are there.
We answer questions on a daily basis and it's not a pick on you or there's no, you know,
the old there's no stupid questions.
Come in, ask questions.
We want to help you.
We want you to enjoy your ATN products to the best of their abilities.
Outstanding.
Ken, you got anything else for our guests to this, this evening?
No, other than the fact that, I mean, as I say, it was not a technology, it was a technology
I was aware of, but not a technology that I used.
And in just using the Blaze Seeker floored, I'm astounded.
And I'm looking forward to that shop to see anything new that might come on the market.
But if we have people with limited funds and just want to get into, to Thermal, the Blaze
Seeker, I had a price point of, you know, just over $500 list.
Phenomenal product with unbelievable uses around the house.
Things you haven't even thought about.
So yeah, that's basically what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Any closing, you know, save rounds there, Ryan?
Well, you know, you guys ever down in Louisiana?
Come make a hog or coyote hunt with me.
You know, I run Marino's Outfitters.
You can find us on Facebook or Instagram.
Be glad to take you guys out hunting.
I know you said you're not a big hunter, but maybe we'll get you started, get you introduced
to it.
But I'm not adverse to it though.
And particularly for vermin, you know, that's where.
We'd love to have you guys.
Y'all, y'all welcome anytime.
Just let me know and we'll get y'all taken care of.
Sounds good.
All right.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you all for having me.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Good night.
So, well, Ken, that was an outstanding guest.
Another in our, you know what?
I'm just going to say it again.
We are the best gun related podcast in the universe.
That's audio only.
Far enough.
Of course.
I believe that as well.
Yeah.
We get to the point.
We, we let our guests own the floor and we make it happen.
And I really hope that, that more people will expose themselves to these products because,
you know, that the, the, the ability to do stuff you just never thought you could do.
Exactly.
And this thermal technology is phenomenal.
I mean, if you think you've seen it or you think you've seen it on a movie or TV, um,
wow.
Take a look at it.
If you have an opportunity to take a look at the ATN, this is basically a monocular.
The uses around your house that you wouldn't have thought about.
Astounding.
Just amazing.
And if you're a geek like me and you like doing stuff like designing radicals, even
silly radicals.
I mean, you could have something with a smiley face and you know, the, the, you know, the
button nose is, is the center of the radical or something like that.
I mean, you can do stuff like that just for the hell of it.
I mean, you know, and that by itself, I'm not saying that makes that justifies the cost
of the object, but I mean, it's worth a little bit of fun at the range.
But as frugal, I mean, this technology is getting into that realm of, yeah, it, it before
was a, something you'd never be able to buy.
And then, and it's kind of like getting down to the point where, you know, this is a doable
thing.
This is a technology that I can add to my, to my collection, something I can use.
So exactly.
Exactly.
All right.
So, um, next up, I, you know, maybe we'll have some live content from the shot show
because the next show we're going to be producing is to the right side of the shot show.
Maybe we'll get something there.
At least we'll get some more contacts.
But everyone, if you have a company that you think is good, I mean, we just gave her a
free plug.
I just gave her a free plug today to a company I didn't know about until a few days ago.
Get ahold of us at frugalfirearmspodcast at gmail.com or just visit the website frugalfirearmspodcast.com.
Anything else Ken?
Nope, that'll do it.
I wish everybody a happy new year or 2025.
Let's make it a good one.
All right.
Good night folks.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time.
Do you want to ask it, Ken?