When I get some free time I will try to take some pictures. I want to show off my 6 ARC too and see what ya'll think.

The scope is definitely made in China. It was sub $1k. None the less it represents a substantial value for what it brings to the table.

As far as quality goes, I can only really base that off of what is visible and the feel of the moving parts. The turrets are solid and someone definitely went through whatever process to make sure everything lines up properly. It doesn't look like they just slapped something together to be 'good enough'. It's not just the features (IE locking turret) but rather the very positive clicks, all the dashes line up, the components (at least from the over travel stop and things I can see in there) are definitely better. There simply isn't a lot of mush like in my other optics from Vortex. Given this was a higher price point so I do have take that into consideration when comparing.

I have looked through several higher end Vortex. The gun store let me go outside and look and all that. I have not used any higher end optics while shooting though. In a way I am scared to do it because next thing you know I will have $10,000++ dollars worth of optics on the way.

Relative to what I had before the 1x is by far the biggest surprise. I mentioned distortion on the edges but really it's not anything huge unless you are looking for it. I took it outside and tested in just before hand so I could be as accurate as possible so at that time I specifically watched for it. Again I kind of borrowed from my understanding of camera lenses but I am no expert on either. If you are not specifically trying to find distortion on the edges you might not even notice it much.

Again I don't know why it's better at 1x but it's a big jump up. My hypothesis is because it's a larger tube diameter. I am not sure if you are familiar with photography but there are F stops and T stops. F stops is a function of the size of the glass vs the size of the aperture opening, which is obviously adjustable, ie f 2.8, or f 5.6 etc. T stops is a much more technical measure that needs special equipment to measure. They shoot a certain amount of light into the front of the lens and then have a special machine in the back to measure how much makes it through.
A lens with a ton of glass and/or certain designs will just let less light pass through as a natural effect of more glass=less light. It has nothing to do with sharpness. On the flip side specifically talking about scopes, the bigger tube can let more light through. So if you had the exact same optical formula on a 30mm tube vs a 34mm tube you get more light on the bigger one. At least that's my theory.

Anyway whatever they did it's decent.

As for my load, I use 24.3 grains of Varget, virgin Lake City brass and a 69gr SMK. I am switching brass though just to make segregating things easier so I will need to redo it. I already started but I have like 10 projects going on at the same time and I still have some ammo I loaded a long time ago that I need to shoot through.