Good morning,

How do you feel about using an high quality, fixed power optic on your PRS, or extreme long range rig?

Up to 12x it works just fine. Beyond that you'll have trouble. At 10x it's almost not enough magnification on the long targets. I've used fixed 10x, 12x, 16x, 24x and 36x in PRS and I still use fixed 24x and fixed 36x in rimfire metallic silhouette competition. If you're anything near a beginner, then you'll find that it gives you one less thing to worry about but just don't go over 12x if your targets are spread across the horizon. That's for competition use. For just horsing around, there's no real downside. I use fixed 36x as close as 40m and fixed 6x as far as a mile, all against 1MOA targets. People will tell you a lot about what they think you need based on what they need. What you actually need is not that much. Variable magnification helps when you're finding your target in a PRS match but in my view all it does is cost seconds for the guys that spend time zooming in and out while the rest of us will normally just set on one magnification for a whole stage and we get the extra time not spent fiddling with knobs.

My .02 is there’s a right answer but it depends on your particular situation.

I shoot SFP on my ELR PR and it might as well be fixed. It’s so much math to figure out hold over at mid range zoom it hurts me brain. It keeps the hairs small enough to drive tacks but not worth a damn (to me) on the fly where you’d have to reticle range unless I’m at max.

And max mag mirage can suck...

Field of view is where variable takes the cake at anything in between for acquiring multiple or moving targets imo.

I wish someone made a high quality fixed 12x.  Like on par with an AMG, Kahles, etc...  All of my 3-18's, 6-24's, etc.. get set somewhere between 12 and 14 and left there 99% of the time.  10x can be a little light.  12-14 is just enough to comfortably use mil-based reticles.

IOR makes a really spectacular fixed 16x. I know it's a little much on the mag but it's quite nice. There are a ton of guys that I shoot metallic silhouette competition with that have sent fixed power scopes to a guy that doubles them (doubles the magnification), so you could find a really high quality fixed 6 and send that to be doubled.