Picking the Hive Mind on a rimfire scope and mount - advice, please?

[Diamondback]

As my "Modular Charger" project draws to a close, the barrel/forend assemblies are selected and waiting for order placement so now I need to make decisions on the scope. And with the intensely concentrated into narrow specific areas (and thus very limited outside those specific areas) nature of my current knowledge base, I'm asking some of the sharpest guys I know for advice.

The weapon: Handbuilt Ruger .22 Charger "Briefcase Kit" pistol/rifle convertible. Scope will be mounted almost exclusively in combination with 16" barrel and stock.
Range: 50-100yd, most shooting probably done at 50. This is a pure range toy whose most demanding expected tasks will be Appleseed, probably no PRS (already contraindicated by Takedown platform) and certainly not hunting except in unthinkable dire emergency like COMWEC.
Special requirements: The receiver rail has an integral rear sight to 5/8" above the rail top-line (it's the one NoDakSpud made special for Brownells 10/22 clone receivers), which means the scope needs to either be lifted to clear that or cantilevered forward in front of it. Since this is a Quick Change modular application, I need a one-piece mount that either has QD levers or has its mounting lugs spaced no more than 12 slots apart using dual 0.6" 3-slot QD risers. Using risers as QD adapters obviously means more forgiving height on the mount, but I do need it to reliably hold zero over repeated remove-and-reattach cycles.

This is mostly a plinker and general "fun gun," so it's about as far from "spare no expense" as it can go but I'm looking for "value/budget" not "cheap crap." Probably a 2-7x at most if a variable power between the short range and the fact that the most likely shooters are all badly nearsighted. What other things do I need to know or get decided before starting to look for optic and mount candidates, or has anyone here done something similar and how did you end up going with it?

[Todd.K]

Get a pic rail attached to the barrel. Then run a cantilever AR mount backwards.

Gives you a good selection of QD mounts, without being too high.

You could even run the cantilever forward and try a scout scope, it would make the rear sight clearance a non issue.

[Diamondback]

Probably should have noted that the build plan is a Midwest M-LOK forend, which makes the Scout position almost as high on the railhead as the receiver rail.


Other than my build having a pistol receiver, 1913-mount backend and iron sights, this is pretty close to the build plan when setup in "rifle mode." Then again, with the weapon being lower to the shoulder than a standard 10/22 (the "contact surfaces" are actually pretty close to an AR's geometry, maybe a little vertically shorter) perhaps a higher-mount scope might be better.