That sounds awfully sensitive. How these were used in a combat zone seems a mystery. It was mailed via UPS but packed to the hilt with paper and peanuts.
I have been using several Nikon RF cameras for decades and all in all I have had to adjust their rangefinders four times.
In one case it was after I had dropped my camera bag from a shoulder height (S3).
The two other cases were after the cameras had been shipped to me (two S2).
The fourth case was after a sudden downtilt of a naked camera body on the table (S2).
In the meantime I have adjusted two friends' Leicas RFs twice (M6 and M3) for some sudden and unexplained heavy misalignment at infinity. Both friends are climbers and used to take their Leicas (wrapped in several layers of clothes) in their backpacks.
One of those two friends got me rotflmao'ing with a message telling me that according to his M6 the moon wasn't at infinity any longer !
😀
Given the amount of time anyone has to give to properly clean the RF halfmirror on a Nikon, this is fairly possible that DAG didn't dare to do it like it had to be. Most of the repairers are now overwhelmed with work and won't spend several hours of their time at cleaning an half-mirror trapped into a metal casting if they think that the camera is usable as it is. Hence the great interest of having some basic skills to maintain that kind of gear oneself.
If you don't like that S2, send it back to the seller. This is not a rare camera and you'll be able to find another one with an excellent RF patch.
You can try to remove the small square mask which is screwed over the RF window. Like this, there'll be more light entering the RF light path. It can help the RF patch to be more "punchy". Basically, that little square mask has no real purpose but for reducing the size of the RF patch (and without making it a RF patch with definite edges).
ScreenHunter_01 May. 25 18.23 by David Fincher, on Flickr
