what kind of rear site should I get for my ranch model

Since you did not qualify your "The only down side" with "important to me", I assume you may not be aware of the other downsides that may be important in various circumstances.

1. The muzzle brake does create much louder sound to the sides. On a target range that will merely inconvenience one's shooting buddies, who are likely to wear ear-protection anyway - which one can live with.
In combat that could potentially seriously affect one's mates' combat effectivness and temporarily deafen them - and oneself if there is an echo-creating obstacle on one's side.

2. Muzzle flash - at least the perceived one - is increased considerably by the brake - which may temporarily blind one or one's mates when shooting in low-lignt conditions. The effect will probably inerfere with one's shooting routine by making one flinch/close one's eyes while pulling the trigger. I doubt many plan plan on spending dozens of hours practicing night shooting to get used to it, like the army grunts do - may be easier to get used to recoil.
It is also more noticeable to the enemy and having particular shape (rather than a point pinprick of light there are several cones seen sidewise) may help them better estimate one's position/distance and even light the surroundings.

3. As seen through a night vision device, a flash-supressed or brake-dissipated thermal signature is much prominent than a regular one - a large "doughnut" rather than a brief cone.

4. When shooting from consealed position, the sideways blast may disturb environment and reveal one's position.

Any of those side effects may have serious consequences in combat. There are probably more. It is probably no accident that standard milirary M16's are equipped with a flush supressor rather than an effective muzzle-brake and snipers do not use either.

AK-47 has a simple 45 degree flip-compensator and a heck of a recoil/flip. AK-74 has a brake and is the sweetest thing to shoot on full auto - with all above-mentioned effects amply exibited.

Voruzon.

cajungeo,

Please do not take it personally. I find no flaw in your reasoning. You obviously know what you want and what you are doing and every 2 cents you care to drop here are carefully deposited in my piggy-bank of valuable knowlege.
It's just that some may have completely different objectives affected by issues far from obvious to them.
Quite a lot of people here select the Mini as a survival/combat rather than a hunting rifle, especially in localities where AR-15 and similar types are banned.

Sweet recoild may be great but if it comes at a price of blinding, stunning and unbalancing one's squadmates in the middle of a firefight (and possibly revealing your position) one may wish to reconsider. That is of course completely irrelevant to hunting/target shooting.

I will certainly try to observe the effects of a muzzle brake - especially on accuracy - and will buy one to experiment with. Your suggestion to take my muzzle brake off is too cruel - I live in socialist New York City and it will be at best 4 month but probably more untill I am allowed to own one. Untill then, I can only read your posts and salivate.

What kind of earplugs are you talking about? How well do they work? Where does one get them?

<S!>
Voruzon.