Sunday, December 27, 2009

Red Dot Sights

Greg of the Colo RKBA newsletter included a bit on the use of red dots in his newsletter:

"Red-dot, non-magnifying, optical sights (particularly the Aimpoint T1) changes the game much more than I ever imagined! With 'normal' shooting positions, their value is seldom truly realized. It is in the roll-over-prone position, shooting support-side shoulder, around cover, in low light, when you're out of breath, that they really shine! Improvised positions, particularly around cover and obstacles, do not lend themselves well to tediously aligning front and rear sights. Being able to simply '(1) put the thing
(2) on the thing, and (3) pull the thing' magnificently simplifies achieving consistent hits."
To which I would like to add my $.02. I got a Barska 30mm job
for about $20 and mounted it successively onto several of my guns, including pistols.
What I found was that with the tubular units, since you can't see the front sight, sometimes getting the pistol on target takes a bit longer as you wave the gun about trying to find the dot. With practice, however, you learn to get the gun pointed correctly automatically so that when you look through the tube, there the dot is, and when you take the sight off and go back to iron sights, you get on target faster as the pointing is now much more automatic.

2 comments:

Pawpaw said...

I don't know who makes these things, but everyone sells them. I've seen a half-dozen all exactly alike, with different brands on them.

Mine's a Simmons and I've had it mounted on two or three different rifles. I guess it'll eventually find its home, but right now it's laying forlornly in a pile of other cast-off scopes on my bench.

Billll said...

They are fun toys, but like you, mine's sort of a solution looking for a problem.

On a pistol, the tube style is slow getting on target, but blazing fast once you're there. Both my rifles already have conventional scopes and don't need the red dot.

I have a happy home in mind for it, but haven't been able to find one. It would work well on a plinking rifle or a pistol caliber carbine where you don't expect to emasculate flies at 100 yards.

Might be just the thing for pig, though.