Sight picture commonality

[Schalk]

Hi there.

I have been looking around at various aftermarket sights for a new handgun that I have purchased, and I have the following question.

How important would sight picture commonality be between different weapons, even from handgun to rifle? I read that Ikor mentioned that he has several different sight setups on his different handguns, and that you just needs to get used to the sights on the particular gun that you are using.

Kelly McCann even has a Docter Optik red dot on his Glock 19, which he says gives him sight picture commonality with his carbine (and because of weakening eyesight 8)).

I suppose that it will be more of an issue with radically different sights, such as having Warren Tacticals on your IDPA gun whilst you have XS Systems Big Dot sights on your carry gun.

Personally I was looking at the XS Big Dots for my new carry gun, but decided to stay with more conventional sights such as Warren Tactical 2 dot tritiums. This will provide a very similar sight picture to the Heinie Straight 8s currently on my Glock 19, and should make transitioning from one to the other much easier. I don't like 3 dot setups, as I find the sight picture too busy.

Does anyone have experience using the XS Sight Systems Big Dot sights?

Thanks.

[ikor]

Speaking only for myself, pistol sights on a SD handgun make very little difference to me so long as they are use a squared rear notch and front blade of one sort or another. . As I age, however, that front blade becomes more difficult to pick up quickly and harder to focus upon clearly. I have now installed a Heinie +50 rear 'ledge' model rear with a Dawson fiber optic front (red in color) on my G19 that does, indeed, allow me to shoot more accurately in daylight. This is not a tritum 'night sight' set, but I do (well, I did have one before a certain guy in Pretoria deftly plyed me with alcohol one afternoon and I gave it to him ;D) have a SureFire X300 that I hang on it at night. At home, it is not my primary bedside handgun...that one gets both a X300 and tritium sights.

I use and prefer the Aimpoints on my carbines and like a really big white or silver front bead on my shotguns...I have little trouble going from one system to the other. For others, it would seem logical that the more 'common' you can keep your sighting systems the better, but IMO this works only up to a certain point. I would never...ever...put AK type sights on a rifle that had a good rear peep, for instance, etc.

BTW the Warren Tactical sights are designed to shoot '6 O'clock', which is why I won't use them...if your other pistols are set for a 'center' hold (bullet hits where top of front sight blade is pointed at normal ranges) you might wanna think about that...OTOH, lots of guys prefer '6 O'clock'.

[Gidsie]

Brownells are not exporting Sights above $100 and we are gonna pay more than that for a Heinie Pro Slant Night Sight
And they are not selling front or rear night sigts seperate...

Novak also has a nice single dot sight

Heinie are not exporting interationally and neither is Novak

Actually nobody is now exporting firearm parts over $100, including sights, grips.

Can still import Tactical lights though!

[shooter]

Brownells are not exporting Sights above $100 and we are gonna pay more than that for a Heinie Pro Slant Night Sight
And they are not selling front or rear night sigts seperate...

Novak also has a nice single dot sight

Heinie are not exporting interationally and neither is Novak

Actually nobody is now exporting firearm parts over $100, including sights, grips.

Can still import Tactical lights though!

So a weapon mounted light is exempt from the stupid $100 limit? What else is exempt that you know of?

[SSP]

Brownells are not exporting Sights above $100 and we are gonna pay more than that for a Heinie Pro Slant Night Sight
And they are not selling front or rear night sigts seperate...

Novak also has a nice single dot sight

Heinie are not exporting interationally and neither is Novak

Actually nobody is now exporting firearm parts over $100, including sights, grips.

Can still import Tactical lights though!

So a weapon mounted light is exempt from the stupid $100 limit? What else is exempt that you know of?

Pretty much anything that isnt a gun part.

[BigT]

Does anyone have experience using the XS Sight Systems Big Dot sights?

Thanks.

I have played around with them a bit and don't get the point. You loose precision on difficult shots and I didn't find them any quicker than seeing as much as you need to see on fast close in shots with conventional post and notch sights.

[DS]

Re Mini Red Dot on pistol issue - I was quite intrigued by the idea when I viewed the Crucible videos by Kelly McCann:

I found some very interesting observations here http://www.defensivecarry.com/vbulle...te-see-op.html

"I bought a Optima 2000 a number of years ago thinking that this would be an ideal tool for CCW. Clearly it solves a number of problems. First, generally, as Kelly McCann puts it, “This sight is like cheating.” It definitely improves the sight picture and sighting process. It doesn’t project a traceable beam like a laser sight. Absolutely no sight alignment (i.e. front sight with rear sight) is required, the dot is in the same plane as the threat so that eliminates the need to focus on the front sight. It is a good replacement for night sights, for one, because it’s a red dot, and two it doesn’t get dimmer with time. BTW, I find night sights dim noticeably in about five years.

I thought the defeating problem with the sight was the battery life. If you carry this thing day after day the battery would discharge quickly. QKShooter set me straight on that. The battery is good for something like 17,000 hours and about double that, IIRC, if the cover is replaced when not in use.

Kelly McCann has this sight on his CCW, and has had for many years, and speaks very highly of it so that piqued my interest in this sight again, so I re-installed the Optima 2000 on my Glock 19 (19 Dec 2008) and have worked with it since. I discovered some interesting things.

It has an illumination control to help it dim or brighten in varying conditions of ambient lighting. However, there are some very real conditions that can trick the sight in the wrong direction. Whether this is ‘defeating’ or not remains to be determined as far as I’m concerned but here’s the issue. This is the one of most concern: imagine me in a dark doorway and a threat in the very bright sunlight outside. One would think the sight would get bright to match the threat in the bright light, but it does not, at least not the Optima 2000. The sight matches ambient light around the sight. Hence given the above condition, the dot would be dimmed, not brightened. The times I’ve tested this, I have found it very difficult to see the dot on a brightly illuminated threat. A similar thing happens when using a flashlight. The threat is brightly illuminated, the sight is in ambient darkness, so the dot dims and washes out on the threat.

The opposite is also true, i.e. the sight in bright ambient light and the threat in the dark. E.g. you’re in the sunlight approaching a dark doorway and a threat appears. Because the sight senses the bright sunlight, it brightens the dot and really dominates a threat in dark light. This isn’t as bad as the former issue.

However, I have found another issue that really concerns me. Acquisition of the sight can be elusive. When the gun is drawn and the dot is in the sight window, it’s great. The problem is when the dot isn’t immediately visible in the sight window. Sure, I can stand at the range all day long and do the same tactical draw a hundred times and see the sight in the window. But, when things are ideal and the sight doesn’t appear in the window there is a serious problem – finding the dot.

First let’s consider how we deal with the same situation with conventional sights. With conventional sights, the eye and mind sees more than just a little sight window. E.g. if the front sight is not visible, there’s only one reason why, it’s too low. If it were too high we’d see it and if it were off to the left or right we’d see it. The worse it’s off, the easier it is to recognize and correct.

Now what happens with the ‘doctor’ type sight if the dot is not immediately visible? We will likely have no idea how to correct. Sometimes we might, I find far more often that hunting is required. Here’s the problem: I have the gun in front of my eye and see no red dot, where is it? It doesn’t take much misalignment to produce this so there’s little orientation information to assess the problem. Let’s say the sight was just a bit low and left out of the sight window. Well I can’t tell that by looking so I move the muzzle upward hoping to see the dot. What happens is the dot moves upward but it’s still off to the left so the dot didn’t show up in the vertical movement. So, I move it to the right some. The dot may be too high from the previous effort and is now slightly high and right but still out of sight. And on it goes. Imagine this occurring in a gunfight.

Although this is speculative at this point, I have to believe when movement of both the shooter and target is introduced, this ‘lost dot’ problem will be even worse.

OTOH, the effectiveness of red dots on battle weapons has been clearly demonstrated, but they are on carbines, not handguns. So that raises the question, why is a handgun different? I’m not sure, but from my experience there is in fact, a big difference.

Update: 26-Jan-2009:
I did something interesting last night. I stood in front of a mirror so my image could be a threat. I turned the light out in the room and adjusted the ambient light by closing the door until I could clearly see my image, though darkly and raised the gun up (unloaded of course) to see if I could get a sight picture. I could not! Well, I could not within anything close to a acceptable time frame. I had to really work the gun to pick up the dot. I tried it more than once with the same results.

Interestingly, my gun also had a night sight on it and it was no trouble at all picking up that sight. What I realized from this is that I could not see the 'window' frame of the red dot sight and it turns out that is critical in aligning the sight. A night sight doesn't have this issue because it is not restricted to a sight "window".

conclusion:
Under any lighting condition that does not allow a quick visual of the sight frame (window) it will be practically impossible to reliably acquire the dot.

Another consideration is, under these conditions, use the NS instead. rocky raised this question in a later post (#6) and I will address it as a reply to his post."

[Fred24]

How important would sight picture commonality be between different weapons, even from handgun to rifle?

An easy way to get sight commonality is to put a fiber optic front sight on pistol, shottie and rifle - problem solved tup

[DS]

The problem with FO sight is that you cannot see it at night and iron sights on a rifle are slower than a red dot optic and with vision problems or older age eyesight problems the red dot optic on the rifle makes a huge difference.

[Fred24]

iron sights on a rifle are slower than a red dot optic

I beg to disagree - see below:


SHOOTERSIGHTSTTIMETPD
KHUMBARed-Dot57.68 17
FRED24OPEN67.72 20
SSPRed-Dot69.3017
ETC Red-Dot71.64 5
ETC OPTICAL88.0612
ETC Red-Dot146.7916


I agree that red dots are probably a better option at night, but as the scores above show - an open sight rifle with FO front sight can be just as fast as a red-dot tup