Tips for sighting-in Red Dot

[NBPD3682]

Hello,

I am planning on putting a C-More Small Tactical Sight on a Glock 35 for use in USPSA Open division shooting. Any suggestions on what distance I should use to adjust the red dot for use in a typical Level I USPSA club match? Any other red dot tips or comments for a first-time user?

Thanks.

 

[38supermatt]

my pistols are sighted in for 15 yards
At the clubs in this section, with the exception of Harvard, we typically don't see targets out at beyond 25 yards, so 15 is a nice balance.
the only other tip I'd have is, if you sight in that close, know where you need to hold to hit the A zone on targets out at 25-30 yards, and remember that.

 

[IPSC_DRL]

Same as getting to Carnegie hall

Hello,
Any other red dot tips or comments for a first-time user?

Thanks.

Three.

Practice.
Practice.
Practice.

You need to be able to draw and mount the pistol with your eyes closed and then see the dot when you open them, without moving the pistol. Not easy to do at first but dry fire practice at home will help tremendously.

Welcome to the dark side. (we have cookies!)

 

[scottb]

Try to get some sandbags or a good solid shooting rest when you sight-in. I try to move the pistol very little so I can stabilize the dot better. Your groups will be much better so your sight-in will be more valid. I like to use a diamond shaped target and place the bottom point at the top of the dot. Bring many as I find a clean target easier to sight in on. I sight in a little longer than Matt because I like to know exactly where I will hit at 50 yards but I don't discount anything Matt said - he wins a lot of USPSA matches. I just like to be prepared for the rare long shot.

 

[NBPD3682]

Thanks people for the tips... I appreciate it.

 

[Jose]

You need to be able to draw and mount the pistol with your eyes closed and then see the dot when you open them, without moving the pistol.

No advice to offer, but just a personal observation that shooting an open gun with optics (redundancy alert?) for the first time is an exercise in weirdness and that it will take some work to get used to it.

 

[Supermoto]

They guys above are talking about a standard C-more not the STS,

I used the STS on my open gun, I sight in for 50' and am 1" low at 10' but stay inside the dot out to 40 yards. Are you going to slide mount or frame mount? There is a lot less offset with the STS compare to the standard C-more so you will not have to worry about holdover

make sure you can index the dot in any position, nothing cost more time then the open gun wiggle. so its not just the draw, but also strong hand, weak hand, around barricades etc

also, don't follow the dot, focus on the target, snap your eyes to the next target, then see the dot

 

[GTOShootr]

You have to remember that you're shooting a 7moa dot sitting on your slide, where Matt and Scott have varying sized dots frame mounted. The offset is different, and in Matt's case with his 12moa rising-sun of a dot is way different. You'll have to experiment.

Instead of thinking in terms of the average distances of the targets you are likely encountering and your dot as a point in space, look at the dot as a cone extending out from your gun, in your case to 7" at 100yards, 3.5" at 50. Seeing it like that you want to pick a zero that keeps the point of impact closest to the center of the dot through the greatest range of target distances. For my gun 25 and 50 yard zeros do that much better than a 15 or 20.

It seems complicated but playing with that it itself is good practice and will pay off over the long run, especially with Harvard in our area.

 

[Lugnut]

Ah man I can't believe you are doing it! I feel the pressure.

Anyway this calculator may help you while trying to get an idea as to the POI with different ranges that you sight in your gun. If you know the "dot" height you should be able to use this.

http://www.handloads.com/calc/

EDIT: I Just thought of a question that is almost too embarassing to ask... but I will anyway. With an iron sight gun the sight height/and the view from the rear to front sight gives you an imaginary line to the POA. With a dot... you don't have this. So how does the "dot" know that your muzzle isn't tilted slight up or down or whatever?

 

[Supermoto]

http://www.bullseyepistol.com/dotsight.htm

you still have 2 fixed points, the diode and the lens (the dot is only 2 dimensional,so you can not look at the sides of it) either can be moved to adjust the location of the dot, The mirror is curve to adjust for parallax. Round lens allow for better parallax correction than do the rectangle lens of the Jpoint Dr or STS, when you get to the edges of these sights, the parallax can become a big issue

 

[NBPD3682]

I am planning on mounting the STS right on the slide. I have an extra Lone Wolf slide coming for the GL35 and I'm only going to put the channel liner in it. I will simply remove the cover plate and transfer the firing pin assembly, spring loaded bearing, extractor, etc. from my stock slide. This way I can leave the stock slide set up for Production or IDPA and have a dedicated slide for the red dot. There is a mount that is set in the rear sight groove and the STS is mounted to that - it is not too high above the slide.

 

[NBPD3682]

The STS I bought has a 3.5 MOA dot, I could have bought one with 7.0 MOA but I figured for USPSA in our section the 3.5 would be the size to go with.

 

[NBPD3682]

Ah man I can't believe you are doing it! I feel the pressure.

Please, I'm gonna have to ask you to let me shoot this GL35 with the red dot and the powder puffs to try and keep up with you and 3M (although he did jam his finger...)

 

[Supermoto]

The STS I bought has a 3.5 MOA dot, I could have bought one with 7.0 MOA but I figured for USPSA in our section the 3.5 would be the size to go with.

You might find it too small. everyone shoots 6-12moa, 3.5 is usually best for rifle

 

[NBPD3682]

You might find it too small. everyone shoots 6-12moa, 3.5 is usually best for rifle

I was thinking that in our section we don't have a lot of really long shots, except for at Harvard, and I figured a larger dot would take up a bigger part of the "A" zone... We'll see how this works out.

 

[scottb]

Remember that dot moa size is subtended @ 100 yds. In other words The dot will cover approximately 3.5" of the 6" wide A zone. At 50 yds the A zone will appear twice as big (12") while the dot is still 3.5" so the A zone is covered only approximately 25% (a little more than a quarter of the A zone). At 25 yds the A zone appears twice as big as at 50 yds (24") so the dot will only cover and 1/8th of the A zone, etc. The closer the dot to the target the smaller the dot appears.

The problem with a small dot (less than 6 moa) is seeing it clearly while you're moving or running. If I was standing still I'd go with the smallest dot pratical. Believe it or not, it's pretty easy to 'lose' the dot when your running and gunning. I find my limit is an 8 moa dot. Anything smaller I tend to not see it clearly if I'm shooting on the move or even running from position to position. GTOShootr uses a 6, 38SuperMatt uses a 12, and I believe Supermoto uses a 8 so it goes to show that one size doesn't fit all but you'll notice that 6 moa is the smallest you'll see generally at USPSA matches. Obviously you'll need to experiment. My belief is you need to do it under match conditions to get valid results. The practice range is OK to evaluate equipment if you can recreate all the stress of a match. That's not all that easy to do actually.

 

[NBPD3682]

Thanks, Scott... I'm built for stealth, not speed so I don't think that the running and gunning issue will be a major factor. I suppose the smaller MOA dot will be good to engage smaller targets at longer distances (i.e., poppers on a larger pit like at Harvard). I just received the Lone Wolf slide I'm going to mount it to and I'm planning on going out on 11/11 to shoot it for the first time. The directions recommend starting at 10' to make sure you are on paper and then set the target out to the farthest distance you intend to shoot and sight it in for there... I'm going to follow Supermoto's advice and sight-in at 50' and then take note of where the hits are at closer and longer ranges. I'll try it out at Bass River in December, maybe in Dorchester in November and see how things work out.

 

[NBPD3682]

Got a chance to shoot this rig for the first time today - not bad, but I broke both sides of the sight adjustment tool that came with it - just snapped off. I'll have to use a little screwdriver from an eyeglass repair kit now.