I set my guns up for top edge of the front sight = POI because I don't care for covering my target either. But, I find that when I am trying to go a little faster I will often go to a drive the dot picture. This helps counter the inevitable pulling the shot a little low and doesn't cause a problem w/ covering the target because the gun is there for such a tiny fraction of a second.
I prefer the same POI - top of front sight.Originally Posted by CraigS
The challenge I’m finding, is that if I have a perfect POI at 10 yards,it rises about 4-5 inches at 25 yards. (For my load).
So I can certainly imagine the advantage of “drive the dot” at closer ranges, and being able to use top of the sight at longer ranges.
Not that I’m contemplating changing my sights to make that happen…
Thanks for that suggestion.
My Langdon LTT Elite came with a red fiber optic. When it broke, I changed to green, thinking it would more resemble the tritium sights on my other guns.
I just did that conversing myself, and the red is much brighter to my eye.
I guess I’ll be changing it back today. (luckily, I bought both colors of replacement fiber optic).
Indeed, a red fiber optic front is excellent too, for day time and "magic hour" (twilight, dawn and dusk).
Another thing that's useful, an exercise we did in a class once, put masking tape over the rear sight and go to town on some drills.
It drives you to focus on front, and demonstrates the value of good index.
Even with true target-focused shooting, I think the goal is to still have the front sight be that one and only main "other thing" superimposed on the target, not the "sightS", just the "sight" (front obviously).
Good job on testing your FO color. I found out maybe 3 yrs ago everyone's eyes are different. I put an FO on my pistol. A month or so later my wife shot it and said when do I get one on mine. I will order tomorrow honey. I got spare tubes in 4 colors and had her look at all of them right next to each other. I prefer green and she sees red as brightest.
I am shooting with a stock Glock 19. In general, I shoot outside and if the light is good and falls on my frontsight I can focus on it. But sometimes, especially if the target is more bright then the front sight, my focus drifts away from the sight to the target and sometimes it is difficult to get the focus back to the front sight.
Based on this, I have 2 questions:
1. Are there any exercises that I can do to more easily focus on the front sight?
2. Would it help to change from the standard sight to some night sight?
Of course any other suggestions would be great.
Thanks,
Peter
Did you apply any of the suggestions made here?
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....on-front-sight
If so, how did it work out?
Are the hits still good when your focus shifts to the target?
You can still line up the fuzzy "soft focus" sights with a little practice even though you are focusing on the target (crisp target fuzzy sights vs. fuzzy target crisp front sight).
Plenty of way more experienced shooters than I are bound to chime in but personally I found that in my shooting:
Phase 1: Focus on the front sight to consciously learn the skill of quickly centering the post in the notch.
Phase 2: Let your brain handle centering the post in the notch subconsciously and focus on other things (the exact spot on the target you want the bullets to go.)
When I am trying to focus more on the front sight I generally try to hone in on the top edge of the front sight and making sure it is "equal height". Paying close attention to that gave me something to do and my attention couldn't wander away from it. The equal light part tends to handle itself, IMO. Breaking the shot as soon as the sights were lined up didn't give me much extra time to shift my focal plane to something else.
Using multiple A zones and immediately transitioning to the next A zone didn't give me time to let my attention wander and my focal point change.
When I was working on front sight focus a year ago I would work on putting the front sight over the A zone quickly constantly switching A zones inside of 10 yards. The whole time repeatedly in my head going "front sight front sight front sight front sight front sight front sight" like a crazy person repeating a mantra as fast as I could (not out loud)
For the initial phase when I was brand new I painted the whole front face of the front sight with a pink glitter hobby paint (they are like $4 for a bottle at Michaels, your favorite hobby store, or online). I did a white base coat, a pink glitter top coat, and a clear coat on top of that to make it super bright and grab my attention. Use a toothpick as your "paint brush" here. After practicing this way for a few months I scraped the paint off and just put a small dot (also using a toothpick) in the recessed white dot area of the Glock front sight.
Since I didn't own any proper dryfire targets at the time I used the light switches in a room of the house. Unloaded pistol made safe, no one else in the room, pull the blinds so the neighbors don't call the cops on the crazy guy with the gun... Put the front sight over a switch plate cover, then the next, then the next. Stare at your front sight as you move it around the room putting it on top of your light switch covers and outlet covers. Your eye will want to follow the bright pink front sight post that you keep moving around.
If your attention wanders, try to pick out the individuals glitters in the paint on the front fight. Study how sh!tty your toothpick paint job on the sight didn't completely make it to the edge, look to see if the glitters are different colors. Various things to keep making your brain focus on the front sight. As you gain focus on this start using the actual light switches and pronged outlet insertion point as your targets instead of the whole cover plate. Then move on to using the screws on the cover plates as your target. Once you are using the screws you are normally putting the top edge of the front sight blade just under the screw so it looks like the screw is sitting on top of the front sight blade. Check to see if your glitter is sliver, gold, or pink or count the glitters in the paint to keep your focus on the front sight.
About this time, I scraped the paint off the front sight and just put it just in the recessed dot and started all over again.
Side note: As the distance becomes more difficult I had to focus harder on centering the post in the notch and that game also held my attention to the front sight. If you haven't sharpied out the stock white outline on the rear sight, I would recommend doing that to keep your focus on the bright front sight and be working with a less busy sight picture.
Personally, (and again I am NOT a resident expert, this i just what's been working for me) I think that a front sight focus is a very useful beginner/intermediate skill to learn to accomplish the initial goal of keeping the sights lined up while you press the trigger. But eventually you can learn to let your subconscious manage to keep a fuzzy sight picture lined up while you focus on staring a hole through the target and putting the edge of the front sight blade just under that future hole that's about to appear in the target just on top of the front sight blade. (By then you'll be telling yourself to stop wasting transition time looking for holes though).
Are you practicing your front sight focus in dryfire or only in live fire? I find there is a LOT more going on in live fire and burning in the skill or program you are working on in dryfire helps a LOT more than trying to manage everything before the BANG.
All of this is why I think red dots are the way of the future.
I mean, WHY do we have to fool ourselves into staring at the gun when we really want to be looking at the target?
Staring at the gun to improve visual feedback and accuracy serves no functional purpose other than a throwback of visual limitation and focal plane.
It’d be like saying you have to learn to drive staring at your dashboard gauges and watch the road with your fuzzy vision rather than using a heads up display projected on the windshield. If the technology exists (that’s the question), then why not use it (barring cost limitations).
If you train with a dot, your iron shooting will improve too.
While I'm sure there are people out there who can do fine work with the stock Glock sights, I am not one of them. I find a high visibility front sight like the Trijicon HD-XR or an Ameriglo Pro-Glo, combined with a plain rear sight, allows me to best pick up and focus on the front sight.
"When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man."
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