Finding clarity is just a red-dot away

Seeing clearly is pretty crucial for most people usually, I mean who wants to have blurry vision, or worse, no vision? I'm lucky to have had great vision generally although the older I get...Well, the less great it'll get. I wear glasses for reading now and without them have a little trouble seeing small text, like on my phone, clearly. It also get's in the way of one of my hobbies.

Above you can see one of my handguns. This is the handgun I use to shoot an IPSC (International Practical Shooting Confederation) discipline and I compete in the Production Division with it. That means the handgun cannot be modified: No trigger jobs, no compensators, racking lever's, extended mag-well's or any other of the many modifications that can be made in other Divisions. This means it's a little cheaper and to be honest I prefer all of my handguns and rifles to have a more field-oriented aspect so I stay away from heavily modifying them.

Having said that, I've noticed that I'm having trouble focusing on the sights of this particular gun. My vision blurs right at that point where I need to have clarity, the front sight, when I'm in my shooting position and so my accuracy suffers, or has the potential to. I could wear glasses (similar to my reading glasses) of course however as this shooting discipline is practical there's a lot of running, climbing, crawling, navigating obstacles, rooms and things in a standard course of fire and since speed is required to obtain good scores...Well, glasses aren't an option when competing as they make everything past my outstretched hand blurry and therefore it's difficult to run very fast.

Fortunately there is a solution. A little while ago IPSC handed down a decision to introduce a new Division called Production Optics. What this means is that red-dot optics can be fitted to the handgun rendering the traditional front and rear sights redundant. Below you can see the rear sight assembly on my Production gun. This is the part that would be replaced with the red-dot scope.

Having a red-dot scope will mean easier sighting of the gun and will eliminate the need for me to focus at the front sight. I'll be able to point the gun, place the red-dot on the target and shoot. Provided the trigger-pull is right the bullet will land more or less where the red-dot is.

Here's an image of what the optics look like. This assembly replaces the current rear sight and once zeroed will make my shooting a lot easier, at least from the perspective of sight-alignment. This form of sight is used quite extensively in military and law enforcement applications and.

This one is a TRIJICON RM01 RMR SIGHT (LED) 3.25 MOA RED DOT. It's forged aluminium so it extremely tough but lightweight and the dot is powered by a small button battery. It is designed for military, law enforcement and sporting use and should suit my needs perfectly. Just in case you're wondering, it doesn't project the dot out onto the target, the battery powers the dot inside the optics which is what the user places on the target down range. It's not a Predator-style laser sight...As cool as that would be.

This image shows the windage and elevation adjustments allowing the user to get a perfect zero on the handgun. I'm not sure yet however I think at this stage I'll zero at 25 metres or so. That way I can shoot at the dot from from around 5-50 metres knowing the bullet will land pretty much where the dot was placed with only a little drop. At past 50 metres I'll have to aim a little high (place the dot higher on the target) to account for the greater drop over that longer distance, but that's not an issue. At least I'll be able to see the dot! The sight will get affixed to the slide of the handgun by my gunsmith as some milling may be required however it's a reasonably easy job to fit.

At this stage I'm still considering a few different makes and models and as they are quite costly at around $580AU it's important to get it right the first time. I'm more of a buy-once cry-once sort of guy so would rather spend a little more on the right product the first time.

The Trijicon product is leading the pack. I need it to be rugged and durable considering a standard IPSC match could mean I'll fire some 250 rounds...That's a lot of force being exerted on the scope mount and scope itself. I shoot almost every weekend, either in competition or practice, so over a year that slide will push back and forward thousands of times with a lot of energy driving each motion. (It moves faster than the eye can catch to eject the spend case, reset the trigger and load the next round each time the trigger is pulled). Reliability is important as a broken scope will mean the handgun is pretty-much un-shootable. (It will shoot, but will not be accurate.)

Anyway, that's that. I'll do a post on the finished result sometime, probably including some work in process photos if my gunsmith lets me. I'm looking forward to getting it done and to hopefully finding some more accuracy and speed in my shooting. Oh, a word on the competition aspect. In Production Optics Division everyone will have optics so there is no advantage either way; I'll compete with other's with the same, or similar equipment. I'm looking forward to getting this modification done and to seeing what results it'll deliver when at the range.

Note: CZ Shadow 2 9mm semi-auto (Lok Grip grips)