When they click the power back a couple of settings, they can actually see the targets through the tube and get down to aiming - even on a clear summer’s day. Invariably, we find that during the law enforcement patrol rifle classes, when it comes time to shoot past the 50-yard square range and engage the knock-downs out to 300 meters, officers have their dot cranked up too bright. Unless you’re in the Southwest, or in a sandy range on a bright day, you don’t need to dial your power up to max. When the dot is so bright it pulls your attention away from the target and surroundings, and it insists, “Focus on me!” If it “blooms” or shows a star-like pattern when you aim, you have the power turned up too much. What I found, over time, was that almost everyone who starts shooting with a red-dot optic runs it too bright.
When the dot is 20 MOA, you don’t need a lot of power to see it. Since then I’ve paid close attention to the size of the dot in our optics, as well as the brightness. And overlapping hostage targets? Well, that was real conundrum, even at close range. But when the distances got much past 35 yards, the dot covered the entire target. With a dot that big, I was warp-speed fast on close- to medium-range targets. Let me tell you: For a short while, I was a monster on the stages. Just like that, I went from a 4-MOA dot (which was tiny for the time) to a 20-MOA dot.
Soon after, the mask inside of the tube, the one that blocked the emitter, fell off. In the very early 1990s, I’d just had one custom-rebuilt for my USPSA Open pistol. Ideally, it should be set low enough so it's still visible, but not a distraction from the target.īack in the prehistoric era of red-dots, they were large, fragile and expensive - and they gobbled batteries like salesmen at a conference chews breath mints.