In message et, Evan
Williams writes
All the while you are looking through a tube that tends to take away your
peripheral vision.

I'd recommend trying a red-dot sight. My own experience of them is
limited to pistol ranges (static cardboard targets) and airsoft gaming
(mobile targets shooting back, but only with 6mm Tokyo Marui) but I've
found that a good RDS is much better for snap shots and moving targets
than iron sights.

Fortunately, I have never been in a fire fight, but it
seems to me that when there is one guy out there shooting at me there are
probably others out there as well.

So you want to be alert to the rest of the world, rather than focussing
on your front sight.

I'm not absolutely convinced of the *execution* of the dual sight on the
H&K G36 (red-dot sight and 3.5x scope, both built into the carry handle)
but the concept's excellent: red-dot for closer quarters and the scope
for longer-range work. (The H&K uses a daylight-fed red dot, too)

In my opinion this is a perfect example
of fixing something that isn't broken. Good old iron sights with cammed
adjustments are the way to go.

How well do they work with NVDs? It's easier to have a switch on the
side of a red-dot scope - or an IR-only laser that only NVGs can see -
than to put Betalights on the iron sights.


The sights are the brain of the weapon. In
an extremely feeble attempt to get this thread on topic, it has been said in
this NG many times a good pilot in an inferior A/C will beat an inferior
pilot in an excellent A/C. I would feel more confident shooting a surplus
Mosin Nagant with a well mounted Leupold 10x Mk-4 than I would shooting a
M-40A1 with a $20 Wal-Mart special slapped on top.

I'll take a L85A2 with a SUSAT I zeroed over either. I'll take a
worn-out L1A1 with iron sights, and the key ingredient of 'lots and lots
of ammunition with range time to use it and someone who knows shooting
to coach me', over just about anything.

This is a perfect
example of engineers going nuts in a lab and being out of touch with what is
really needed in the field.

It seems to me to be more pulled from the field, than pushed from the
lab. (If it was an academic push, the troops in the field would be
firing 'salvo squeezebore bullets' or flechettes or some of the other
interesting concepts that fell by the wayside... the way to improve your
troops' marksmanship is less to buy them a new rifle, or even give them
a new sight, than to give them lots of practice)

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk