鉄砲道 — teppoudo

The search for better sighting systems is always on and there are new innovations in sights being marketed constantly.

In the realm of iron sights on a handgun everything from ghost ring sights to shotgun beads has been tried. The interesting thing is that all the top competitive shooters always return to using partridge sights.

There is a lot of debate as to the dimensions of the sights, but the basics remain the same. Dave Sevigny recommends a set of sights that are basic black partridge sights. Brian Enos recommends a .115 front and .135 rear setup.

Most recommendation for sight dimensions are based on the analysis done by the Olympic Rapid Fire Pistol coach A.A. Yur’ Yev in his book Competitive Shooting, which recommends a perceived one-half of the front sight width on each side of the blade at a minimum and a full front sight width on each side of the blade at a maximum, when placed in the rear sight notch.

Yur’Yev also reported that the most winning rear sight in the various Olympic pistol shooting events, by 2 to 1, had a U shaped notch, not a square bottomed notch.

The Russians also found that a front sight that was the same or slightly wider than the apparent width of the bullseye gave the best accuracy with the least eye fatigue, however they found this recommendation to be impractical on a pistol, given the wide bullseye in Olympic Rapid Fire.

I believe that these recommendations are built around two main reasons. The first one has to do with accuracy and the second one has to do with the calling of shots at speed with less than perfect sight alignment.

The accuracy argument is based on the ability to get a good alignment between the front and rear sights. If there is a small gap on either side of the front sight, the conscious mind spends a lot of time aligning the sights and creates a lot of movement in the hold. With a larger gap on either side of the front sight, at some point the conscious mind has to accept the alignment and allow the brain to proceed. At this point I believe the subconscious mind takes over and performs the final alignment. Taking the conscious mind out of the equation, allows for a more precise alignment and a more accurate shot.

This also switches the conscious mind from the trying mode into the observing mode as covered in the calling the shot post.

In the case of IPSC or similar shooting disciplines, success comes from the ability to call the shot at speed, which comes down to the readability of sights that may not be perfectly aligned. As covered in the second calling the shot post, the degree of misalignment may be acceptable for the shot being attempted.

Some of the newer sighting systems make it easy to see when the sights are perfectly aligned, but do not provide sufficient feedback as to the level of mis-alignment when a shot is triggered without perfect alignment.

This information is critical and is what makes partridge sights so good.