Rear Sight Use
 

How do you guys aim with your "iron" sights? I've increasingly found it easier when plinking to just use my front pistol sight and ignore the rear one completely. I've read somewhere that real steel marksmen don't close their eyes or something, but I find it extremely difficult to focus on the target if I don't and use both sights, so I just use the front sight.

I always aim down both ironsights with both eyes open, rifle or pistol.

Most people have a dominant eye. mine is my right.

I aim with both eyes open, but focus with my dominant eye. With enough practice, you dominant eye will take over the angles as soon as you shoulder the rifle.

Itll come to you with time

Your ICS Sig has an open sight notch on your rear sight. Makes it much easier for you. Keep practicing the transition between normal sight to your dominant eye.

To be as accurate as possible the focus must always be 100% front sight. Pistol, rifle, anything with irons.

You start to change focus when you trade accuracy for speed or situational awareness.

-Grant

Line up your rear sight with your front sight. Then your focus should be on the front sight. For maximum accuracy you rear sight and target should be blurry while you focus on the front sight post.

I'm weird, my left is dominant but im right handed. Makes aiming weird kinda sometimes.

Same here. Because of that with iron sights, I have to one eye it. If I switch to my left arm, then I can keep two eyes open.

Right hand/Left eye isn't that unusual. I"m the same way. I shoot pistol with the Quell system and rifle with both eyes open except for precison shooting with irons or a magnified optic.

As long as you practice, practice, practice you can make just about anything work.

Because of my extremely horrible vision, if I try doing both eyes I get dizzy and cross-eyed. Advice?

Practice, your eyes are muscles that can be trained.

Thanks man. Will do

I though I was the only one shooting pistols that way...

Except that I shoot both eyes open with magnified optics up to 6x...


OP: It just takes practice. I am sure you can find some videos on youtube and some training online. Just got to try again and again. When I use Irons, I usually focus on my target, then align the sights and shift focus towards my front sight. It lets you align the sights while shifting focus so you don't have to keep re-checking that you are correctly on target. Kinda hard to describe, but it works.

One way to develop the ability to focus one eye at xx range and one at yy, and to be able to quickly shift your focus is those magic eye pictures; you need to have your eyes focused at 2 separate distances to see the stereogram.

I can look at one of those and pick out the detail in a couple seconds as I shift focus with one eye and imagine I'm going back and forth between the target and sights.

You could try the "Firebirds Method" to train your eye.

I wonder if anyone else here saw that movie :D

I put some glow paint on both sights and it behaves more or less like a red dot sight. very useful for night/dark games when batteries are out

If you don't know which eye is your dominant eye...make a triangle with your hands infront of you. Close each eye one at a time and for which eye the triangle does not move, that would be your dominant eye.

I've searched google for videos and or images to understand what the heck the Quell System is about, does somebody point me to some links? I read a lot about it but I'm a very visual person and I really understand better when I see something!

thank you in advance, anyone!

You want to be in a Weaver stance but have some float in your elbows. Keep both eyes open, pistol is in your right hand and use your left eye to line up the sights on target.

I know I'm quoting some magpul "science" here but wouldn't some float decrease your ability to control recoil with a real firearm? I'm just curious.

edit : I don't really have my left eye/right handed problem with my pistol, I usually line up both front and rear but focus on the front to shoot.

The float lets you keep the pistol (or other weapon) on target as you move. Lock up you joints and you're all over the map.

Try it sometime with a laser, light up the target and run towards while you keep the sights on it.

So that is the first part of the system, the Quell stance. More may follow. They guy who put this out there was either Chuck Norris and Chris Costa rolled into one or the original mall ninja. Regardless for cross dominant shooters the stance is great!

From what I've read here, however it still seems like the front sight is the most important, and if need be I could ignore the rear sight.

I don't think you understand how sights work, you need both.

Correct aiming consist of having a imaginary line of aim that crosses 4 points:
-your eye
-rear sight aperture
-front sight or front aiming post of optical sight
-point of aim on target.

On pistol, it is easier to focus on the front sight because the distance between the front and rear is so short that the line of aim is not distorted too much.

On the other hand, if you focus on the front sight of a rifle only, the line of aim go bye bye.

So I use the rear sight to make sure I can keep that line aligned properly, then?

a gun is a tube.. you have to line up the whole tube with the target not just the front end of it.

for close targets, if your shooting posture is practiced and you have a clear understanding of your natural point of aim you can acquire and hit targets using the foresight only.. or even just looking over both sights.

For targets farther away you need both the fore and rear sights aligned to have an expectation of hitting.

Spend some time trying to Chrony people 's guns and you will soon find out that most players have no idea where their gun is shooting, and have little understanding of even the basic principles of aiming.

Hold it straight and level,

no level,

no that's not level,

no lower the butt,

no the back end,

no the BB has to pass through the middle of the hole,

look just give it to me and watch.

I've seen people shooting the ground 10 feet in front of themselves .. while yelling at a person 50 feet away for not taking their hits.

I expect this person was "aiming" with their front sight only... it seems many people think the bb goes in a straight line from the muzzle to their target.

Rather than a straight line from the chamber to the Muzzle .. and then to whatever is in line with that.

I think the "ignore your sight" vibe comes from a bit of a misunderstanding.

What you want to do is shoot so much that things like sight picture, grip, breathing, trigger control, and the rest become part of your subconscious and the voice in your head is now telling you about more urgent matters like someone who may be about to shoot you.

Anytime you're doing instinctive or snap, or point shooting it's not a casual hacking around dump your mag kind of gig. When you shoot you want the first shot to hit.

The only way to get good at shooting is to shoot a lot and to shoot every day. Fortunately with airsoft that is more possible than with other disciplines. Ammo and other consumables are cheap and places to practice safely are easy to find on the most part.

Brian here's a good thing I ran across about the call your hits folks. http://www.ukairsoftzone.co.uk/forum...ing-your-hits/

Nice, I think there is also the adrenaline factor, your blood is pounding in your ears and the BB hits some webbing. You don't feel it and may not hear it.

I just shoot again.

I understand using iron sights to shoot but when you use a red dot/holo sight do you have to line the dot up with the front sight?

I seriously don't get why people would have any problems aiming. The instruction is simple: Put the front sight right between the aperture of the rear sight; the top of the front sight should line up perfectly with the top of the rear sight; maintain that sight picture while putting the front sight right on the target and squeeze the trigger.

You'll hit your target that way EVERY SINGLE TIME (wind, bullet drop...etc aside for the sake of the point). It's not even about "basic principles of aiming"...it's freakin common sense...I mean they made rear sights for a reason...:rolleyes:

No,

Simple explanation...

Zero your Iron sight
Turn on your optic, zero your optic with iron sight

Your optic is now zero, if you line up, which is fine you will have rear sight blocking it.