50m prone smallbore shooting poll

demonloop

After a heated debate yesterday in which everyone was right and everyone else was wrong.............

What size aperture do you use shooting 50m prone?

Results will either prove me right or mysteriously vanish.

Sparks

Depends on the light on the day. As low as 3.2; as high as 4.0. Brighter the light, tighter the aperture.

Rovi

Sparks wrote:

Brighter the light, tighter the aperture.

Must... resist... temptation...


Must...


resist...



<Rovi runs off to buy a welding mask and install halogen lamps over the bed>

Sparks

Oh dear. Bad Rovi. Down boy!

demonloop

Rovi wrote:

Must... resist... temptation...


Must...


resist...



<Rovi runs off to buy a welding mask and install halogen lamps over the bed>

Seen that one coming!!

Rovi

demonloop wrote:

Seen that one coming!!

Fnarrr!




I'm a weak and shallow person, I know.

To get back on topic -
I use a 2.9 if its bright and a 3.0 indoors

Sparks

2.9? Wow. Waaaaaay too small IMHO. You'd get corona effects around the inside of the foresight ring and your eye would stop giving your brain an accurate perception of the sight picture as a result. You also start running into alignment problems the same way a standing shooter does if they use too small a diameter - even a little wobble has a disproportionately large effect on the sight picture and leads to subconcious overcorrection, which adds to the wobble and you get a whole positive feedback cycle going and the entire thing goes to the seven ring.

While we're talking 50m prone, by the way, anyone here used that panoramic rearsight from the UK?

Sheena Sharp uses one. She had it over in IoM

Sparks

An interesting document on this:
http://www.northfloridashooting.com/Misc/Aperture.pdf

Save yourself a few hundred quid and just don't use a blind!

Much easier!

Sparks

I dunno OP - my .22 blind is a square that's 5mm on a side and only blots out the foresight and target to my left eye. But the rearsight is still taking out a lot of the front view.
I notice that both Gehmann and MEC are bringing out takes on this idea. Gehmann have a glass ring around the iris to give you more field of view:


While MEC are just making the rearsight as compact as possible and mounting the adjustment knobs as far out of the way as they can:

demonloop

Re: That 518 Gehmann rearsight unit, it is possibly the most innovative design I've ever seen, you have an iris built in, you can buy inexpensive colout filters for the front side and rear side of the sight and you can buy a polariser tibe for it, completely does away with the need for any seperate rear iris, and you can see the wind flags perfectly up it without moving your head / eye.

Excellent bit of kit.

Although expensive

stevenw

original_psycho wrote:

To get back on topic -
I use a 2.9 if its bright and a 3.0 indoors

Wow. You must use the force......

stevenw

stevenw wrote:

Wow. You must use the force......

Put in a tonne in DRC with the 3.0 on Sunday...

Mind you I had a 91/92 as well.... :mad:

Sparks

demonloop wrote:

Re: That 518 Gehmann rearsight unit, it is possibly the most innovative design I've ever seen, you have an iris built in, you can buy inexpensive colout filters for the front side and rear side of the sight and you can buy a polariser tibe for it, completely does away with the need for any seperate rear iris, and you can see the wind flags perfectly up it without moving your head / eye.
Excellent bit of kit.
Although expensive

Got a look through a 518 today:





I love the field of view, it's wonderful and a lot less confusing than having your right eye track the target and sights while your left tracks the windflags and indicators, and your brain tries to switch in between the two or overlay one on the other...

Thing is, as you can see in the second shot, the rear iris is so small that there is almost no daylight between the rear iris and the foresight tunnel. Lining up on the target was very hard and I don't think it can be done very accurately like that. Don said that the rear iris couldn't be dilated any - does anyone know if there are larger replacement rear irises or anything for the 518?

demonloop

Sparks re: the iris on the 518, it cannot be replaced, it goes up to 2.4mm. Plenty of colour filters, polars etc for it but only the one size iris. Took me ages to get used to the sight picture as its so different to anything I've looked down over many years, after a month heavy shooting my average was back to normal, now its creeping up a bit!

Sparks

DL, where's the dial to adjust the 518's iris?

demonloop

Its on the 'other' side of the sight unit, the side you don't look at. I thought that was wierd to begin with but then it was only because I like to read the scale when I set the size according to light etc etc.

When I thought about it, I don;t need to know what the dial says, as long as I can access it OK to change the size and look through it to se the changes I'm making, I don't need to know what the dial says.

Now I jot down the aperture size in my little book AFTER I shoot.

Sparks

A-ha! And you have no problem getting daylight between the foresight tunnel and the rear iris in your sight picture?

demonloop

Sparks wrote:

A-ha! And you have no problem getting daylight between the foresight tunnel and the rear iris in your sight picture?

No problems at all I have to say. I found that the shape of the unit (shoebox stood on end!) was strange, causing me to fix it on the receiver it too far away from my eye. All my previous rearsights where locked on at roughly the same point on the receiver but when I did that with this one it was too far away, due to its design.

When I got my eye relief sorted it was fine. I have no problems with getting light round the foresight tunnel or any other problem I have to say.

The big benefit to me was seeing the flags. I use a blinder indoors and outdoors through years of habit and I can't see flags outside with my left eye. Now I don't know myself with this sight, cuz one eye does it all, after a while shooting it I have developed a sense of watching the flags even when concentrating on the sight picture to release a shot, I only give the flags about 5% of my attention and it seems to work, I can see significant changes in the wind out the corner of my eye and still can be concentrating enough on my sight picture to get away good clean shots.

Not sure if this would be recommended though, I was always taught to concentrate 100% on the sight picture in smallbore but I watch the flags out the corner of my eye in fullbore, you have to or you could end up in next door's target at 800m+ !!!!

demonloop

Just as a footnote, a 16 year old girl just made the USA 50m Prone Team for the next Olympics using that 518 sight, I know her father and he puts her success to that sight.

She only got it about 4 months ago (I sold it to her) and was amazed at the difference it made to her scores, obviously won't have such a big impact on seasoned shooters like ourselves :cool:

Sparks

demonloop wrote:

She only got it about 4 months ago (I sold it to her) and was amazed at the difference it made to her scores, obviously won't have such a big impact on seasoned shooters like ourselves :cool:

Uh-huh. Yeah....

demonloop

Sparks wrote:

Uh-huh. Yeah....

I attribute my good shooting to years of experience, a steady hand and nerve and a balanced diet.








Any every gadget I can my hands on