Without night sights...

[Thug Hunter]

I don't think tritium is a giveaway. They are bright enough to be seen from the rear by the shooter, but not from the front by a potential target. I've never seen an adversary's tritium during force on force, and never heard it mentioned during an AAR.

I'm skeptical on fiber optics. I've seen a couple break at ranges, and know of no one in police or military circles using them on a duty gun. Don't they need a certain amount of light to be visible?

[carmen fovozzo]

I like them....no need for light....mine are on my EDC and when I go to bed it is on my night stand....they glow all night w/o light...I really don't see what could break on mine...I also have a guide rod LaserMax also on the gun...they do light up the subject it's pointed at..

All I need now are some white walls...

[Mr. Glock]

I don't think tritium is a giveaway. They are bright enough to be seen from the rear by the shooter, but not from the front by a potential target. I've never seen an adversary's tritium during force on force, and never heard it mentioned during an AAR.

Not from the direct front like a light beacon, no. But if you are slowly clearing a house by yourself, and you either Chalie's Angel the gun or the BG is hiding and you are not facing BG directly or your gun technique is poor, it can happen. Not super-common, I will agree. But a possible negative.

And not likely at all when working in a skilled team or at speed. And you have more skill/experience than most of us here, so your techniques and speed are much superior to an average joe CCW trying to clear a house with no/low training and skill set.

[Bianchi?]

I don't think tritium is a giveaway. They are bright enough to be seen from the rear by the shooter, but not from the front by a potential target. I've never seen an adversary's tritium during force on force, and never heard it mentioned during an AAR.

I'm skeptical on fiber optics. I've seen a couple break at ranges, and know of no one in police or military circles using them on a duty gun. Don't they need a certain amount of light to be visible?

I have TFO's on my daily carry (glock 17), and they just...fantastic. They're bright in any condition, and they are BIG and easy to see, and easy to line up. Personally, I won't have anything else on my carry guns other than TFO's. Night sights are , IMO, far superior to stock iron sights.

[TSiWRX]

I like them....no need for light....mine are on my EDC and when I go to bed it is on my night stand....they glow all night w/o light...I really don't see what could break on mine...I also have a guide rod LaserMax also on the gun...they do light up the subject it's pointed at..

Er....Carmen, sir, that's your alarm clock!


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I'm skeptical on fiber optics. I've seen a couple break at ranges, and know of no one in police or military circles using them on a duty gun. Don't they need a certain amount of light to be visible?

Yes, they do need visible light - a good amount of it - in order to be visible.

If you've experienced an ACOG or a Trijicon Reflex, it's the same idea - that "light pipe/matrix" on the outside of the sight body picks up ambient light and amplifies it via internal refraction. From "behind the sight," the glow in daylight actually looks just like the dot of an electronic red-dot optic.

As to their durability?

I think design of the post itself has a lot to do with it, and also installation (to extend to the light pipe itself) and maintenance. In the overall scheme of things, I actually don't have that much time on the line, but in what little time I have had, I've seen both fiber optics and Tritium tubes break. For me, based on my personal experience with FO front sight posts on pistols as well as Tritium vials - albeit in other applications - I see it as a wash. In either case, the backup is the actual sight post itself.


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Another option I haven't heard yet is chem lights, aka light sticks. I keep a pack of them in my car for varying degrees of roadside problems. They can give enough light to at the very least id a target in a dark room.

It's definitely a tool to have, particularly, I think, in one's safe-room, but overall, I think its usefulness is about the same as that of using a cell-phone's "flashlight" function.


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I just picked up a Fenix E11 as an EDC light, being in the same situation as a previous poster. I can't speak to longevity, but the size is quite small, uses a single standard battery (AA)and is pretty bright. The little wrist lanyard wraps around the belt at the correct height so it stays vertical in the pocket and you can just whip it out one handed for everyday tasks. It clicks on/off only, with momentary on with light pressure. I don't want to cycle through low, medium, High, strobe etc...just on/off with a tailcap switch. Surefires et al were just too big.

It's a trick finding just what one wants - and even after getting it, after "playing" with it, you may find it wanting - not speaking of your light in-particular, but rather, of my experience as a flashlight collector and someone who likes to mess-about with this type of thing.

I really liked my Z2S-LED (it really fit pretty well in my jeans' pocket using an X-Concealment polymer clip) until I realized - like Thug Hunter pointed out - that the strobe function wasn't quite all it cracked up to be in terms of trying to "dominate with the light" (here, it's quite clear that one needs *A LOT* of power behind the strobe in order to achieve its desired effect; however, in using even lower-powered strobe to conceal one's actual movement/positions, that actually works pretty darned well). So then I jumped all the way to the opposite side of the spectrum, with a single-phase very-high-powered light (P2X), only to realize that for my usual daily tasks, it was total overkill: visually, for me, uncomfortably so.

I currently really like how my "Executive" body Surefire's carry in my usual wardrobe, but even they are a compromise, as I really CANNOT run the Rogers/Surefire technique with them, at all.

I've thought about adding the Surefire Combat Ring or the Costa SwitchBack, but it would contribute significantly to the lights' (and yes, I'd have to get new lights ) carry profile. Furthermore, given that I already carry a folder in that same pocket, it's gonna get really hard to reach my mints, with all those protrusions on my ninja-gadgets!

Even now, attending Keith's low-light class just two weeks ago, I still do feel a slight tug on my wallet in wanting yet another light.

[/quote]
I also find most night sights harder to see in the day time...I like a nice big white dot upfront for the daytime. Big
Dot sights seem to work the best for me, in general, with the big day sight and a night sight combined up front,
but I'm still working with my first pair. Fiber optic ones..at least the Sig ones....are kind of fragile, but really easy to see. I admitably do not like 3 dots of the same color, so YMMV.[/quote]

Have you looked at the Trijicon HD series? I really like how they highlighted the front dot. That paint really pops in sunlight - and something I didn't realize was that the paint is also photo-fluorescent: the set that Cindy has on her carry gun is green-on-green (which is not my cup-of-tea), but the glow-paint renders the front dot a nice bright orange for a number of minutes after even the slightest hit with a P2X.

This is the one that I'm mulling over as replacement for my current setup - but I really appreciate the precision that a .100 front post gives me at-distance. I think that by playing with the post width to rear notch size I can get close to the same overall relationship, but I don't believe a front post narrower than .110 is available with a Tritium insert.

In any case, that's enough about me , sorry - Ameriglo also has a FO front post that's highlighted with a painted outline that you may also want to look at

http://www.ameriglo.net/sites/default/f ... 20copy.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

GL-453 - Glock 17, 19, 22, 23, 26, 27, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39 - FiberRod Black combo - RED / BLACK - MSRP $49.95

[carmen fovozzo]

Allen, you got me thinking here so I took my G19 with FO sights and put them in a room that is 4x4 with zero light ..pitch black...after 20 minutes or so I looked at them a they were as bright as ever....
....I'm confused by your post.....not unusual for me.....can you explain ?

[TSiWRX]

Carmen, are you talking about Tritium, instead?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

^ Which is radioluminescent - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioluminescent" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium_illumination" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is what's used in Trijicon's pistol "night sights," for example:

http://www.trijicon.com/na_en/products/ ... p?id=BNTNS" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But -

There are fiber-optic ("FO" is how some of us unofficially dub it ) sights that are also incorporate Tritium, like the TruGlo sights:

http://www.truglo.com/pc_product_detail ... 841BDD3D5E" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

However, there are fiber-optic sights that are just a plain piece of plastic that gather available ambient light, but do not, by themselves, glow.

Here's someone's video comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wPn6t7U9MU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

^ His camera setup has a problem seeing the night-sights glowing, but that's really a function of the camera.

Hope this helps!

And sir, it's not you - it's my writing that tends to confuse (and put people to sleep!!!!).

[carmen fovozzo]

Yes that's it, Tritium....TruGlo

[TSiWRX]

^ Ah!

What you've got there, Carmen, is the hybrid of the two.

Remember the Williams FireSights on your old PM9 that's in my paws? That's FO only, with no Tritium. They don't glow without light.

[carmen fovozzo]

I hope your taking good care of MY PM9 ?

[TSiWRX]

She's well taken care of.

I still think of her as "yours," even though she's mine.

[carmen fovozzo]

It's not a she ....it's name was Bruno...

[TSiWRX]

Well....that's not what she told me!

[Brian D.]

I'm skeptical on fiber optics. I've seen a couple break at ranges, and know of no one in police or military circles using them on a duty gun. Don't they need a certain amount of light to be visible?

Whew, it's so much less keyboard work to quote partial posts from you than TSiWRX, Thug Hunter. High volumes of shooting will for sure break fiber optic tubes, or cause them to fall out occasionally. Tritium vials not so much from use, but bumping them into barricades under recoil and what not, definitely a bad thing. Repairing the latter, of course, is way more expensive and annoying than staking/melting a new piece of FO into place.
I've yet to avail myself of the combination tritium/fiber optics; Tru Glo had enough issues with them, early on, to justify a reboot of the things. I'm told they did a good job with what's made now, and took care of unhappy customers who bought the version 1.0. Didn't follow the details of that because I had no skin in the game.

Heck I'm still a bit wary of Sure Fire lights because in spite of the ad copy in early days, the bulbs on the things wouldn't survive a three foot fall on a linoleum floor, much less the high speed low drag activities of the folks shown deploying them "in harm's way".

[carmen fovozzo]

Brian...if you look at the pics of the one I have the sights are well protected......