Ohioans For Concealed Carry Discussion Forums

I recently replaced the stock sights on my glock with truglo tfx pro sights. I found that the stock plastic sight works faster for me in any lighting condition in which the white paint is visible.

The truglo is usually slower for me, but the worst is when lit from anywhere other than the top. It's too bright to see the tritium, and the fiber is enclosed in a way that light only reaches it from the top. The "focus ring" on the front sight is significantly less bright than white paint, and only works well in daylight.

So I have 2 questions - does anyone know if the 3 dot glock oem night sights or the trijicon hd with the paint/tritium front sight work better? The oem sights seem like they would show up just as well as the stock painted sights when lit, with tritium visible when dark. My other question - have you set up practice sessions that really uses the night sight's capability? or do you know of any low light matches in the area that would work well for it?

This could be just a practice issue - years with the stock sights vs 2 months with the tfx pro, so I will give it some more time in any case.

I could, but won't, go on for pages and pages here. Instead I will just ask about your eyes: 1) How old are they? 2) What's your vision like, corrected and uncorrected? This discussion will take a while because of several factors; your eyes are as good a place as any to start with.

Brian D. wrote:I could, but won't, go on for pages and pages here. Instead I will just ask about your eyes: 1) How old are they? 2) What's your vision like, corrected and uncorrected? This discussion will take a while because of several factors; your eyes are as good a place as any to start with.

Eyes are as old as the rest of me, which is all less than 30.

Correction needed for vision. With uncorrected vision I can "tactical turtle" my way to a sharp front sight. That's arms straight, head down and forwards.

The glock stock sight was actually better for uncorrected vision than the tfx, which was not what I expected.

Are there enough Glock shooters around you so that you can take a peek at other folks' guns?

All of us "see" differently.

Ever wonder why there are so may sights on the market, with so many claims? Ever wonder why not all the top shooters agree on which sights are for them?

To really get a good feel for what your eyes take to, you really need to get behind the gun. And remember that the context of that "test" matters, too: a sight that's great outdoors on a cloudless day as you focus on a target 50 or 75 yards downrange may or may not give you the same kind of feedback in another setting.

Brian Enos wrote/interviewed extensively about his changing eyesight through his shooting career. Everything from his changing cross-dominance to aging. It's worth taking the time and effort to find some of his old stuff.

TrigiconHD are the best I have found. The front sight is easy to find do to the bright color and the wide 'u' shaped rear notch. The tritium is not as bright or big as some, but in darkness I have to use a flashlight and splash the light on the sights anyway.

Want to add that I really liked the ameriglo T-CAP sights also but starting at 20 yards the seemed to shoot really high for me. Gave them to friend and she has no issue at all with them.

I find it helpful to black out the rear sight, so there's only 1 thing that your eye picks up. Cheap nail polish on a toothpick tip works great, and is easy to remove. Sharpie if you want to try it but have rear dots 'dimmed' a bit instead.

Thanks for the suggestions!

The reason I went with these is I had tried models with the fiber exposed on the top, front, and sides, and did not realize how much less light the TFX picks up with the fiber exposed only on top.

I am a bit skeptical of photo-luminescent painted sights. For concealed carry purposes, are they any better than just painted sights? For me it usually wouldn't be practical to charge them with a flashlight.

I prefer fiber dawsons with a plain black rear, followed by Trijicon HD's, followed by factory sights with the rear dots blacked out. If you need to use a glowing thing to aim the pistol, you're probably unable to ID the target - and with light, your sights are probably going to be blacked out as shadows like plain irons anyway. Just my thought on the matter.

jeep45238 wrote:If you need to use a glowing thing to aim the pistol, you're probably unable to ID the target

I've heard this before, and it strikes me as very odd. When you walk outside at night do you constantly need to use a flashlight to avoid bumping into things? Are you unable to recognize friends and family a few feet away after the sun goes down? Of course not (at least, not most of the time). There's a big difference between "dark enough not to be able to easily see a small (non-glowing) white dot" vs "pitch black".

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

jeep45238 wrote:If you need to use a glowing thing to aim the pistol, you're probably unable to ID the target

I've heard this before, and it strikes me as very odd. When you walk outside at night do you constantly need to use a flashlight to avoid bumping into things? Are you unable to recognize friends and family a few feet away after the sun goes down? Of course not (at least, not most of the time). There's a big difference between "dark enough not to be able to easily see a small (non-glowing) white dot" vs "pitch black".

If you can't see the target well enough to ID, then it sort of negates the ability to take an aimed shot at a dark blob in the dark, doesn't it? And in the event of being able to ID, then the point still stands that you'll be able to see your sights. And in your situation you mentioned, do you need night sights to make a shot from a few feet away? Of course not - because there's a big difference.

Distance changes things big time, as does the precision needed for the shot and ambient lighting. And I think it's pretty simple to be able to say if you can't see your target well enough to ID, you're probably well served by using artificial light to do so - until you can see what you're trying to hit the sighting system doesn't matter worth a damn.

jeep45238 wrote:If you can't see the target well enough to ID, then it sort of negates the ability to take an aimed shot at a dark blob in the dark, doesn't it?

But that's your fallacy. The idea that anything less than normal daytime lighting prevents you from being able to ID a target. Human beings have been able to function normally in many types of low-light conditions for thousands of years. We can't see "as" well, but there's plenty of low-light conditions where you can still see well enough to identify a stranger vs. a family member or friend (for instance), yet it be dim enough that your ability to see the (very small, often black with maybe a small white dot or line) sights on your gun is enhanced with night sights.

I don't get why this seems like news to some folks. We've lived in dark-but-able-to-see conditions for large parts of our whole lives.

Maybe 20 some years ago I bought a set of night sights off a clearance table at Knob Creek for ten bucks because they were close to a decade old. I super glued them to a small diameter metal rod about five inches long and carried the gizmo in my pocket for weeks.

I then looked at the sights every chance I got in all conditions and places encountered, day and night, rain and shine.

Came to the conclusion that there are indeed times when light is adequate to identify friend from foe and the tritium, at least up front, added much needed glow.

I never said anything about needing normal daylight to identify something. Hell, I even mentioned a few factors of the gray scale - ambient lighting, distance, and precision of required shot. Heck, that's one of two main reasons why I run a single dot sighting system - if I see the dot, I'm in the 'good enough' hit factor for a paper plate out to 15-20 yards. Every hardware 'solution' is modifying one of the grayscale factors in some fashion.

The only thing I've said is if you can't ID, the sight system doesn't matter. Don't try to extrapilate out anything more than that.

I was merely relating some homework I spent a month or more completing. "Sights on a stick" © could be whipped out whenever I pleased without raising the DEFCON level.