If you wear corrective optics might be a good idea to train without them occasionally too… you may not remember or have time to grab your glasses or put in contacts when Things Go Bump In The Night, and I can’t really recommend sleeping on your back and never taking 'em off like I do. (Granted, I’m on a round-the-clock schedule so my sleep is 90 minutes a a time rather than straight-through, but… yeah, can’t recommend that either.)
Getting older and your vision going to crap.
An issue worthy of a separate discussion; ‘work-arounds’ and solutions.
Another reason why a good weapon light is a must.
Circling back to Marks’ question:
Low light No light Pistol, another take-away: night sights are useless.
Caveat - my eyesight, especially at night, has taken a serious dump. Therefore the following is based on MY experience:
Using bright weapon light to ‘paint’ the target (i.e you can see whats safely deemed to be a target in a somewhat hi-stress situation) they are strongly backlit rendering their ‘tritium’ etc function negligible - any regular iron sight would serve.
Only time I can see that ‘bright tritium front dot’ was when it was dark enough, light off, meaning I can no really safely id my target.
They no longer have any real world use for me.
Again - this is my ‘reality’; you may have a different experience.
Almost COMPLETELY Usless! If you’re using them, you can’t possibly also have positive target identification. I qualify that with “almost” because there could be a rare set of conditions where the night sights combine with partial lighting, or for some reason you’re firing from a dark room into a lighted area. But come on… I NEVER spend money on tritium sights. Plus most h0m0s are going to dot sights anyway.
My tritium sights were bright enough to stick out on a cloudy day. Very useful until i switched to rds. I wont buy them again since they suck for NV use.
Uh-oh, did I just come out? Lmao!
Just read your post; sounds like a real (fun) challenge.
(Lets face it - NVG is just not obtainable for the 99% of us…
Wanted to ask,
At what distance were you running these drills?
And in your experience what would be a realistic ‘max’ distance to run no/low light light drills; is there a minimum output/type of light - pistol/rifle, etc?
Any other takeaways?
Thought my gear was mostly squared away in whats considered real world - ‘intruder in house’, ‘close and personal’ type scenarios; but once I actually started running drills and extending range clearly I was not.
Convinced this goes for the majority of us - we simply don’t practice in this environment and are unprepared for this essential skill set.
Kind of off topic, however, not worthy of its own thread.
I was engaged in skunk warfare with my clip on thermal late one night. I noticed the thermal screen really screws up your night vision when not looking through the scope.
Do any of you night shooters have any mitigation advice?
Shot a couple stages last night in low light, one moving other stationary. Its kinda good to have to get light out, turn on and go to work. Glad this indoor match is adding some value.
PB
Try putting a red lense or film over the ocular.
Red doesnt impact your NV nearly as much as white
Thanks, great suggestion.
My apologies for this late response, I’m just now seeing it. The drills I was talking about in my earlier post were from behind VTAC barricades from 35 to 50 yards with my AR. As mentioned I was using my Modlites, the carbine was equipped with a AP Micro. I have used a LPVO with my OKW head out to 200 yards on full size silhouettes but not with blackened pistols like described in the drill.
Pistol drills were 25 yards and closer with a RDS and SF X300U. And yeah, night sights are pretty useless.
I’m convinced there is no such thing as too much light at night shooting. I saw a bunch of lesser lights not up to the task of extended ranges.
For sure. I have some cheaper Solarforce LED modules where the beam is really too focused for indoor use, and even those suckers aren’t good at 50 yards and beyond.