I have noticed during the last couple of IDPA matches that in the dark room my night sights are not as visible as I imagined they would be in a dark fluid environment. I use the back of palms handling technique for holding the firearm and light. Im using brand new Trijicon HD’s so I know it isn’t the brightness of the sights. I have tried illuminating the sights and room by holding the light separate from the gun and close to the support side near my head and this seems to do the trick even with plain non-illuminated sights. It begs the question, are night sights all that necessary particularly with the high number of people using gold beeds? To add to my confusion when last I took classes with LAV and Ken Hackathorn (when I was younger) I could see the night sight much better in the dark. Thoughts?
are you talking about self illuminated tritium, or just high visibility (white dot, gold,etc.) ?
if talking abiut tritium or similar, personally i think they are useless for a civilian/police shooting situation as the light from your illuminator tends to wash out the sight picture, at least in my experience.
in a military application where target ID may not be critical and you may be firing in total darkness i feel there is a usefulness.
YMMV
edit sorry i see you said Trijicon HD which i will assume are tritium sights.
I did some tests years ago and concluded that they were of some benefit, but not as much as people assume. Areas of weakness:
- When shooting at dawn or dusk, or in general low light, there is a considerable range of dimness where the sights are hard to see, but the trit is not visible. Try lining your sights up at dusk on a dark target or a target in the shade/shadows. Too dark to see the sights, too light to see the trit.
- In complete darkness, yes I can see the sights. But I still need target ID, so I’m going to light 'em up with a flashlight. At that point the sights are silhouetted against the target and trit dots are not visible.
Under the same circumstances, a gold bead does pretty well. If the gold bead is set up right, you will get a glint of reflection off of it even in dawn/dusk/twilight conditions. Of course in total darkness, the gold bead does nothing for you.
Bottom Line: I don’t think the trit hurts anything, but it does a lot less for you than most folks assume. The gold bead does extend your sight capability into low light conditions.
I don’t consider it important that my new guns have night sights, and I don’t retrofit night sights to my guns anymore.
Howdy,
Basically what ^^^^^^^^ said.
I feel they are a waste of money, especially in a military setting.
If you are worried about being able to see at night of during low lights conditions in your home install LED night lights in every room. Helps when you get up to go to the bathroom, get a snack or take the dog out after bed time.
Paul
Agree. I am an old school bullseye shooter and even most of my carry guns have plain black sights. Once you turn on a flashlight the tritium is gone - in situations dark enough to make the tritium useful you the. Have no target Id so I can say I only ever had one pistol with night sights ( got a set for free long story) and they made zero difference in acquiring a sight pic in low light
Haven’t been in a situation yet where I said “jeez; I wish this tritium wasn’t in my sights”. To each their own though
Wishing they weren’t tritium, and having actually needed the tritium are very different things. I’ve never actually needed the tritium, but I’m not bummed that I installed them (tritium front, black rear).
How does fiber optic stack up? More useful in the day, equally useless at night? Potentially more fragile because of the exposed rod, if that’s even an actual problem?
I’m curious about this as well. Last idpa match I shot (daytime) I saw them on another fellows gun and they looked awesome in daylight.
The FO rod is too fragile for duty or carry.
I can think of a number of gun-point incidents in which I used self-luminous tritium dots to bolster verification of sight alignment in poor lighting conditions. In some of those, a higher visibility non-luminous sight may have worked as well. More recent low-light training using my HDs and I-Dots supports that. While those are still tritium sights, I had more to work with at a glance.
I like having the option, but want my rear as uncluttered as possible.
Thanks.
If you are holding the light in such a way that it also illuminates the pistol while lighting up the target, then yes you wouldn’t be able to see the tritium very well.
But that would be an issue of learning to use the light in a different manner such as Harries.
double
How so?
I have had a dawson fiber optic front sight on one of my Glock 19s (the other runs straight black sights) for at least 3 years of daily carry in all sorts of environments without a single issue.
And if the fiber optic falls out…the sights still work fine.
This may be so, however, if you drop the gun, bang it on something you are more likely to damage the exposed f/o. This makes it inherently more fragile than an inclosed tritium vial or brass bead.
Keep in mind duty guns take more abuse than you average ccw.
Yeah; I should have clarified and stated that during felony traffic stops at night, dynamic search warrant services at night (or where reduced illumination is present), building searches, training in shoot houses, etc I never said that I wish tritium wasn’t in my sights.
…then time yourself getting a good 100% positive sight picture in a high stress situation with said lighting.
Just running around the house, on a cloudy day with lights off(dry runs?), tritium is extremely usefull. Total dark, you will have a light to shadow the sights, but tritium still helps keep them aligned with lights out. Bright - no need. The in-between lighting (which seems to be most of the time) is where they are worth their price 5x over IMO. I’ve never had a problem picking up my ameriglo idot pros. Cant say the same about my factory sights.
I can see stuff, like boxes, furnature, people, etc around the bedroom at night, but I cant make out sights without struggle. I do not want to struggle with a stranger coming up the stairs, and I may not want to use a light depending on the situation.
There are some folks who may disagree with this statement.
Im well aware of the abuse duty weapons take. However, My pistol is in a holster 99% of the time with the front sight completely protected. The only time my pistol has seen true abuse was in training. I have owned that Glock 19 since 2004 and somehow in 12+ training classes and shooting biweekly the F/O hasn’t managed to break.
In that same period of time I have seen several tritium vials either break or go bad. They are fairly fragile themselves, being a container filled with H3 gas. And again, on the 1/Million chance that either of them break, the sights still work fine in most instances. With a WML they are somewhat redundant (But I believe in redundancy) so I think the fragility of F/O sights. Also reference the article and comments section posted above.
Rick
Staying on topic-remember that my issue as i am getting older and am doing more IDPA is that the night sights are just becoming less visible in dark rooms. It seems that simply lighting the slide and the target is more effective. I had not thought of the in between times where there is diminished light. I guess in my experiece in IDPA its either light or totally dark. What NCPatrolAR said answered my question in that there exists those times where there is darkness and some amount of ambiant light. At those times the tritium is helpful.