10M pistol home practicing

[RobinC]

Ian
A good practice technique to aid concentrationon on the foresight is to shoot on a blank card, I often do my sighters like that before a match card.
I also use shooting glasses with the prescription lens set to the focal length of the foresight, so I can't focus on the target if I want to, sadly that does'nt stop me trying, so It still takes practice to just focus on the foresight.
Best regards and good shooting
Robin

[joker]

Hi Robin - thanks for the tip. I have to confess that sometimes I 'forget' about focussing and spend too much of my concentration on the sight picture. Then if I remember focussing, the sight picture sorts itself out. I have only recently come back to pistol after over 45 years (YES 45!) of no shooting. With the Internet, the whole scene has changed so much with the availability of advice from around the world.

Regards

[BigAl]

Ian I would strongly agree with RobinC about getting a lens that automaticallyb brings your eye to focus on the foresight. I used one like that on my shooting frames when I shot pistol. In fact being both a rifle and pistol shooter it made having specialist shooting frames cost effective as I was able to have two lenses in different holders which quickly swapped over on the frames. I have the Champion frames which have two sizes of holder.I used the larger one for pistol, as it gives a sligtly wider view so that I could start to pick up the foresight as I raised the pistol to the target without moving my head.

Alan

[joker]

Alan - wrt pistol shooting frames, which size of lens frame is best? There appears to be 2 sizes like 23 and 37 mm diameter?


EDIT

sorry Alan - you have already answered this one - DOH!

[BigAl]

Worry not Ian, we all do it at times.
The smaller one is usually used by rifle shooters. There is not that much room for the bigger lens, especially in the prone position. Also in the prone position the lens needs to be mounted quite high, so that you are looking through the center of it. The larger diameter lens will obvoiusly not go as high as the smaller one.
On the frames that I have the nose peice is fixed, so that I have to use a pair of pads to raise the frames to even get the smaller lens central behind the rear sight.

Alan

[Paul55]

I have read this thread & found this all very interesting. I shoot an informal 10mtr comp with the UBC boys & I have a small problem. I am very myopic in my right eye, I'm right handed, and when I'm standing at 10mtrs I find it very difficult to see the target bull. While I can focus quite happily on the foresight of the pistol, I have no idea from a 1 eyed view where I am aiming.

Now comes the silly question, is there any way I can correct this? I already wear glasses & I have tried shooting L/H, never again!

Hope you can help

[joker]

Alan - thanks for the explanation on size of lenses - makes great sense. I would not hesitate to get a set of shooting frames with a lens and a blinder but they are soooooooooo expensive. The cheapest seem to be from Intershoot, the Varga frame with a lens holder + blinder @ £65. Knobloch are about x3 on Varga prices. A relatively small market + typical mark up for sports goods + top shooters get them Free?

[jonyb]

I have read this thread & found this all very interesting. I shoot an informal 10mtr comp with the UBC boys & I have a small problem. I am very myopic in my right eye, I'm right handed, and when I'm standing at 10mtrs I find it very difficult to see the target bull. While I can focus quite happily on the foresight of the pistol, I have no idea from a 1 eyed view where I am aiming.

Now comes the silly question, is there any way I can correct this? I already wear glasses & I have tried shooting L/H, never again!

Hope you can help

perfect!
you should not be able to see the bull. the black of the target should be a blur, with your foresight being the most important follwed by your rearsight.
your sight picture or aiming point should be below the blurred black circle of the target.
get the sight picture right and the pellet will follow.

[RobinC]

Paul
You say you are myopic, shortsighted I think, you say that you can focus on the forsight perfectly, is that with glasses or with out? If its with out then you have naturaly what pistol shooters pay for with lens's!
As long as your eyesight is adequate to find the target thats' all you need, ignore the aiming mark, focus on the foresight and concentrate on the sight picture of the foresight perfectly central and level in the backsight, get that picture against the card (which I presume you can see?) at the level you have your pistol sighted, if its just below the aiming mark thats' two thirds down and central.
I can see a blur of black with my shooting glasses but its irrelavent as I can shoot the same scores with the target back to front!
Now if you can't find the target thats' another issue.
Ian
I got a set of Varga's and a 37mm lens, an excelent investment, you need a good optician who understands to get the prescription correct, I took my pistol in and he did it with a test frame and test lenses until we got the focus on the foresight correct. Welcome back, I'm a 25 year break returnee as well, came back a year ago to my old club as therapy for a balance problem and got bitten again, now my wife who was GB ladies air rifle has returned at Bus pass and is costing a fortune in new kit!
Best regards
Robin

[joker]

Robin

When getting a lens prescribed should one ask for astigmatism to be corrected as well. Or is it just a plain dioptre correction only?

Cheers

IanR

[RobinC]

Ian
I know that you used to be able to buy standard 37 mm lenses for shooting in differeing diopters and those would not account for astimatisms. I did mine via an optician and I presume that he set it to my astigmasm, as the lens was round and he fitted the lens whilst I was there and he was very particular to set it to a mark to get it vertical. There is some very good guidance on prescription on the Knobloch Schiessbrillen website for both rifle and pistol, I passed that to my optician who was very interested and wanted a few days to study it.
He heeded the guidance from Knobloch that you should do it with the pistol, they don't use test frames now as they have these trick machines, but he found some old test frames and adjusted the lenses with me on aim to get the best sharp image on the foresight. I was concerned that I might not be able to find the target so he tried a couple of tenths either side to test as a comprimise but the sharp one was best. He even measured out ten metres in the shop to ensure I could find the target adequately!
I initialy used an iris which helps you to fine tune but I stopped as I found it tempted me to be focused on the target. The only problem I have is I have to be careful to look through the lens when loading other wise I can put the pellet in back wards!
(We did some tests on backwards pellets and the group and impact point was the same as forwards! yes honestly!)
Best regards
Robin

[RobinC]

Ian
I know that you used to be able to buy standard 37 mm lenses for shooting in differeing diopters and those would not account for astimatisms. I did mine via an optician and I presume that he set it to my astigmasm, as the lens was round and he fitted the lens whilst I was there and he was very particular to set it to a mark to get it vertical. There is some very good guidance on prescription on the Knobloch Schiessbrillen website for both rifle and pistol, I passed that to my optician who was very interested and wanted a few days to study it.
He heeded the guidance from Knobloch that you should do it with the pistol, they don't use test frames now as they have these trick machines, but he found some old test frames and adjusted the lenses with me on aim to get the best sharp image on the foresight. I was concerned that I might not be able to find the target so he tried a couple of tenths either side to test as a comprimise but the sharp one was best. He even measured out ten metres in the shop to ensure I could find the target adequately!
I initialy used an iris which helps you to fine tune but I stopped as I found it tempted me to be focused on the target. The only problem I have is I have to be careful to look through the lens when loading other wise I can put the pellet in back wards!
(We did some tests on backwards pellets and the group and impact point was the same as forwards! yes honestly!)
Best regards
Robin

[BigAl]

Certainly for Rifle you need even very small amounts of astigmatism corrected, as it is all about concntric circles. For pistol shooting as long as the sights look square then you should be OK. Of course if the astigmatism makes the sights look wonly at all you will need to have that corrected. I know that I have to have the asticmatic correction for my rifle lens but I know that my pistol lens dosn't have any and it always looks ok to me.

Alan

[Paul55]

Paul
You say you are myopic, shortsighted I think, you say that you can focus on the forsight perfectly, is that with glasses or with out? If its with out then you have naturaly what pistol shooters pay for with lens's!
As long as your eyesight is adequate to find the target thats' all you need, ignore the aiming mark, focus on the foresight and concentrate on the sight picture of the foresight perfectly central and level in the backsight, get that picture against the card (which I presume you can see?) at the level you have your pistol sighted, if its just below the aiming mark thats' two thirds down and central.
I can see a blur of black with my shooting glasses but its irrelavent as I can shoot the same scores with the target back to front!
Now if you can't find the target thats' another issue.
Ian
I got a set of Varga's and a 37mm lens, an excelent investment, you need a good optician who understands to get the prescription correct, I took my pistol in and he did it with a test frame and test lenses until we got the focus on the foresight correct. Welcome back, I'm a 25 year break returnee as well, came back a year ago to my old club as therapy for a balance problem and got bitten again, now my wife who was GB ladies air rifle has returned at Bus pass and is costing a fortune in new kit!
Best regards
Robin

Thanks for that explanation, I'm not so lucky as I need my glasses on to focus on the foresight. It's your quote about " what pistol shooters pay for with lens's" that's put it into perspective. I now understand what to look for & what to practice on.

Also I must stop myself being so target focussed.

Thanks again

[Arnold Layne]

I've read this with great intrest,

I originaly started out shooting target air pistols in the 70's, settling on FT shooting after the H/gun ban, I've recently bought an HW75 and re found the reason i started shooting in the first place, however I have a feeling the 75, will not be around long before I get the itch to move on to a more appropriate 10m pistol. given the relative lack of trigger adjustment and generaly poor grips.

Mark