Best way to use a red dot on a pistol?

[Antoni]

Yet another boring difficult to use Red Dot came with my first PCP airgun - an Artemis PP700S-A. A pistol kit from good ole Pleasley car boot.

Gun, pump, visibly full tin of top quality Eley Wasp pellets and a red dot. Not toy money price but a modest price and I took a gamble. With anything you buy second-hand, you get a low price but you get the list of faults that come along with it. No complaints on this occasion.

It's a Hawke-badged red dot but no model number on it. Tubular job with eleven (count them) levels of brightness. First job will be to replace the single CR2032 lithium, check it then flog it - either at the Pleasley boot or maybe on here. For me the target acquisition time to place the dot is a pain in the fundament.

Then I noticed that there's no eye relief on a 'scope' which has no magnification.

It doesn't matter how close or far it is from your eye. Focus of the target and the focus on the dot is fine. With iron sights I need my monitor glasses that I'm wearing now to type this.

I can hold the gun in my right hand, bring it right up to my left eye (I'm left eyed) and rest the base of my thumb joint against the left side of my mouth. Then simply support the fore-end with my left hand. I don't need to wear glasses at all.

Good pistol stability is achieved by the mass of my head (no taking the piss please) and no arm's length-worth of wobble. AND totally easy and quick acquisition of the target.

Result !

Is this post a statement of the bleedin' obvious or is it a new idea to other people like me?

.

[tinbum]

I’m a fan of a decent red dot, I have them on pistols, carbines and shotguns. The fast target acquisition and lack of parallax error are great out to 50m.

Dot size is all important, be careful though! It can start to get expensive.

[Antoni]

I found the red dot excelent on my latest pistol at a fixed range of 5½ yards across my living room. Best results I've had from a sighting system on a pistol. That was because the range was fixed. As soon as you change the range the elevation changes dramatically. Pistols are good for short ranges. Other shooting things are good for much longer ranges and I can see that elevation differences will be much less of a problem.

What do I want to use the pistol/red dot for? Paper punching, spinner spinning and plinking - all at varying ranges.

I'd say that unless your range is fixed, the best thing to do with a red dot on a pistol is to remove it.

[Antoni]

As said up-thread the red dot is excellent at a fixed range and can be used whilst resting your trigger hand on your face giving stability. It works in sub-optimal light too.

I just noticed that both the rear and front iron sights are visible through a tiny gap/hole under the scope mounts, which just happens to be bang-on at the centre of the rear iron-sight aiming point

This with, as before, the pistol supported by my face at the rear. No chance of any focus on the rear sight, but it doesn't matter. The rear scope mount against the rear sight becomes a peep-sight. The front sight is not in focus of course, but good enough for government work.

It bloody well works!

I have two sighting methods now for my first cheap PCP pistol. The red dot for good precision and fast aquisition at a known distance, and open / iron / aperture sight for a more forgiving tolerance of variation of range. Both methods using my head as a stablising mass for the pistol. This due to the iron sights being much closer and much more aligned to the axis of the barrel.