TargetTalk

position constant?

I shoot a 6:00 hold and I still find that the front sight position is vague, because the target is so fuzzy.

And when I shoot at home. My sights are fuzzy. Is there not enough light? Light coming from the target, or light on the sights themselves?

James,

You've asked a question which is easy to answer, and not easy to answer, all at the same time. The real answer is that, through frequent training, we teach our brain to recognize when the front sight is at the proper distance below the fuzzy grey target. This is something that comes with time and practice. There is no absolute amount of distance between the top of the front sight and the bottom of the bull that's "right". If you're looking for this then you'll also be looking at the target, which is a real no-no.

What you need to do to shoot sub-6 effectively is to concentrate on the front sight, making sure you see it clearly, and crisply. Once you see it clearly you need to ensure that it's properly aligned in the rear sight. And that's all you do. The front sight will float somewhere beneath the bull, and that bull should look fuzzy if your focus is in the right place. If you've trained enough your brain will recognize this picture and say, 'yup, that looks about right' and the shot will fire.

Although the sub-6 sighting technique appears to be highly imprecise, you need to understand that it has the greatest potential for precision. This is the case because it's the sight picture which allows the front sight to be seen in the greatest clarity. Errors associated with the front sight not being in the right place relative to the bullseye are relatively small in comparison to errors associated with not seeing the sights well and having alignment errors between the front and rear sights.

So... in short, don't worry about whether the front sight is exactly the same distance below the bull on every shot. Spend your efforts in making sure the front sight and rear sight are perfectly aligned as you squeeze the trigger. If you do this your worst shot will be a 9!

Thanks. Thats what i was looking for.

In my current hold, the top of the front sight, touches the bottom of the target. This causes some problem with seeing the front sight, especially if there isn't enough light. Should I switch to a sub 6 hold? Or is it too much to relearn? I've been shooting for almost a year now. But with school, and stuff I havn't had too consistant practice. My score is 504.

I was just shooting a few min ago, and I shot some shots that I felt should have been 10s, but they were 9s.
So I did some dryfiring (something I havn't done very much of) and realized that my trigger technique is terrible.
I dry fired for a bit, then whent back to pellets, and I was surprised to find many more 10s :)

I'll start dryfiring the rest of the week. I have a match on Sat.

Great post Mark.

I would only like to add/reinforce a (the) key point.

Trying to "hold the sights in relation to the target" is an absolute no-no; practicing (or training) that way will prevent your skill development and set up a bad habit that you will spend years trying to break.

As the country song goes: "Don't Ask Me How I Know!"

You have to accept- no, embrace- better yet, internalize- that a part of your brain (and not the one generally in charge of getting stuff done) will be able to *recognize* when the perfect aligned front and rear sights are in "a good position, moving in a good direction." Also realize that there is no freakin way you would be able to hold "perfect position" or even try to recognize perfect position in time to break the shot.

I know this is really counter-intuitive and seems "backwards." It seems that way for everyone, that's why "World Class" means something.

OBTW- to answer the implied question in spite of all this zen mumbo jumbo, generally have your front sight width equal to the width of the aiming bull; with about 1/3 target width of light on the top and sides.

It will look *very* "sloppy" but it's supposed to . . .

Steve Swartz

James:

You should be shooting *a lot* against a backwards (blank face) target. You should probably (out of 100 training executions) dry fire against blank surface 40 times, then live fire against blank surface 40 times, then dry fire against bull 10 times, then live fire against bull 10 times.

Your objective is to internalize the act of maintaining perfect sight ALIGNMENT (aim is irrelevant) while releasing trigger with absolutely no disturbance to the perfectly aligned sights.

The only way to tell if you are doing this is to do it against a blank surface . . .

Steve Swartz

I shot some blank target yesterday, and I have a tendency to chase the dots.

When I shoot against the backwards target, what am I looking for?

Trying to "hold the sights in relation to the target" is an absolute no-no; practicing (or training) that way will prevent your skill development and set up a bad habit that you will spend years trying to break.

As the country song goes: "Don't Ask Me How I Know!"

You have to accept- no, embrace- better yet, internalize- that a part of your brain (and not the one generally in charge of getting stuff done) will be able to *recognize* when the perfect aligned front and rear sights are in "a good position, moving in a good direction." Also realize that there is no freakin way you would be able to hold "perfect position" or even try to recognize perfect position in time to break the shot.

I'm having some difficulty visualizing this :) It seems to me, to be able to do that, I have to have the subconcious/semi-concious release down. But the majority of my shots now are manually released.

The distance to hold below the black is a judgement one. Do not hold on the bottom of the black as thesight will meld with the black and you will vertical string the shots.
My sight picture has a fairly wide rear sight, the apparent light gap on each side of the sight I try to produce between the top of the foresight and the bottom of the black.
Hence my aim point will vary a few clicks up or down with light levels ,but sighters fix this.
When setting up a range try not to have too much light coming from behind.

James wrote:I shot some blank target yesterday, and I have a tendency to chase the dots.

When I shoot against the backwards target, what am I looking for?

Trying to "hold the sights in relation to the target" is an absolute no-no; practicing (or training) that way will prevent your skill development and set up a bad habit that you will spend years trying to break.

As the country song goes: "Don't Ask Me How I Know!"

You have to accept- no, embrace- better yet, internalize- that a part of your brain (and not the one generally in charge of getting stuff done) will be able to *recognize* when the perfect aligned front and rear sights are in "a good position, moving in a good direction." Also realize that there is no freakin way you would be able to hold "perfect position" or even try to recognize perfect position in time to break the shot.

I'm having some difficulty visualizing this :) It seems to me, to be able to do that, I have to have the subconcious/semi-concious release down. But the majority of my shots now are manually released.

To answer this, I went to the range this morning, and tried the following. I started concentrate on my sights (and changed to the following) after the shot, I conciously try to put no attention in looking for holes, and tell myself that "the group" is what's important not the individual shots. After a while of thinking like this I almost lost all the memory of where the shot ended, and gave me "more" time to concentrate where the sights where and where did the pistol flip to (in the follow through).
After a 60 shot session in one session of 20 shots I made a hole about 3 cm in height and 1.5 wide. Although it wasn't at the center, it got me in a good mood and made me trust more at looking my sights instead of putting attention to the bullseye.

OBTW- to answer the implied question in spite of all this zen mumbo jumbo, generally have your front sight width equal to the width of the aiming bull; with about 1/3 target width of light on the top and sides. [/quote]

Steve - this is interesting. Could you elaborate a little further. I've read Don Norgards notes 'What about sights?' - which goes back to 3/99 and he refers to ratio's. 1:2:1 or 1:1:1 etc.
After reading your post and that of David M it appears I've been trying to learn this sport with the sight ratio quite wrong - mine [front inside the rear notch] having just a very thin slither of light on both sides with a sub six hold. Very disproportionate.
Advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
John Harvey[/quote]

The older the eyes, the wider the rear sight gap

S

John:

Of course everyone will have their own preferences etc. but here's my $0.02 on it all:

The eye will naturally seek to find "balance" in lining things up. We can very precisely line up a row/column of objects (and conversely detect when light/dark objects are "out of balance."

We want the sight alignment (front sight-rear notch) to be managed consciously and precisely. To this end, we want sufficient light on either side of the notch - within reason, a wider gap makes it easier to focus on the front sight without loss of precision. A narrow gap only makes it harder to focus on front sight *and* gives disadvantage of making alignment appear worse than it really is- with no benefit at all of added precision. So make the rear notch wide enough (speaking of Nygord- wasn't the idea of 1/3 target width mentioned in his notes?).

Now that we have a wide rear notch to assist in focus and alignment, what about "accuracy" in settleing into the aiming area? Go back to the statements about being able to "seek balance." If the light gap between sides and top of front sight (where we are concentrating our focus) is equal, this is the "balanced" picture that our mind seeks. Unequal amounts of light is an "unbalanced" or "unnatural" picture that will be difficult to maintain and almost impossible to manage "in the background." Personally, I would suggest that unbalanced light gaps would just flat out look "wrong" as a sight picture (if any of that makes sense).

Good luck with it and let us know how it goes.

Steve Swartz

Check out the current issue of USA Shooting. In the series of articles on shooting, (29th chapter, I think), the author talks about the need to get rid of any thoughts other than getting of a proper shot from a proper hold. Worrying about where the front sight is in relation to the target smudge takes effort and your concentration away from a perfect hold. The author stresses that the word "hold" is supposed to be a noun, not a verb
elliott

[quote="Mark Briggs"]James,

There is no absolute amount of distance between the top of the front sight and the bottom of the bull that's "right". If you're looking for this then you'll also be looking at the target, which is a real no-no.

So... in short, don't worry about whether the front sight is exactly the same distance below the bull on every shot. Spend your efforts in making sure the front sight and rear sight are perfectly aligned as you squeeze the trigger. If you do this your worst shot will be a 9!

I know you see the front sight sharp and set it up to the rear sight but you have to put it in relations to the bulls eye even though you say you shouldn't see it as that means your not concentrating on our sights. you have to line it up somehow.
Sharp front sight and semi sharp rear with blurry bull. You must peek through the sights to see the relation to the bull to shoot. Please clear up this confusion.Thanks

James,

I'll insert a website that you need to read and thoroughly understand before you can begin to reap results.

http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Side ... apter1.htm

This is the key that will 'start your engine'.

Good luck!

Matt

darticus

You only think the shots will be way low if you hold deep sub six. Wrong. If you really have the sights aligned, look how much do you have to lower the gun to get the perception you are way below the bull. (sights are still aligned to each other, Right?) A fraction of an inch at the aligned sights only looks like a lot out there on the target. Get your eye on the sight and keep it there.

As someone who just recently started to experience all this... All I can say is it is an odd feeling! I do the "equal space around the front sight" method. i.e. Centered in the rear sight and that same distance below the bull. I do a "check" of that, but then go back to sight alignment and mainly front sight focus before releasing the shot.

And it amazes me at how much I can feel like I'm wandering around quite a bit, but yet if alignment holds, and I get a smooth release... The shots group very tightly. As jackh eludes to above.

So my method, wrong or right... Is to do a check of where you are in relation to the bull, but then forget about it and focus on sight allignment and trigger release. Easier said than done, though :)

Thanks
Time to go try it out!

In relation to rear sight gap, that the correct width is one where the edges of the gap due to the rear sight are not too fuzzy at the end of a match.
When you start a session/match, the front sight will be crystal clear, and the rear sight fairly distinct, and personally I use a gap around 1/3 of the width of the front sight.
But after more than 2 hours (including warmup time remember) and all the focus on the front sight, the rear sight will be "fuzzy". It will (shouldn't) ever be crystal sharp, but you can't align the sights properly if it is too fuzzy. Open the gap until the fuzziness goes away.

My opinion only.

So if my front sight is fuzzy, my gaps are too small?

James wrote:So if my front sight is fuzzy, my gaps are too small?

Good try - but NO!

If the front sight is fuzzy, either you are having trouble with focal length (corrective lens needs changing), or you are 'looking' at the wrong distance

S