Coaching Question: When / How Much to Adjust Sights?

[Gwhite]

I help coach a collegiate team. One of the things we haven't really pinned down formally is when & how much to adjust sights. We try to keep an eye on their groups when they start out and give them sight adjustment suggestions. With almost 30 shooters, after that, they are pretty much on there own unless they ask. Some of the students have decided that constantly tweaking their sights is a way to get more points, which is nonsense. Our top shooter is a young woman who has won a raft of top placements at three collegiate national championships, but she cannot shoot a match without attacking her sights in some way. I suspect she would do even better if she started thinking about why her shot process isn't consistent, rather than trying to compensate with frequent sight adjustments. Unfortunately, because she shoots so well, lots of the other shooters try to emulate her, and we have a bunch of shooters wearing their sights out to no purpose.

As an example of what we can run into, we had one new air pistol shooter this fall who had two groups on her target, one in the center, and one up at 1 o'clock in the 6/7 ring area. After watching her a bit, I decided that the correct group was the one at 1 o'clock, and the one in the middle was the result of jerking the trigger (very consistently). We adjusted her sights, and then had her work on her trigger control. She's doing much better now, with a group in the middle, and only occasional strays down at 7 o'clock.

Another example: yesterday I was working with a woman who is a fairly good shot. She was back from the long holiday break, and hadn't shot in almost a month. She had a pretty good collection of shots centered on the ten ring, but maybe three or four a bit off to the right, including a couple of 8's. It never even crossed my mind that a sight adjustment was in order. Instead, I told her to keep her thumb relaxed, and the shots to the right went away. This is a case where the shape of the group was important.

Personally, I make only one of two click adjustments a year, if that. A lot of it is based on being able to call my shots well. I can almost always tell within one ring & one "hour" where a shot went. When I can get my shooting glasses tweaked just right, I can usually see the difference between a 3 o'clock ten and a 9 o'clock ten. If I call several shots and they aren't going where I expect, or I have consistently tight groups that are offset a bit, I will make an adjustment. With rifle (at least when my eyes were younger), I can call very reliably, I will make adjustments based on just a couple shots, but only on rare occasions like when changing loads. With pistol, I need a lot more data before I decide it's the pistol and not me. The problem is that it's just something I've gotten a feel for after 40+ years of shooting, and it's hard to articulate the details in a meaningful way to new shooters.

What I'm hoping to do is to put together a written set of guidelines (maybe with some pictures) on the process.

I'm looking for feedback on issues like:

1) How many shots in a group is enough to make an adjustment? I would think this would depend on how well you can call your shots. If you KNOW that 9 was supposed to be a 10, would you adjust on one shot? If you can't call your shots but still have a group, how many shots would you consider the minimum before being confident that you need to make an adjustment?

2) How tight a "group" would you consider worthy of an adjustment? With beginning shooters, if they can get 7 out of 10 shots clustered in less than the size of the black, we would probably make an initial correction & refine from there as their groups shrink.

3) How big of an adjustment would you make? Under normal circumstances, with a good shooter & tight groups, you would presumably count up the number of rings the center is offset by, and then crank in the appropriate adjustment based on "clicks per ring" for that pistol, target & distance. Upon reflection, I'm not sure there is any more to it than that... I've talked to some shooters who like to "sneak up" on a correction, only making half the indicated adjustment before doing more shooting. Again, if you can really call your shots well, this shouldn't be necessary. I don't know if it makes sense to limit the amount of adjustment by some fraction of how well you can call your shots, or the group size.

Comments & suggestions welcome.

Thanks!

[David M]

When I get a brand new pistol one of the first things I do is to mark the sight screws with a witness mark.
This is usually a engraved dot on the edge of the screw head.
Record a initial sight setting, like full down and full right position of the screw. Note clicks per turn,
This allows you to reset the sights even if removed off the gun.
Shoot to establish a group and precision setting. Write down settings including location of dot on screw head.
Then move the sight 2 turns left and shoot a group, note position of group on target.
Now move the sights 4 turns right, note position on target, then move sights 2 turns left (back to centre).
Repeat using 2 turns up and down.
This will tell you how much the sights move per click and per turn and confirm sight direction vs screw direction.
Write it all down, use a range reference book.
Now you have a rough sight setting to start a match.
Sight adjustment during a match will be caused by wind, sun angle, amount and type of light (indoor) as well
as yourown fatigue.
If you can call your shots (position and direction) make adjustments on well called shots. In sighters course
adjustments can be made up to 1/2 turn to centre.
Once centred adjust one click at a time on well called shots. Remember One click will not take you out of the ten ring.
Over a match you will centre the group for conditions and the witness mark will show movement.
During a match course sight adjustments are only made for big changes in conditions,ie strong wind changes
or from overcast to full sun.
At the end of the match compare the sight settings to start of match and record.
After two or three matchs you will refine these recorded sight settings.
For Sport or Centrefire you will also record the sight changes between Precision and Rapidfire stage.

[Rover]

When shooting a pistol match you shoot a sighter target. When you've finished with it, put your match targets over it until you've shot half the match. Put another sighter target up and put the match targets over it again until finished.

You should have a pretty good idea of where your group is by the end. You shouldn't have any major sight changes due to changing conditions. A couple of clicks will take care of things.

[C. Perkins]

I am with Rover on this.

Every AP and FP match indoor I used what I call a "base line target".

A target will be used throughout as a backer behind the regulation targets.

After 60 shots you can see if your sights need to be adjusted.

Once you get it right then work on being consistent with hold and sighting and etc...

We know things may change from match to match but it gives a good base line for a new shooter to start from, a good zero.

Clarence

[MSmoczynski]

You nailed the only guidelines you will ever need around sights when you wrote this: ' I suspect she would do even better if she started thinking about why her shot process isn't consistent, rather than trying to compensate with frequent sight adjustments.'

The 'why' part is critical, and the factors affecting your grouping placement are infinite.

On my part, whenever the group starts shifting on me a little, the process I go through to understand whether or not I need to adjust sights is this, in the order of importance IMHO:

1. Is my stance changing with time? (it will, unless you are built with concrete)
2. Is my natural point of aim changing? (it will, unless you are really consistent and fit)
3. Is my sighting and trigger game changing? (it will, unless you spent tons of time working on your sighting consistency)
4. Is my shot process consistent throughout the whole shoot? (it should be, but rarely is, every 1%'er makes a difference, from breathing to timing to grip and everything in between).

Most of the time when I shoot, any sight adjustments in a match are required becasue either of these is shifting on me, very rarely the reason would be external, i.e. lighting on the range changing all of a sudden, or wind picking up etc. Only when I understand WHY my group is moving, I will make the decision.

Most of the time I will go back to my shot process consistency rather than tweak the sights.

The bottom line is this: Follow through with your shots and self-analyse every one of them in practice. If you skip solid analysis and self-evaluation, you will find that you are chasing your groups with sight adjustment rather than bringing them back to where they should be with being disciplined around having a correct and consistent shot process.

In a match, if you had laid the right foundation by doing the above steps in practice, you will hardly ever have to dial in the sights after your sighter shots.

At sighting shots, I normally can tell the group after 2-3 shots in AP especially, however I still would shoot 5-10 sighters to settle into a rhythm first and the call the sight adjutment if required. And yes, I will then dial the sights into x, not half-way. My first shot after adjuting would be the first marked shot.

I hope that helps, PM me for detail if you like.

Cheers

[sakurama]

The app TargetScan does the same thing as a backer target but much more neatly and accurately - I adjust sites based on it and find it works very well. It also keeps historical data which is helpful.

[David M]

After 60 shots you can see if your sights need to be adjusted.

After 60 shots it's too late, the Match is over.
A backing target or electronic target mean point will help with the next match, but not
much help for the current one.
You need a way of adjusting during the entire match to achieve the highest score.
If the entire group is moving with no enviroment change something else is wrong,
either shooter (grip,stance etc) or a mechanical sight problem.

[Gwhite]

After 60 shots you can see if your sights need to be adjusted.

After 60 shots it's too late, the Match is over.
A backing target or electronic target mean point will help with the next match, but not
much help for the current one.
You need a way of adjusting during the entire match to achieve the highest score.
If the entire group is moving with no enviroment change something else is wrong,
either shooter (grip,stance etc) or a mechanical sight problem.

This is the issue with the students I coach. None of the students are capable of shooting scores where things like lighting make much difference. A reasonably high collegiate air pistol score is ~ 550. We do occasionally have mechanical issues, but the vast majority of the problems are with technique and/or shot process.

They still need to adjust their sights as their groups shrink. Most of the people reading this may not remember what it was like when they were just starting, but it's very rare that groups will shrink symmetrically and stay centered. The trick is explaining to the students when to adjust the sights and when to step back and think harder about the fundamentals.

I think the best I can do is to create a bunch of example targets (or take pictures of some of the hundreds we have accumulated), and then supply a critique of whether or not to apply a sight correction, or focus on some part of their technique.

[JamesH]

If your group is wandering around excessively then it can just be inconsistency of technique, setup.

If you're in a match and think you can gain points by moving the sights then do so.

It is possible for your physiology to alter during a match, due to lighting changes, fatigue, exercise of the muscles etc.

Psychologically it can be more useful to tweak the sights a fraction than be thinking "the last group was left, I must pull the next ones right" with all the consequences that gives.

If in doubt adjust the sights half as much as you think they need. If you're wrong then you haven't moved too far, if you were right then you're a bit closer to where you need to be.

For me usually its some physiological change or slackness in setup that causes groups to drift around. My sights are marked up and they always hover around a single spot.

[NosfyBe]

+1 James H

During a match even 1 or 2 clicks can have a result on your mindset. And that is still the most important part during a match.

If your students is constantly adjusting her sights, how many clicks does she makes? Maybe it is just in her head, but if it helps it will be hard to get away from.

[john bickar]

Nobody's mentioned "two in the head, one on the gun"?

Gwhite, you've identified a conundrum - nobody on your team is anywhere near the level of David M, so I'm not sure his advice would be applicable at that level (good as it is).

I have found that sight adjustment strategy varies widely among shooters at the top levels, so maybe part of your work with your shooters involves creating a personalized sight adjustment strategy. The act of forcing them to be intentional about it would at least be better than having them arbitrarily spinning knobs in the hopes that they shoot a 10.

I've never been shy about making a sight adjustment, but that's partly because that was drilled into me from the time I first started shooting (i.e., "a 9 at 3 o'clock is worth the same as a 9 at 9 o'clock"). I'm not sure whether I would advocate that strategy for novice shooters.

[Gwhite]

If your students is constantly adjusting her sights, how many clicks does she makes? Maybe it is just in her head, but if it helps it will be hard to get away from.

From watching at a distance, I would guess as many as 3 or 4 clicks. She has a number of odd habits that I suspect are preventing her from shooting even better, but she tends to ignore instructions in any event... We are also afraid to derail her mentally with tweaks to her process right as the season is peaking. The sectionals (which determine who goes on the National Championships in March) are only about a month away.

It's a bit like the old story about the man who thought he was a chicken. When his wife was asked why she didn't get him psychiatric help, she replied "We need the eggs".

We need the 10's...

[C. Perkins]

After 60 shots you can see if your sights need to be adjusted.

After 60 shots it's too late, the Match is over.
A backing target or electronic target mean point will help with the next match, but not
much help for the current one.
You need a way of adjusting during the entire match to achieve the highest score.
If the entire group is moving with no enviroment change something else is wrong,
either shooter (grip,stance etc) or a mechanical sight problem.

Was not talking about a match, but a practice match.
And don't tell students it is practice, tell them this is a real match so they will buckle down.
Younger people are just like some of my older employees, they need a reason to produce and sometimes a little mental persuasion can go a long way.
When the 60 shots are over you can see if the sights need to be changed.

Clarence

[Spencer]

Nygord's Notes - So that's why there are screws on my rear sight! (04/02) http://www.australiancynic.com/NYGORD.h ... that's_why

[django]

Every group move i click my rear sight. Body always move during shooting. We don't have time make analysis and make right back. Simple way make pistol suit with our movement. Click it.

Done.

1 click - 2 click every group move it goes well for me. I am not afraid, i know exactly how much click for moving my shoot to center of target.

[seamaster]

If the pellet spread is all over, and no discernible pattern noted for rear sight adjustment, you can stack three shot targets together, held them up to light. There might be a pattern recognizable, where all three targets have in common.

Isolate the wheat from the chaff.

Hopefully there is a recognizable common pellet holes ( or partial holes/ partial edges). But at least there is pattern.

[motorcycle_dan]

When coaching, have them verbally call the sights. where was the sight in the notch when the pellet left?
Now ask them which direction was the sight moving within the rear notch as they squeezed the trigger until sear release.
No way to hold it still, It moves. So before adjusting know where the sight was throughout the squeeze process.
Starting the squeeze with sight level and centered almost always is a 9 or worse.
Starting the squeeze with the sight low and right (or somewhere other than perfect) then driving the sight toward perfection as you squeeze will net more 10's
Until they can properly call the sights, and call the direction of movement during squeeze no turning of the screw.
Once you can call the sights accurately. 2~3 clicks per scoring ring. Be not afraid of the screwdriver. Lighting conditions on the target, lighting above the shooting bench and sooting on the sights all affect my shot placement. I have learned to re-blacken the sights before going after a screwdriver.
So if the whole team is doing it because the kewl kids do, Make them explain why.
At a CMP match where electronic targets are used. I always adjust sights to that particular machine. Often I've found where the machine thinks the middle of the target is located is not always where I think the middle is. I shoot a sub-6 hold so that tends to vary based on lighting down range.