help a noob with aperture sights please....

[patriot]

The typical scope setup instructions, focusing the cross hairs on the ceiling, are suboptimal. Art (Shooting Sight) shared this approach:

1) Mount the rifle on a bench centered on a 100 yard target
2) Adjust the parallax out - move your head up, down, left, and right to make certain the cross hairs remain stationary
3) Adjust the eyepiece to bring the target into crisp focus (go back and forth a few times to find the center)

This approach zeros the scope for your eyes, allowing you to use the same correction for irons and scope rather than having two lenses. If you change your prescription the scope should be readjusted.

Mark

[Tim S]

Starting where I can afford to....adjustable Centra glass front sight with pink(researched/no experience) and at least 3MOA space? No plans to use a bloop tube. Is that available now, or am I headed down a rabbit hole? Course of fire at CRC is dewar and 100y. Is the aforementioned MCS 22 a better start? I'm wanting to buy ONCE and not have to trade up/around every month.

Tim, sights at 4.0? for outdoors 50/100 or should i shoot for some adjustable model? Not quite sure my direction with the rear yet. Haven't figured out the adjustability aspects of the iris and magnification. help please?

It's entirely up to you and your budget whether you get an adjustable aperture foresight, or a selection of elements. Personally I'd wait until you get your sights; if you're buying used (and there's nothing wrong with this), you may find the tunnel comes with a few elements/inserts. An adjustable aperture is much easier to fiddle with in position, say if you want to tweak the aperture to account for changing light, but it's more expensive, and you may find that tweaking the rear aperture/using colour filters does the job for you. While you are just group shooting to determine your optimum size/sizes there is very little advantage to an adjustable foresight.

As for 18mm vs 22mm, again there is no clear cut answer. You really need to try both. I use a 22mm tunnel, but that's with a 6in extension tube, so the 22mm looks better, particularly with a 4.8mm aperture. But many of the US Olympic prone shooters like Eric Uptagrafft and Mike McPhail stay with a standard 18mm tunnel on long tubes. 22mm tunnels do give a slightly wider view of the target through the tunnel, which can come in useful for checking you are lined up on the right target.

With the rear, an adjustable iris is very useful, I'd say almost essential if you will be shooting outdoors. Colour filters and polarising lenses are useful. I don't use any magnifying lenses, only a prescription lens in glasses. The magnification by itself can be accomplished with less fuss by a lens in the foresight, but the rearsight dioptres also allow you to alter the focal distance. I'd suggest a trip to an optician before choosing he eyepiece.

[patriot]

Don't over look the 30mm front sight; just walk the line at a large match and survey the field. There is a reason used ones sell so quickly.

Mark

[justadude]

Fields,

Tim has some very sage advise here, start with the simple stuff and then turn up the "fancy" meter as you get more comfortable.

Starting with the rear sights, as mentioned if you shop around and are patient an Anschutz rear sight with a 10 click turret can be found for about $150 US. There is currently one listed on ebay for $159 buy it now price. Apparently coming out of Bulgaria which I am not so sure about but that is a typical price. As you are starting out, I would encourage you to avoid the 20 click turrets as if you are clicking to dope the wind you can get lost counting clicks and also lose some valuable time clicking when you could be studying range conditions.

The "stock" rear aperture with an Anschutz rear sight is 1.1mm. This is actually a touch on the small side for all but the brightest ranges. If you shoot indoors an adjustable rear iris is just about a must. The very basic Gehmann rear irises can be had for $50 and some change, you can go nuts with color wheels, neutral density filters and polarizers all in one unit and get past $200 without too much trouble. Seldom if ever are these units necessary. For outdoor prone work I personally shoot a Centra 1.8 Twin, adjustable from 0.8 to 1.8mm a color wheel and some grey filters. I expect with current exchange rates they are near $200. The thing with rear irises is that they will go from sight to sight, so long as they have the European thread you can swap it right over to a new sight if you change.

Considering things up front: here again you can go from mild to wild. Looking at the Champions Choice website you can buy a brand new 18mm front sight for $63. (The odd thing is you don't seem to see very many front sights for sale on the used market.) The two most popular sizes are 18mm and 22mm. This is important as if you look carefully you will see front sight accessories listed for M18 or M22. Between manufacturers those threads are standard so again if get a fancy adjustable aperture or a high end fixed aperture it would move over to a different sight tunnel with the same diameter. Would I recommend you worry about such stuff right now?... no. You say you are not shooting a bloop tube so 18mm (more or less the standard since I started in this sport several decades ago) will be fine to start. There are the most accessories available for the M18 front sight, followed closely by M22. Now, I had a bad experience with an adjustable front aperture many years ago and have never messed with one since. I simply swap front elements when the need arises. If you start with an empty Anschutz M18 tunnel you can get a set of stamped steel apertures, ten of them, for under $40. The set ranges from 2.5 to 4.5mm and you can play with them until you find your sweet spot. (As I have mentioned before, standard length barrel on the NRA targets 3.2 to 3.4 seems to be a sweet spot but everyone's eyes are different.) Then you can start to worry about clear or colored plastic or the Centra glass apertures. (I have a small handful of the high end Centra apertures and they are nice and clear but I can also buy metal or plastic by the handful for the price of 1 high end, so best to experiment narrow down to the one or two sizes you need then drop dollars on the high end elements.)

If you get into shooting a bloop tube, the availability of M22 or a few larger front tunnels becomes more of an issue. A few years ago I experimented with a 12 inch tube on a standard length barrel. That M18 front sight looked just about like a pea hanging way out there on the end of that tube. Also had to move from about a 3.4 to a 4.2 front aperture to get things to look right. I have since backed off to a much more manageable 8 inch tube and the M18 sight is a touch small but nothing terrible.

I note that Patriot mentioned the 30mm front tunnels, there are a few of them out there but accessories are far less common. Starting with a more common size like M18 will likely work to your advantage until you gain some familiarity and comfort then if you feel it is something you want to try you can move out to the more esoteric bits.

In closing, if you poke around there are the Gehmann "Compact" series and Centra "Start Line" rear sights. The Gehmann can be had brand new from Champions Choice for $145. From what I have heard, for the money these are solid sights. There is one problem however, there are reports that they do not have enough vertical to adjust out to 100 yards so this can be an issue if you are shooting NRA Prone. CC does carry these sights so it might be worth a call to ask the current status on those reports.

Cheers,
'Dude

[SRay53txtn]

I have been wanting to shoot small bore matches and Looking forward to some matches here in TN.