TargetTalk

When using aperture sights is it necessary to line up the front sight in the rear sight so the when all is lined up you have three concentric circles? (target, front, rear)

Yes!

Yes, but think of it this way, otherwise you run the risk of looking at the target - a cardinal sin!

The rear sight fixes the relationship of the sights, and therefore the rifle, to the eye. Get your head position right, and you can't help but look through the middle of the rear sight. Now try to forget it.

The front sight should fairly easily centre itself in your rearsight-limited field of view. If it doesn't, change your position (not your head position) until it does.

Now, where is the target? You need to move the entire body-rifle system as a unit, until the target sits in the middle of the front sight aperture, but you must always, always, ALWAYS, be focussing (optically and mentally) on the front sight only.

When all is aligned, without any physical effort to force the issue, you've got it!

An experiment. If the sights are aligned as above and the position of the rifle fixed somehow, you can see that movement of your head results in the front sight moving around in the rear sight field. Therefore, strictly speaking, the front sight needn't be central in the rear sight, but the central position is the easiest to reproduce. It has been shown that, if a consistent head position can be achieved, the rear sight can be removed, with little loss of accuracy. Sorry if this confuses - ignore it if I haven't explained myself adequately.

Hope this helps.