Free Pistol

If Free Pistol ever comes back into vogue, I wonder if Red Dots would be allowed? It is, after all, "Free Pistol".
What's your thoughts?

While Free Pistol event has been removed from Olympic Games, it is still part of the ISSF World Championships. Under ISSF rules, Red Dots are not allowed. In the US, our official matches under the NRA auspices are conducted in accordance with the ISSF rules. It is conceivable that one of our governing bodies (NRA or CMP) may allow Free Pistol Matches with Red Dots but it would make the athletes not competitive at the international events.

For what it's worth, my personal view is to leave well enough alone and to keep Free Pistol an irons-only event.

Best Regards,
Oleg.

Annnd you would most likely shoot worse with it.

bruce martindale wrote:Annnd you would most likely shoot worse with it.

Wonder why you say that Bruce? It's true best record scores in history were with irons, but today, winning scores are made with dots. Dots prevail on the line today, so why is that if higher scores are made with irons?

I'm missing the physiological reason why irons, IN THE RIGHT HAND, would make for higher scores.

Iron sights do not have parallax. I honestly believe that the old records stand because they were fired with iron. Dots let you be a tad lazy on stance and grip and those things matter

Photo Escape apertures are the best thing to come along for dot sights

bruce martindale wrote:Iron sights do not have parallax. 

Huh???

Red dots, all of them, do.

Prove it? It's distance dependent. Bench the gun and look at the dot on the target while moving your head.

Amazing eh?

That's why you have to keep the dot centered in the tube.

https://starreloaders.com/edhall/nwongmain/enhancer.html

Thanks Bruce!

UnGe wrote:

bruce martindale wrote:Iron sights do not have parallax. 

Huh???

To clarify. Nobody questions the fact that dots have parallax by themselves. But irons (or any sighting equipment) have parallax by definition wrt the bore (unless you manage to get them in the middle of the bore)

UnGe wrote:

UnGe wrote:

bruce martindale wrote:Iron sights do not have parallax. 

Huh???

To clarify. Nobody questions the fact that dots have parallax by themselves. But irons (or any sighting equipment) have parallax by definition wrt the bore (unless you manage to get them in the middle of the bore)

True, but the parallax from irons are fixed, and can be adjusted out. In a dot, the sighting is a variable with every shot.

Optically most quality dots are parallax free at about 50 yards.  A good test is to shoot a group with the dot at the 4 extremes in the  “eye box”.  I did that with a reflex dot and a tube dot on a M4 carbine on a B8 target. The groups were centered on the “X” line at the four places all were “center” breaks.  Now for ISSF you might be more critical, but for bullseye it won’t cost you points if the dot isn’t centered.  Nor is parallax a serious issue.

Thank you.

I've had some bad ones so you do have to check...

Putting a red dot on a free pistol is an odd duck. They're designed with long thin barrels to give a long sight radius while staying balanced. If you're going to just slap a red dot on it you might as well shoot a 5" barrel, the 11.4" barrel at that point will be a hinderance and improve your chances of pulling shots before the bullet leaves the barrel.

As Bruce mentioned earlier, it's simpler to set the gun on the bench such that the dot is against a discernible point down range and move your head to shift the dot around in the tube.  You can view the parallax, or lack thereof, as how the dot moves around the point.  Doing the same with open sights will also show you how different sight alignment affects sight picture.  What's surprising is that with dot sights the parallax can vary greatly between samples of the same model.

And, yes, I'm a "preacher" of centering the dot in the tube as you would center the front in the rear.

Wobbley wrote:Optically most quality dots are parallax free at about 50 yards.  A good test is to shoot a group with the dot at the 4 extremes in the  “eye box”.  I did that with a reflex dot and a tube dot on a M4 carbine on a B8 target. The groups were centered on the “X” line at the four places all were “center” breaks.  Now for ISSF you might be more critical, but for bullseye it won’t cost you points if the dot isn’t centered.  Nor is parallax a serious issue.

You can confirm this with a simple experiment: Hold the pistol steady (ha ha) and look at the dot and a target about foot away from the sight (computer screen, etc), then move your head back and forth.  Moving such that the dot travels from edge to edge of the sight makes a big change in where the dot is "pointing".

Now repeat the experiment, only this time using a target at a distance - as Wobbly suggests 20yd or more.  Now moving your head and watching the dot go from edge to edge makes little difference in where the dot sits on the target.

I set parallax on my rifle scopes by moving my eye around behind them while on a target at the distance I'm shooting. And I've seen it change a bit as the temperature changes.