I wanted to start a thread of my initial thoughts and impressions on what I believe is an interesting setup that I have created for my carry gun, a Glock 26 Gen4. I bought this Glock about a year ago, and even before I bought it I had planned to attach some sort of red dot sight to it. I waffled around considering my different options, and in the end I decided upon the mounting system of the RCS Balor mount, and the Aimpoint H1 Micro for the sight. To help others who are deciding on a red dot system for their handgun I figured I would start a thread.
(Here's some cell phone pics to get us started)
-Why the Balor? Because it looks cool… Seriously though, I chose the Balor because of how solid the mounting platform is. The main body of the mount slides into the Glock’s rear sight dovetail, which is a solid mounting solution, but this mount goes the extra mile by having an additional piece that replaces the old Glock slide cover and screws into the main body of the mount. This provides extra stability and acts as a back up rear sight (those of which I will speak to next). Aside from the stability I like that fact that I haven’t permanently altered my slide.
-Backup Sights: The Balor’s backup sights are backup in every sense of the word. They are low profile and honestly when I raise the gun up into my sight line on draw I don’t even notice them. For me, that’s perfectly fine; I like them being out of the way but knowing that they are there if my H1 goes down makes me feel good. In the future I’m looking forward to having a range session with just using the backups to see what I can do with them actually. A cool design feature is that the front sight is a standard Glock front sight, so you could mount your favorite front sight if you wanted to. (the front sight that comes on it is a white dot, and is made of metal FYI).
-Sight, and dot intensity: I decided upon the Aimpoint Micro because of their extreme ruggedness. Specifically I chose the H1 model with the 4MOA dot. I went with the 4MOA instead of the 2 because I figured it would be faster to pick up on the draw. With a rifle you have your face anchored to the stock so it's almost impossible to miss the dot, but with a pistol I wanted to hedge my bets the best I could. The H1 is certainly heavier than the other red dots commonly seen on pistols, but for me it’s an acceptable trade off for bombproof construction. The H1 has dot intensity settings from 1 all the way up to 12, and I have settled on 9 as the perfect setting for me in a variety of lighting conditions from blinding bright (from my flashlight) to pitch darkness.
(Sight picture, the dot looks much bigger in a camera lens, it's about half that size to my actual eyes)
-Picking up the dot on a draw stroke: It took me about 30 minutes of practice to solidify the smooth acquisition of the dot from a draw. I haven't put it on a timer, and I will be doing dry practice every day to improve speed, but I have got to a point where I know how I need to hold my gun in my hands to ensure that I will see the dot when I lift the Glock to my sight line. Through my dry practice I learned that I would consistently hold the muzzle low at first and I couldn’t see the dot. I then worked to keep my muzzle a little high on the draw and I began to consistently bring the dot into focus as my gun rose to my sight line. At first it felt strange, but it became natural pretty quickly.
-Initial Shooting Impressions: I took the Glock out for the first time yesterday to put 150 rounds through it and man was it fun. After I got it dialed in at 25 feet it was easy to crank rounds out quickly and accurately. My groups at 15 feet were pretty damn good for a first outing and if I pulled a shot I could instantly tell because the dot dipped before the shot broke. Height over bore is something that needs to be considered with this setup too. My shots closer in (around 10 feet) were roughly 1.5 inches below point of aim. Something to keep in mind during training.
(Here's a decent group at 15 feet aside from me pulling to the left and an example of a headshot once I figured out the height over bore)
(Here's a tighter group)
-Manipulating the slide: With how large this package is I experimented on different ways I could run the slide. Running it from the front, near the muzzle was immediately dismissed because I don’t like my fingers being close to the muzzle. Rolling my hand around the slide and wedging my fingers up in front of the mount/optic worked pretty good but my fingers covered the ejection port which I didn’t like either. In the end I’ve decided the best way to go is to grab and yank on the actual optic to manipulate the slide. It keeps my hands away from the ejection port and is easy to do with how large the optic is.
-Concealed Carry: My preferred method of carry is appendix, and the Balor and Aimpoint don’t make concealed carry any more difficult, they add some extra ounces but it’s nothing deal breaking. The “footprint” of the gun is larger now with the addition of the sight but I can still wear the exact same garments that I’ve always used for CCW (Medium T-shirts, collared shirts, jackets), no need for me to go to JC penny to buy bigger shirts.
-Random thoughts: I’m excited to do one- handed, support hand, and just backup sight shooting. I also want to push it out to 100 yards and crank some steel. I want to allow my novice shooting friends to try it too to see what their impressions are. All of this will be along side regular training at closer distances of course.
I hope this post was interesting and helpful for everybody. I hope everyone enjoyed it (I really enjoyed writing it), and if anyone has any questions for me, or advice to give, I would be happy to answer and listen. I would love to hear from those guys who chose different red dots for their pistols to compare their experience. Also I plan to update this in the future as I continue to practice.
Thanks gentlemen.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by gillian_seed
Bookmarks