Low/no light shooting

**Diamondback** · 11-17-23, 22:03

If you wear corrective optics might be a good idea to train without them occasionally too... you may not remember or have time to grab your glasses or put in contacts when Things Go Bump In The Night, and I can't really recommend sleeping on your back and never taking 'em off like I do. (Granted, I'm on a round-the-clock schedule so my sleep is 90 minutes a a time rather than straight-through, but... yeah, can't recommend that either.)

**polydeuces** · 11-18-23, 09:49

Getting older and your vision going to crap.
An issue worthy of a separate discussion; 'work-arounds' and solutions.
Another reason why a good weapon light is a must.

**polydeuces** · 11-27-23, 20:47

Circling back to Marks' question:
Low light No light Pistol, another take-away: night sights are useless.

Caveat - my eyesight, especially at night, has taken a serious dump. Therefore the following is based on MY experience:

Using bright weapon light to 'paint' the target (i.e you can see whats safely deemed to be a target in a somewhat hi-stress situation) they are strongly backlit rendering their 'tritium' etc function negligible - any regular iron sight would serve.

Only time I can see that 'bright tritium front dot' was when it was dark enough, light off, meaning I can no really safely id my target.
They no longer have any real world use for me.

Again - this is my 'reality'; you may have a different experience.

**markm** · 11-28-23, 07:46

Originally Posted by polydeuces

Circling back to Marks' question:
Low light No light Pistol, another take-away: night sights are useless.

Almost COMPLETELY Usless! If you're using them, you can't possibly also have positive target identification. I qualify that with "almost" because there could be a rare set of conditions where the night sights combine with partial lighting, or for some reason you're firing from a dark room into a lighted area. But come on... I NEVER spend money on tritium sights. Plus most h0m0s are going to dot sights anyway.

**MegademiC** · 11-28-23, 08:18

My tritium sights were bright enough to stick out on a cloudy day. Very useful until i switched to rds. I wont buy them again since they suck for NV use.

Uh-oh, did I just come out? Lmao!

**polydeuces** · 11-29-23, 21:14

Originally Posted by titsonritz

Low/no light shooting is a must in my book. These I"ve been playing with NV but before that it was white light all the way.
One of the drills we do is work with several black targets, either painted and/or clothed black, and paint cheap dollar tree type guns black and place them on wires hanging from a few of the target. The goal is to ID the armed bad-guys and shoot them and not smoking any of the non-armed good-guys, missing a bad-guy mean your dead. It can be pretty challenging seeing the black pistols against black threats and it requires a top notch light to make it happen reliably. I've been very happy with my Modlite OKW and PLHv2 lights, they blow the doors off my SF dual fuel.

Just read your post; sounds like a real (fun) challenge.
(Lets face it - NVG is just not obtainable for the 99% of us....;-)

Wanted to ask,
At what distance were you running these drills?
And in your experience what would be a realistic 'max' distance to run no/low light light drills; is there a minimum output/type of light - pistol/rifle, etc?
Any other takeaways?

Thought my gear was mostly squared away in whats considered real world - 'intruder in house', 'close and personal' type scenarios; but once I actually started running drills and extending range clearly I was not.
Convinced this goes for the majority of us - we simply don't practice in this environment and are unprepared for this essential skill set.

**HKGuns** · 11-30-23, 08:35

Kind of off topic, however, not worthy of its own thread.

I was engaged in skunk warfare with my clip on thermal late one night. I noticed the thermal screen really screws up your night vision when not looking through the scope.

Do any of you night shooters have any mitigation advice?

**Pappabear** · 11-30-23, 09:46

Shot a couple stages last night in low light, one moving other stationary. Its kinda good to have to get light out, turn on and go to work. Glad this indoor match is adding some value.

PB

**MegademiC** · 12-03-23, 11:08

Originally Posted by HKGuns

Kind of off topic, however, not worthy of its own thread.

I was engaged in skunk warfare with my clip on thermal late one night. I noticed the thermal screen really screws up your night vision when not looking through the scope.

Do any of you night shooters have any mitigation advice?

Try putting a red lense or film over the ocular.

Red doesnt impact your NV nearly as much as white