Dear Jim:
After doing some night shooting courses with no night sights on my long gun – ( bad idea 🙁 ) I found XS Sights for long gun tritium retrofits. Fortunately, I was also introduced to their pistol sights for faster day and night sight shooting – 24/7 Express Sights.
You really need to see the photo to appreciate the design, but basically it make the rear notch a very shallow V with a tritium “I” bar in the low center. The front sight is tritium surrounded by a big white dot – so you get the tritium at night, but also a big white dot for faster day and low light shooting (when [the glow of] tritium is not as noticeable). Typical pistol combat distances of 1 to 15 yards you just put the dot on and shoot. Over 15 yards you focus on the top of the dot for a more precise aiming point, and to avoid shooting slightly high.
Having done some Force on Force courses, I realized how valuable making a “flash” sight picture even quicker could be, so I got a set of the Big Dots to test. (Standard size is a compromise – not worth it, go for the Big Dot.)
Bottom line they are significantly faster for combat shooting. These are not precision target sights, but my IDPA accuracy stayed the same in practice and competition. The big improvement was that sight alignment came I’d say roughly 20% faster. Finally won my division in the area match after putting on the XS Express Sights!
I’m taking off my 3-dot tritium sights and retrofitting all my carry pistols with the Big Dot. Regards, – OSOM
Letter Re: Night Sights for Pistols
