How are you zeroing your pistol dots? (Page 2 of 2)
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Get the normal offhand shooting grip and arm position and just use a bag to remove wobble at 15 yards. You wont have a different POI vs offhand if you can shoot well to begin with and use your same hand positions with only light bag pressure resting straight down on your wrists and magazine. Don't dig in or overly rely on the bag. MAKE SURE you shoot with the dot in the CENTER of the window and dont cowitness irons or anything else while zeroing. These MRDS are not parallax free. 10 yard zero is too high at distance. 25 yard zero does not quite reach to 50 yards and has excessive hold overs in close. I fire a 5 round group. I must hit a minimum of 3 of the rounds into a 1" target at 15y but 4 minimum is preferred if the pistol is capable. Then I shoot at 25y to confirm the group is high, but not more than 1/2" high at 25y with an equal left/right distribution at 25y. This is the only way to really know you are on the correct click of adjustment. If you have to shoot 10 or 30 shot groups to know your group center, you just cant shoot worth a damn and the zero is probably not going to be correct no matter what you do IMO. Finally, zero with your duty ammo, not FMJ. FMJ is just for getting close when you zero. |
| If I’m starting from scratch then a couple shots freehand at 5yds to get close. Then move to 10yds and fine tune offhand. Afterwards I’ll shoot at 25yds to see my impact. Then move on to training. I’m lousy off a rest or sandbags and if I zero off bags my offhand poi is way off. |
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Originally Posted By Jambalaya: One of the things you seldom read about is the actual process of zeroing RDS on handguns. I have been supporting the barrel (dust cover) and the butt of the grip with sandbags for stability and shooting at targets at a precisely measured 25 yards (I use a roll up fiberglass tape measure to locate my target stand). I have read that other people just shoot offhand. And folks with co-witnessed irons sometimes just line up the dot with the irons and don't even shoot. I use a laser bore sight to get close and then touch up the adjustments at the range using the sandbags as described above. What's your process? I do this. Instead of a roll-up tape measure, I use a range finder. When zeroing from the bench, make sure you bring the gun up to eye level and sit with your chest erect and as close to a "normal" shooting position as possible. My first time zeroing an optic, I scrunched my body down to meet the gun instead of elevating the gun rest/bags to meet my eyes. The zero was off and I didnt understand why. Aaron Cowan of Sage Dynamics covered that exact issue in a youtube video and in a class. Bottom line was that if you're scrunched down into a strange contorted position to zero the gun, it will be off by a bit. In my case, several inches. |
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Originally Posted By hsvhobbit: If I’m starting from scratch then a couple shots freehand at 5yds to get close. Then move to 10yds and fine tune offhand. Afterwards I’ll shoot at 25yds to see my impact. Then move on to training. I’m lousy off a rest or sandbags and if I zero off bags my offhand poi is way off. If your offhand and rested POIs change, you probably want to look at your technique as the zero from a rest, with no human error, is the true zero. If your POI changes, you have a problem with you and changing the gun to fix it won't fix it. |
| I laser bore sight and then start at 10yds and move out to 25. Usually offhand but recently with a tripod supporting my hands with a towel in the yoke. I find the tripod really speeds up the process. I use cheap bulk to get ballpark and then carry ammo to verify. |
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Line up with irons, fire five rounds at 10 yards, adjust. Fire five more at 15 yards, adjust and fire another group to verify zero. Then test at 25, windage should be right on and the group a little high if you did everything right. |
Can't believe I actually said "scrotum lady" out loud. - Agent Funky
Zero to DeeJ in about 5 posts. - Troutman84
Zero to DeeJ in about 5 posts. - Troutman84