Red Dot Optics Overview

[Music] foreign [Music] McGill with the GlockStore performance and custom shop right here in beautiful San Diego California it's a beautiful day summer is about to begin and today we're going to talk about Red Dot Optics also known as Red Dot sights or just red dots the reason that I want to talk about these is because we're seeing so much traffic for the Red Dot sighting concept that um uh you know I felt well let's do an overview of why you want to go Red Dot and how you can get from point A to point B there's a couple different ways to do it and then eventually uh you know also kind of compare some of the top brands that we carry and we carry all the top brands but um you know really kind of just look at it from that bird's eye view later on and some other videos I'll do individual videos for each and every single one of these red dots that we're going to talk about but right now let's talk about the Red Dot concept and why would you would go to Red Dot and I will tell you this there's really a very simple answer because it's faster and better than iron sights all right that's bold statement right the Red Dot is a faster and better sighting system than the traditional iron sights or three dot sighting system or front post and notch no matter how you call it that's old technology Red Dot is new technology the advantages are it's quicker faster and easier for those of us who are a little older to get an accurate sight picture because of our older eyes now see the older eyes are the fact that you can have you're having trouble focusing on the front sight even if you're a younger guy the Red Dot is faster but if you're certainly having any trouble with vision you have trouble focusing on the front sight because you just can't get that gun far enough away to focus on it uh bottom line is the Red Dot is one thing you look through so that's the true Advantage now the disadvantage is that it is usually or typically battery operated in the sense that it takes power to create the laser that's going to shine into this window so let's talk about that concept for a second because there's a lot of things that keep in mind people sometimes think that the Red Dot projects itself down onto the Target and that's not true that's a laser and we do sell laser light Combos and lasers alone that's a different standard of uh of sighting and different style sighting this is a red dot optic and the concept is that the Red Dot is generated right here and the base of the site and IT projects a red dot into this window and what happens is you are able to through these adjustment screws to adjust the position of that red dot in the window to line up with where the bullet lands at a predetermined distance so you can say well I think most of my shooting is going to be at 20 yards or I think most of my shooting is going to be at 15 yards or 10 yards or 50 yards you would set it in for that particular distance and then play a little Kentucky windage either a hold over or hold under based upon a shorter or longer distance all right but the bottom line is uh it's it's really easy because it's just one dot so it's not crosshairs or anything like that you really just have the one dot and so the concept is that there's a battery that powers a laser that throws a laser and projects it up into the glass and it stops on the glass doesn't go down and wherever that laser is or that dot is that's where the bullet will go once you have it cited in it's pretty darn phenomenal and uh pretty amazingly accurate I mean it's just incredible now you're going to find throughout this selection of red dots that the dot size is usually specified always specified on the package itself so as an example let's pick up this Trijicon because they're a big name the Trijicon on their label itself will say right here 3.25 MOA all right for you rifle Shooters you understand that MOA stands for minute of angle now for the Red Dot what that means that the 3.25 that the Red Dot at a hundred yards look at that okay when you project that red dot at 100 yards that means that red dot is going to represent 3.25 inches so let's take that one step further and say well for pistol if I bring that in in closer okay it's going to be even smaller so that 3.25 inch dot at say uh let's say 30 yards will represent approximately one inch get it a third of a hundred is 30 yards 33 yards eh but uh let's just say 30 yards we'll represent approximately a hundred excuse me one inch so the size of the dot makes a difference based upon the style of shooting you're doing if you're a combat style USPSA shooter and you want uh to see a brighter dot a bigger dot because you need it for your eyes you want to be you'll be shooting outside a lot and you want that bigger dot you may opt to go with the six MOA so that would look kind of like this if I take this Viper Venom and you look down here and in there in a small fine print I could bring it up to you go focus on it it says 6 m o a and again that represents the size of that dot at 100 yards it's basically six inches however bring it back to one quarter of that say 25 yards and one quarter of six is 1.5 inches get it so if I'm shooting you know at 25 yards in a pistol competition uh that dot represents just 1.5 inches so MOA is really something you want to really consider because anything closer than that that dot is actually a smaller even by the same fraction okay so if I take that dot all the way into 10 yards okay then it's basically now one tenth of that six inches so it's actually 0.6 inches at 10 yards hope you follow all that but the concept being is the Moa really dictates the size of the DOT that you see so forget about the hundred yards and forget about all the differences there if you like a bigger Dot then you would certainly just go with a six or even a 7.5 I didn't see much bigger than that there are some 12s out there too I think critical makes it 12. but most pistol Shooters who are competition guys want a smaller dot because they still want that precise accuracy a lot of older guys like me will take a bigger dot because it's just brighter and you know what at 10 yards and if we just go with the math I just did and the dot represents uh what is it 0.6 uh uh you know one-tenth say of that you know a half an inch basically it's no big deal you know I mean you know hey you know half inch here half inch there now it would be half that size if it was up three MOA so I mean certainly uh it's something to consider but the bottom line is think about the size of dot you want and we'll go ahead now and kind of detail all these sites now that we kind of got that out of the way because that's one of the things you're going to look at you're going to see well you know dmoa what does that mean well I hope I described it a little bit it means a lot more too for rifle Shooters okay but basically what that is standing again is that you know that that's the the size of the dot at 100 yards now you would use that you know say that if you wanted a 6 MOA and you wanted to move over six inches just move the dot over just one one notch in a sense one one position over and that would be your Kentucky windage thing so again you know it's not that big of a deal our bottom line is right now is that you understand that smaller dot is three MOA bigger dot is six MOA why would I choose one well if you want accuracy precise accuracy you go with the point uh the three uh MOA you want you know faster you want to be able to see that site faster you want it to be brighter you want it to be bigger uh for your eyes or for whatever reason you go with a bigger Dot all right there's several manufacturers that we carry I've got six of them represented here and then we're going to talk about how to actually Mount that red dot onto your slide first of all let's go through these real quick the big dog in a whole room here is the Trijicon site Trijicon has been around for a while they in fact uh are one of the uh you know kind of inventors of this concept uh I I want to say that are probably not accurate there but I do know they came out in the game really early with uh their site it's been around forever hasn't changed it looks like this forever they do have a new color now this is an FTE that's also available in Black uh it's cool I mean I have to be honest uh Trijicon it works a lot of people ask a question at the show they say gee you know when the slide is reciprocating doesn't that throw the dot off and the answer is no because these guys have their act together they've engineered all the electronics so that it does not move when the gun is recoiling all right so keep that in mind okay so uh the um Red Dot Optics uh nowadays most of the ones that are from these reputable companies they're going to last so there's no questions about the Integrity of the product or the longevity of the product they do last I mean they work well Trijicon big name big price tag but it cannot go wrong with that I mean that is just a great site and like I said this available in many different configurations about five or six or maybe even eight different varieties of this particular site you'll notice underneath here is where the battery gets installed that's kind of a negative for some people because you have to take the site off the mount to actually change the battery and I get it you know that's no fun you know but you know bottom line is uh that you know is something they may want to redesign later because you're going to see some of the newer sites have addressed that particular situation uh one in particular here is the Delta Point another uh very uh highly engineered uh reputable company is Leopold made makes this Delta point this thing is awesome I mean really look at the wider uh well I guess I'll say window okay that's a big wide window compare that to the Trijicon let me put these both here like that and you'll get to see what I'm talking about okay and if I get my hand straight and maybe I can make it a little there you go and so this is just a bigger window here with this uh loophole and they actually uh have you know come to Market in a big way all these sites are going to have holes there you see the holes in the top that's how it's mounted to the mounting mechanism you choose Leopold of course is a big brand name and site's been around for a long time these guys have made a top tier product it is expensive I think it's even more expensive than the trigger gun or some of them at least but you know what you know what's going to work uh it's beautiful and it has some great features to it one of the things they did do is they put the battery window up here on top so you don't have to take it off to change the battery that's you know very convenient another one to look at uh is Seymour now Seymour has been around forever okay I mean I'm talking since the 80s uh they've got a lot of competition guys you know who started using these sites this is their sts-2 it's the a smaller version uh and it's Slimline and very lightweight very robust this is a good company they're not one of the huge names it's Seymour you know I mean that's what they're called Seymour this is a 6moa as well uh what I've noticed is a lot of pistol Shooters you know guys who want to shoot fast and and furiously are going to go to the the 6moa uh most of the rifle guys who are you know shooting 100 yards and out they're going to go to that smaller Dodge the 3moa or even even a 2.5 if they can find it so uh Seymour is another brand name that we carry I tell you what uh nothing bad to say they've got a tray over here that comes out for the battery so again you don't have to take it off to replace the battery I think I failed to mention that all the sites that we're talking about typically have an up and down arrow on the side up is to turn the brightness up or to turn the uh the the laser on and down as I turn the laser off or to you know to dim it a little bit so up and down uh you know pretty self-explanation but uh just something to point out uh some of these have different features will automatically go off by themselves some automatically come on there's a lot of neat things that people have tried to build into Theirs to make it a little unique uh but uh again the concept is all the same one of the other ones I want to show you here is the jpoint this is their uh microelectronic reflex sight also known as a red dot this thing is Tiny and super lightweight I mean it is uh you know probably the lightest weight at all and um you know jpoint uh has been around for a while the you know the JP Precision rifles uh you know these guys JPB Enterprises and you know have been doing this for a long time um they've got a battery underneath because you have to take this off to put it back on there's your two uh holes right there uh you know they've done some neat things they have like a little rear Notch built into theirs which is kind of fun and kind of neat uh none of the other sites have that it's a plastic body and the electronics are just tiny it's amazing what they've done and these guys are one of the newer players so uh they've got a four MOA on theirs all right and you know one of the things to uh remember is you know hey this JP guy he does great stuff and so I I have not had a lot of experience with this but I've only heard really good things about it that's why we're carry it because we know you know he's got some you know good engineering he's not going to put out any junk this thing's going to work it's going to last for you it's a good option if you really want the super lightweight option here's two newcomers as well uh newcomers in the Red Dot field basically they've been around for you know I mean just a handful of years uh and um I really like these a lot Vortex is a name that's been around for a long time the Red Dot concept is really just getting fired so all these companies are kind of getting into it they have developed two uh really high-end uh Red Dot Optics that I believe are are awesome uh one is the the Viper and the other one is the Venom uh they're both by Vortex and you'll notice here uh there's really some differences uh I've got the Venom over here and the Viper here uh uh and um you know bottom line is just a I think you're gonna find a little bit wider window on the um Venom then on the Viper not much but just a little a little bigger window yeah and um you know my initial thought was well you know probably want to put that Venom on a rifle on put the Viper on a uh on a handgun but I'm seeing traction on both of them in fact the one thing I like about the Venom is that it's got the battery window on top so again you don't have to take the site off to change a battery now you don't have to change the battery that often don't don't let that scare you or talk you out any of these sites but yeah you know it just think about you know once you get it mounted do you want to unmount it and do it all over again no you know that maybe that's once a year but you know something to consider so the Venom is super hot and this Viper is super out they're both you know great sites Venom is going to be a little heavier than the Viper uh uh but um you know really same profile and um uh you know same company just a little different uh look with a little larger window on the Venom uh they're both available in three or six moas and I'm going to show you that I've got this Viper mounted on one of my guns here shortly so um that's kind of a look at some of the sites we we talked about and I do want to say one thing here each of these uh sites the Red Dot Optics have the two holes we talked about that and these holes are designed to mount it into your particular uh what's the word in your particular system whether you uh have it onto the frame or on the slide itself or you have a mount or or you have a uh a picatinny rail system whatever bottom line is this is how it attaches um the interesting thing about this is that these holes are different for each manufacturer so kind of you know you have to make sure you know which manufacturer you're going to get before you go through the different mounting systems so that's really important to keep in mind because they don't match up so if you were to cut your slide which we'll talk about here in just a second for a Vortex and then you wanted to put a an RMR on there well it's not going to work so that said let's talk about how do you go from here here's the site I love this thing I want to put it on my handgun to basically here here it is mounted this is that Viper I talked about this is a vortex Viper you can see it's pretty darn awesome and gun is unloaded of course I don't have it turned on yet but I will turn it on here shortly it just looks great there you go get a little light on that thing and the cool thing about this particular setup is I've got a co-witness with the tall Trijicon suppressor sites all right and so I'm able to look through the glass and in order to do that I have to cut the slide down so I can set the slight the site down very low so here it is this is a slide cut for a red dot optic and we offer these in our machine shop which we'll take a look at shortly so bottom line is uh for you to get here you would send us your slide or we would build you a separate slide which we do for a lot of people by the way and we would Mount the particular Red Dot and send it back to you ready to go you just build it up or we'll have it completely build up for you and boom there it goes so that's one way to mount and you'll notice that we saved the rear dovetail Channel as well as the front so you can do a co-witness should you desire now why would you do a co-witness well the purist would say well what if your battery fails then you still have backup sites that's pretty cool okay the other option is is that because you're looking through these sites kind of what you're traditionally used to and there's a red dot sitting right on top of it kind of gives you that extra positive feedback that wow I'm right on target let me squeeze the trigger so it's it's kind of a neat thing to have the Red Dot co-witness with the iron sights so you may want to think about that as an option and again looking through the window here you can see what I'm talking about there I can see my traditional site picture and let me turn this site on real quick I'll go ahead and I'll push the up bar a button and I should be able to see that there it is okay it's pretty not that bright right now let me give it a couple more clicks and get it to be a little brighter there we go okay I'll see if I can get a get you to see the Red Dot now you're not going to see the Red Dot as I would see it usually it comes in there and it's just a big red dot like that all right there it is okay so there's the Red Dot and that's kind of the concept now the Red Dot that I'm seeing uh because of video and the way this thing works that's not what you see inside when you look through it here you actually see a small red dot that's half the size of that guy right there of the front sight post all right now one of the things I want to tell you about real quick before we go too much further there's oftentimes at the show I'll have people actually grab a gun these are guys who shot a lot of handguns and they'll actually look and they'll look out and they say I don't see the site I don't see it I don't see it I don't see it I say look go ahead and just tilt down just a little bit just take your grip and just take it down just a little bit and you'll see it and you know what oh there it is now why is that well because the Red Dot is higher than your traditional iron sights so there's a little bit of offset there you have to get used to so when you come up you're actually pointing the gun down just a little bit just so you can see that red dot if you go to your normal stance and you you pop that that uh that that site out there you know the gun is is up here and the Red Dot is up here you can't really see it so I tell people just just come up and just come tilt it down just a little bit and that's part of getting used to a red dot optic is learning how to mount it so that the Red Dot is where you want it to be and it's pre-aligned so you got to take a little bit of time to get from your older position of mounting the gun or presenting the gun to the Target to your newer now position which is just slightly down I mean I'm talking about just it's here to I mean here's here's a normal and I don't necessarily see it then here and there it is I mean it's here and here it's like that much it's it's just maybe an eighth or a quarter of an inch that I've got to just tilt my wrist down a little bit and then I know that that red side is a red dot is right where I want it to be okay so now uh getting again from Red Dot to your particular amount there's a couple other ways we can go one we talked about the uh you know is in reality the best option is to uh Mill the slide down it's permanent okay you can't go back but it allows the site to sit lower which also reduces that offset we just talked about that's why we talked about it so you don't have to tilt down quite as much because the higher that site gets up there the more you have to compensate your grip to bring that Barrel that muzzle down to match up with what that where that site's aiming okay so that said uh uh the other option to mount to your slide that you can do at home is what we call a dovetail Mount or a version of that dovetail Mount so let me show you how that works I've got three maybe four options right here this is a universal plate check this thing out it's made by strike uh there are a lot of holes there because these sets of holes marry up to different sites imagine that huh so they've got them all listed on their box here and this one actually let's see here it says uh Dr Burris Fast Fire EOTech Trijicon and Leopold Delta point and many others so what's interesting is that the Burris has the same hole pattern as the vortex sites so keep that in mind if you're if you're thinking about a Vortex and you it says burst it'll definitely work here's what here's what's really cool about this thing on the back side is the um dovetail notch and a couple screws there too so keep that in mind because they are helpful in truing this thing up so that dovetail Notch now will slide right into the rear sight and there you go now you're going to get with this uh piece the ability to tighten these things up so it tightens this up so it doesn't move as well as tighten this one up here and tighten this one up here just crank those down so you're basically forcing this screw down forcing that up against the dovetail and locking this in place so that's how you mount that thing and then of course you take your sights let's just take these uh this Viper here and drop it on you find the holes and there they are and that'll match up and I don't know if you can see that in there but uh let's see if we get a little light in there and you can see how well now you can't but there are those two holes right there one two it just matches up right like so and there you go you see a little bit of silver back there from the uh from the slide so that's the concept so this is a fairly simple method and what's really neat about this method is you can always take it back off and throw on your iron sights if you want to so there's something to think about now there's a couple other variations that you should be aware of here's another thing from Strike Industries now this one is very robust and check this out I mean this thing is is like a tank it has a picatinny rail now all these sites usually have a picatinny rail adapter so keep that in mind okay but you know again you also keep in mind the picatinny rail will uh increase the height of this thing a little bit so uh that first method is there okay here you go there I've got that slid in same concept okay it has a dovetail so I slide it in so you see the hole back in the back here and then here's a slide cover plate that goes up into there and you can see how it actually will marry up and you'll throw one of the screws right through there to Anchor this down so this gives you really just another point of anchor to Anchor this picatinny rail on top of your slide it's that cool and that's one of the ways to get from point A to point B so certainly a couple options uh of course Trijicon you know they know about this too and so they do make a uh their own plate that works for their own particular uh uh site it's heavy uh which is good it's steel uh this one is is going to be a tight fit uh you're going to go ahead and uh and have to beat this in with a hammer more than likely and then uh once you get your sights on it uh you're gonna see that these two holes are actually going to marry up with the holes up there in their plate and then you'll come all the way down and you'll actually attach you basically force it down onto the slide so those screws will push up and further capture this plate onto the rail so that's trijicon's option and Trilogy you know is again that's that's the big Hefty plate and it's made only for us to come as you would you would expect and there's one other one that's also a proprietary and that's made by Seymour they've got their own plate for the their own site it's a little different system kind of funky but certainly effective and basically involves a a dovetail bar that goes in take these screws out you put this thing down on top like so I'll bring it out here and then you put this guy right on top of it goes like so and then it snaps into place and you screw your screws down it actually captures it as well not the best one in the world but uh certainly another option if you want to do that for the Seymour now again what we do I think is the best way is we actually Mill the slide down let's go look at our machine shop right now all right this is our machine shop it's here on the premises here in San Diego come on let's go look at it now we do a lot of this work in-house as you know and uh over here I want to show you some of our uh our slides uh this is Brandon our Master machinist thank you Brandon here's some slides we're doing right now for some of our customers all right they're out uh they've sent their slides in from uh you know basically all around the country now some of these uh in particular this slide I think right here is one we're cutting for uh Hammond we're gonna build it up and send it off so this is one of our blank slides that we uh we sell and we're gonna we're gonna actually mount a red dot on it but you'll see we've got all these and I've got all these ready to be coming and here's what we do right here in the back we're cutting away foreign I'm telling you if you're looking to get your slide cut get on the phone get set up send your slide in or we'll build a slide for you and we'll get it done and uh Brandon will take good care of you right yeah all right let's go back to the studio all right we're back now to the studio from the Machine Shop hope you can see that we are able to help you get your slide from here to here the key is to know exactly which Red Dot optic you're going to mount and it's easy you can send us your slide or we can build you one up from scratch here using either one of our gspc designs this is our the Viper this is our Ranger cut or another pyramid cut uh it depends on which one you want to do I mean we've got lots of them or we can do a combination of them or we can just do the Red Dale Red Dot optic by itself we do a lot of those and as you've seen right there at the Machine Shop they're just all lined up people send their guns in because like I said earlier in the very beginning this is a Hot Topic and there's a reason because it is faster it is more fun and you know what it's a lot easier for those of us with older eyes that said there's one other method I want to show you for the actual mounting we talked about the Red Dot optic cut we talked about the different dovetail mounts and now there's actually another methodology that a lot of people think is better because it allows you to mount a red dot optic that does not reciprocate or move and these are basically mounts okay so there's a couple different versions you can see what's going on here all right this is a picatinny rail rail mount here you can see how it's going to fit onto uh your gun like so and basically allow you to capture this on the gun with the holes and using some special pins that they give you to capture this onto the sliders or the the frame itself and therefore be able to see how these things line up okay be able to have a rail system above the slide so here's another one same concept this goes into the trigger housing pin back here boom and this thing's going to sit up about yay as this pin matches up with the Locking block pin okay that's kind of how that works and there's your ejection port and all that stuff they're made for special guns in different sizes so I don't know if I've got the right one I'm just showing you the concept here's one that's a little easier to comprehend and to see the uh the concept that it slides on the rail down below and then we'll lock into place with that and then once you squeeze this shut and you mount your your picatinny rail mount on top for the site the site will sit up here this is cool because again a lot of people think well gee I don't really want that slide moving because I got to track it with my eye and if they saw if the slide reciprocates without the Red Dot I'll have a little bit of chance to keep my eye on the Red Dot as the gun is cycling that makes sense right okay uh these guys thought of everything not only do they have this but they also have a holster that will accommodate this okay so this holster because once you put this on here it's going to be hard to holster it so they actually made a holster that actually lines up with this particular deal there so it's a pretty neat little system uh the only challenge I have with these guys is by the time you actually Mount your site up here and you do that see the difference in in height so let's go this way here and so now my offset is not uh say an inch inch and a half it's two two and a half inches so I've got to really set myself uh able to kind of tilt that gun down just a little further just so I can line that side up with the point of aim of that laser at these pistol distances which are typically 10 yards 15 yards 20 Max for most USPSA competition now there's some 50 yard shots but not many so that being the said that being said this system is good because again it offers you the ability to take it off without any kind of interference there but if you uh you know really want The Best of Both Worlds it would be the co-witness option and that's what I think uh you know I think is really the best option that's why I built this one this is my compact 80 build with the new textured compact frame and uh this is a Glock slide we've done an MP3 finish I refinished it because once you cut into the metal you always want to refinish it because it will Rust even here in Southern California for those uh people who try to save a little extra money because they now don't finish it just leave it cut because you can't really see it because the slide covers it all up hey I get it I know you want to save the money but in the long run no matter what it's going to rust and we've had guys come back two or three months later who say yeah it's starting to rust and you refinish it so we prefer to cut them refinish them you can refinish them in black and gold in this np3 which I really like or a variety of other cerakote finishes that's going to protect the Finish or the the Integrity of the slide won't rust and also you know make it look look pretty cool and pretty awesome which is always fun as well so you know the Red Dot optic again if you're thinking about it uh it's time because as you start to see when your friends are out there or whoever's out there shooting they will be a little bit faster shooting will be a little bit easier and they will have better scores because that's the way the Red Dot works I mean to be honest all the top shooters in the open category use red dot Optics I'm letting me go this is the GlockStore performance at custom shop and we're here to help you get the Red Dot of your choice and get it mounted exactly the way you want it mounted if you have any questions don't hesitate to call the guys up there you know we've got six or eight guys on the phone at any one time who understand these Concepts understand you know what's best you know I mean and can give you some suggestions based upon what you're trying to accomplish you know if you if you don't want to spend the money to do this there's a lot of other ways to go because these mounts are much less expensive than the Red Dot cut you don't have to refinish so just a couple things to think about thanks for watching see you next time [Music]

Channel: GlockStore

Views: 1,061,245

Keywords: lenny magill, magill's glockstore, glock, red dot optics, trijicon, C-more, Vortex, handgun sights, competition sights, competition shooting

Id: d0Nk3HYw1VE

Length: 36min 8sec (2168 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2017