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Dawson Fiber Optic Front Sight vs. Brazos Microdot


baron45

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For those of you who have tried both the Dawson Awsome Fiber Optic Front Sight and Brazos Microdot Fiber Optic Front Sight,which one do you prefer?And why?Also between the Red and Green Fiber optic front Sights,what are the advantages of one over the other?

THANKS.

baron45

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baron45,

I have the Brazos Microdot and can say that is far better than any fiber optic type sight that I've seen. The first thing that I like is that the dot is extremely clear and round. This is done with the forward post being a drilled through hole and focuses the otherwise "bursty" dot down to a clean circle. The other big plus for me is that the dot is big enough to stay in your sight plane when you want to hose and yet small enough to "disappear" when you want to concentrate on the top of the blade for more accurate shooting.

That being said, I have a red rod in now, but will be doing some experimenting with green and amber. The thought is that the red might almost be too bright for precise shooting, and either green or amber might work better without sacrificing full hose capability.

Personally, I think I'll probably stay with red, but imagine green will work out very well too.

Rich

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I've had both, and both are good sights. The Brazos is nice because you can get a precise dot without having to leave one end uncaptured. I don't care for the FO sights where you're looking directly at a melted end - it's very distracting.

However, I had good success with using the Dawson with just melting the muzzle end and leaving the shooter end unmelted. (Which is "wrong", but it worked for me.)

Either way, you'll have a good sight on your gun. Be sure to buy extra fiber. Color is a personal preference.

Installation tip for the Brazos: It's tough to melt the "dot" end with a lighter without heating the shaft of the fiber. Mask the shaft of the fiber with a piece of tinfoil so that you're only heating the "dot" end. Same procedure can be used on the front, if you're nervous about wasting fiber.

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One of our local shooters moved to Florida and took a job with Circue deSoliel as a lighting engineer. His previous job was running the laser show at Stone Mountain amusement park near Atlanta. I mention his background just to say he knows a thing or two about light and how we see it.

One night he was demonstrating some small lasers for me and holding forth with long technical terms that I can't recall due to their complexity and the cold adult beverages we had consumed. He went on to say we as humans see green light "better" than we do red. He had one green and one red laser playing back and forth on my ceiling, and asked which I thought was brighter. "The green one", I said.

"Wrong." In terms of power, it was actually lower then the red, but my/our eyes preceive it as brighter. All told, it was a pretty cool demo.

I know some people have very strong opinions on the color of the FO sights, and I wouldn't try to convince them otherwise but I really did find the green to work better for Me. The light pipes are pretty inexpensive (see http://www.fiberopticproducts.com/Flourescent.htm), so try both and see what works best for You.

Mark R.

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This is true.. the human eye is more sensitive to colors in the green range. However red is 'more different' than typical environmental colors and thus stands out more. Take your pick, try 'em both.

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I had a convo with my gunsmith who said the FBI has done lots of research on color (green v. red), according to him in bright conditions the red actually expands as our eye sees it, green does not, in addition the green can be seen in lower light than the red.

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I currently use the green on my Dawson.

I seemed to be looking at the front sight too much and was sort of losing the target when I shot with it. Does that make any sense?

Kevin

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I seemed to be looking at the front sight too much and was sort of losing the target when I shot with it. Does that make any sense?

Not really. In fact, I just got back from the range - messing with this exact issue today.

Brian's book outlines it best, is the only treatise on the subject I've ever seen, and most of all....is correct. I won't regurgitate it for the Nth time here.

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I seemed to be looking at the front sight too much and was sort of losing the target when I shot with it. Does that make any sense?

Kevin

I'm trying to figure out what you are speaking to...

My best guess is that you are using a type 4 focus most of the time. Meaning, your focus is nearly always on the front sight...even during transitions.

You have to snap your eyes to the next target, your eyes will be ahead of the gun. When the gun catches up, then you want to pull the vision back to the front sight.

It seems like you might have been keeping your vision on the front sight the whole time (not just during shooting). That is slow. You won't find the next target very quickly if you do that.

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My opthomologist said the same thing Ima45DV8 said about green light and the human eye. My doctor said the human eye sees the green much better than red. He explained that is why night vision goggles display everything in green. As a result, I use the Brazos sight with the green filament. I really like the defined dot of the Micro-dot sight.

Jack

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I seemed to be looking at the front sight too much and was sort of losing the target when I shot with it.  Does that make any sense?

Kevin

I'm trying to figure out what you are speaking to...

My best guess is that you are using a type 4 focus most of the time. Meaning, your focus is nearly always on the front sight...even during transitions.

You have to snap your eyes to the next target, your eyes will be ahead of the gun. When the gun catches up, then you want to pull the vision back to the front sight.

It seems like you might have been keeping your vision on the front sight the whole time (not just during shooting). That is slow. You won't find the next target very quickly if you do that.

Man, I must have deleted a line or two from my original post!

What I meant was that I started with the red and my eyes were seeing nothing but the red optic and not enough target. So therefore I switched to green.

Kevin

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