Joshua M. Smith
Member
I received my rear tech sight for my SKS.
After fitting it, this is how it looks. I'm tempted to just drill and tap to put it on permanently.
After taking it out and shooting it, it became obvious that something wasn't right: It was hitting way too low. I adjusted my front sight all the way down, and it was still hitting about a foot low at 50 yards. (I later found that a minority of SKS carbines have a lower sighting plane than standard. The company knows about this but does not mention it on their website, a practice I find disturbing.)
I filed down the front sight.
You'll notice I reduced the hood to two half circles as well. I'd been wanting to do this anyway because the hood was a bit lopsided and gave it a strange look.
I took out the front sight and put a taper on it, then painted it white for fast acquisition. I've tried smoked sights and they just don't work as well for me when it comes to rapid shooting.
This is what the sight picture looks like now. I'm not ecstatic about how low the front sight appears in the picture.
Though the front sight does appear low, it is not needed for close in shooting.
I might order the conversion kit and fine sight Tech-sights offers. The conversion kit will allow me to adjust the impact height from the back while retaining a normal length front sight.
After more range time, I'm able to tell you how this rear sight does, but first, a disclaimer: I did some fine sighting in, and put a lot of rounds downrange before I shot this target to do so.
I ended up bottoming out my front sight again, and so I'm shooting just a bit low, about 1/4-1/2". My hold was in the middle of the target's bullseye. This should give me right around an inch low at 100 yards according to the ballistics calculator at handloads.com, and about 9 - 11" low at 200 yards. This is with a guessed BC of .25 and a velocity of 2396fps.
On to the shooting, all of which was done prone at 50 yards:
This was my best target with the stock military sights. It should be noted that I can go back to them any time.
Not bad at all, and certainly minute-of-coyote. However, I don't have the best vision - not bad enough for glasses when driving, but certainly not 20/20.
This was today's best, about 2" with one flier.
As mentioned above, this group was fired when I was fatigued. The two separate cloverleaf group are probably due to the fact that I came off the rifle once and shifted my sight picture slightly when I came back on. I didn't realize it at the time - I was laying on asphalt in direct sunlight, shooting into the shade.
Those last four fliers are likely the result of fighting the trigger for the last few shots. The pull on this carbine is heavy, and several years ago I snapped my trigger finger at the knuckle. I literally could not pull back smoothly on the last few shots, and ended up jerking. I'm surprised they didn't fly out further.
As I think back through the guns I've owned, I'm realizing that these are the first peep sights I've ever had, unless you want to count an AR-15 lookalike BB gun. I'm finding that I really do like them. They line up as quickly as a 'scope but seem to be much more rugged than optics.
(As an afterward, I turned the front sight down a bit more and sighted it in a bit less than .5" at 50 yards. This should give me a 100 yard zero. The sight picture is "interesting" but very serviceable: For short distances the post can be ignored and hits can be made using a circle-inside-a-circle picture. If I need to draw a fine bead, their is a nice, sharp sight to reference.)
After fitting it, this is how it looks. I'm tempted to just drill and tap to put it on permanently.
After taking it out and shooting it, it became obvious that something wasn't right: It was hitting way too low. I adjusted my front sight all the way down, and it was still hitting about a foot low at 50 yards. (I later found that a minority of SKS carbines have a lower sighting plane than standard. The company knows about this but does not mention it on their website, a practice I find disturbing.)
I filed down the front sight.
You'll notice I reduced the hood to two half circles as well. I'd been wanting to do this anyway because the hood was a bit lopsided and gave it a strange look.
I took out the front sight and put a taper on it, then painted it white for fast acquisition. I've tried smoked sights and they just don't work as well for me when it comes to rapid shooting.
This is what the sight picture looks like now. I'm not ecstatic about how low the front sight appears in the picture.
Though the front sight does appear low, it is not needed for close in shooting.
I might order the conversion kit and fine sight Tech-sights offers. The conversion kit will allow me to adjust the impact height from the back while retaining a normal length front sight.
After more range time, I'm able to tell you how this rear sight does, but first, a disclaimer: I did some fine sighting in, and put a lot of rounds downrange before I shot this target to do so.
I ended up bottoming out my front sight again, and so I'm shooting just a bit low, about 1/4-1/2". My hold was in the middle of the target's bullseye. This should give me right around an inch low at 100 yards according to the ballistics calculator at handloads.com, and about 9 - 11" low at 200 yards. This is with a guessed BC of .25 and a velocity of 2396fps.
On to the shooting, all of which was done prone at 50 yards:
This was my best target with the stock military sights. It should be noted that I can go back to them any time.
Not bad at all, and certainly minute-of-coyote. However, I don't have the best vision - not bad enough for glasses when driving, but certainly not 20/20.
This was today's best, about 2" with one flier.
As mentioned above, this group was fired when I was fatigued. The two separate cloverleaf group are probably due to the fact that I came off the rifle once and shifted my sight picture slightly when I came back on. I didn't realize it at the time - I was laying on asphalt in direct sunlight, shooting into the shade.
Those last four fliers are likely the result of fighting the trigger for the last few shots. The pull on this carbine is heavy, and several years ago I snapped my trigger finger at the knuckle. I literally could not pull back smoothly on the last few shots, and ended up jerking. I'm surprised they didn't fly out further.
As I think back through the guns I've owned, I'm realizing that these are the first peep sights I've ever had, unless you want to count an AR-15 lookalike BB gun. I'm finding that I really do like them. They line up as quickly as a 'scope but seem to be much more rugged than optics.
(As an afterward, I turned the front sight down a bit more and sighted it in a bit less than .5" at 50 yards. This should give me a 100 yard zero. The sight picture is "interesting" but very serviceable: For short distances the post can be ignored and hits can be made using a circle-inside-a-circle picture. If I need to draw a fine bead, their is a nice, sharp sight to reference.)
