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Posted: 2/13/2016 10:32:43 PM EDT
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So I just bought my first AR15. Mind you I was in the Army Infantry and I am very familiar obviously with the M16. We only used the Iron Sights of course. I'm not unfamiliar with the AR15, but what I am not familiar with is having a Sight on my AR15/M16. I just bought and put on a Vortex Spitfire 1X Red Dot. I also have my BUS. Now from everything I have read, you can only 1/3rd CoWitness with the Spitfire and the Iron Sights.
So my questions are.... If I can only use a 1/3rd CoWitness, when I zero in my Spitfire, will I be able to zero in my Iron Sights as well? If not, how do I use my Vortex sight and or my Iron Sights? Will I be able to use either or? Next question, can I use the Red Dot with just the front Iron Sight? Or will that throw off my zero? Sorry if these are unusual questions and I hope I'm not being confusing, but again, I could shoot the hell out of my M16 with the Iron Sights I trained with, but have never ever used a Red Dot sight or any other sight or scope before on a Rifle. So if anyone can help me understand this I would appreciate it. Thanks everyone. |
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Absolute co witness is stupid. It means the dot is in perfect line with your iron sights, and IMO, puts the red dot sight too low on the rifle.
Lower 1/3rd has the iron sights in view, but in the "lower 1/3rd" of the picture you see through your optic. Zero your irons first, no optic installed, then zero your optic. If your optic fails, you can see your irons through it, and they'll be on target. I don't like absolute co-witness because I personally feel it forces me to really get my cheek down onto the stock, where I can bring my rifle up to my shoulder and cheek to the stock more naturally and quickly when using a lower 1/3rd co-witness mount. Your mileage may vary. I have a Vortex Sparc II with lower 1/3rd mount, and it is great. My magpul MBUS are there if SHTF and my sight dies, but they stay folded down in the mean time. |
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I'd suggest since it's a 1/3rd you just zero your Iron sights like you normally would and ignore your optic reticle
Then zero your Spitfire. Like you would a scope normally and when you are doing it disregard the iron sights. Also do you have a Spitfire or a Strikefire? |
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Quoted:
I'd suggest since it's a 1/3rd you just zero your Iron sights like you normally would and ignore your optic reticle Then zero your Spitfire. Like you would a scope normally and when you are doing it disregard the iron sights. Also do you have a Spitfire or a Strikefire? It's the Spitfire 1x |
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Quoted:
Absolute co witness is stupid. It means the dot is in perfect line with your iron sights, and IMO, puts the red dot sight too low on the rifle. Lower 1/3rd has the iron sights in view, but in the "lower 1/3rd" of the picture you see through your optic. Zero your irons first, no optic installed, then zero your optic. If your optic fails, you can see your irons through it, and they'll be on target. I don't like absolute co-witness because I personally feel it forces me to really get my cheek down onto the stock, where I can bring my rifle up to my shoulder and cheek to the stock more naturally and quickly when using a lower 1/3rd co-witness mount. Your mileage may vary. I have a Vortex Sparc II with lower 1/3rd mount, and it is great. My magpul MBUS are there if SHTF and my sight dies, but they stay folded down in the mean time. Thanks for the info. So just so I understand, I will zero my Iron's first without my sight mounted, than once I zero those, mount the sight and zero it? And once I do both, I can either use the Sight, or I can just my Iron's while still being able to have my sight mounted correct? So I would flip up my rear, and just use my irons while looking through my flip up and than looking through my sight at my front sight correct? Is this how I am to understand this? Sorry for my Ignorance, but thanks so much for your help. |
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It's the Spitfire 1x Quoted:
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I'd suggest since it's a 1/3rd you just zero your Iron sights like you normally would and ignore your optic reticle Then zero your Spitfire. Like you would a scope normally and when you are doing it disregard the iron sights. Also do you have a Spitfire or a Strikefire? It's the Spitfire 1x Ok, I was just checking because you said red dot and Vortex makes a Strikefire red dot sight also. You may run into issues with being able to use the irons through the Spitfire but if you can see them just do like I said above and zero them seperately. Another option is finding a quick detach mount for the Spitfire so you can take it on and off easily without tools. A lot of them return to zero just fine. |
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Ok, I was just checking because you said red dot and Vortex makes a Strikefire red dot sight also. You may run into issues with being able to use the irons through the Spitfire but if you can see them just do like I said above and zero them seperately. Another option is finding a quick detach mount for the Spitfire so you can take it on and off easily without tools. A lot of them return to zero just fine. Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
I'd suggest since it's a 1/3rd you just zero your Iron sights like you normally would and ignore your optic reticle Then zero your Spitfire. Like you would a scope normally and when you are doing it disregard the iron sights. Also do you have a Spitfire or a Strikefire? It's the Spitfire 1x Ok, I was just checking because you said red dot and Vortex makes a Strikefire red dot sight also. You may run into issues with being able to use the irons through the Spitfire but if you can see them just do like I said above and zero them seperately. Another option is finding a quick detach mount for the Spitfire so you can take it on and off easily without tools. A lot of them return to zero just fine. Thanks for your help. Another quick question, should I zero my Iron's without my Sight on? Or can I zero my irons with my sight on so long as I can see the front sight through the sight itself? |
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Just remember that both sighting systems remain independent of each other, even though you look at/through one while looking through/at the other.
Sight each one in as if it were the only sight there. If, at the end, the red dot lines up with your irons, OK...if not, it doesn't matter as it's a function of how you aligned the irons versus the dot. |
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Just remember that both sighting systems remain independent of each other, even though you look at/through one while looking through/at the other. Sight each one in as if it were the only sight there. If, at the end, the red dot lines up with your irons, OK...if not, it doesn't matter as it's a function of how you aligned the irons versus the dot. Perfect! Thanks for the Killer. Much appreciated. |
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I want to clarify something here because I think people are misunderstanding what the vortex spitfire is. It is a 1x scope, not a red dot. That is a small but very important difference. As a scope, it has an etched recital, a focal length, and an eye relief. If that eye relief and focus distance is not met, you WILL get optical distortion. Obviously you can't line up a sight directly behind the scope and one directly in front of it and not introduce distortion. Prisim scopes do not cowitness. Red dots do because they are not scopes, they are reflecting an LED off a plane of glass, no eye relief or scope shadow issues.
OP, you should use them as two indepndant systems, zero your irons, install scope, zero it. If you then wish to use irons, remove scope. Cowitness thru a scope instead of a red dot simply doesn't work right. Even if you get it to work, your iron zero thru the scope would be different than the iron zero sans scope because of the distortion. Here is a thread from another forum where someone actually verified this with vortex customer service (I don't think this breaks forum rules, if it does, please remove, just trying to help) Thread on S&W forum |
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Mr. Mitch! Thanks for that info and the other thread you posted. I am new to the whole sight/scope/red dot system. As I stated before in this thread I am an Army Infantry Vet and fired my M16 a Million times, but was always with the stock Iron Sights. I am not nor have I ever been a hunter, so I have never used a scope on a rifle before until I bought this one and used it for the first time today. So I learned a lot by what you said.
I went to the range to sight in my BUS and Scope. I sighted in my Iron sights first, which I did through the Vortex scope without taking it off with no problem. So I'm not sure why it is being said you have to take off the scope to use the iron sights. That was not an issue for me. Than I sighted in the scope itself and everything went perfect. Had a 1 inch grouping with both the scope and iron sights. By the way, I am pretty impressed so far with the Vortex Spitfire 1x scope. I really like it. Thanks for everyone's help here. I have learned a lot! |
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Absolute co witness is stupid. It means the dot is in perfect line with your iron sights, and IMO, puts the red dot sight too low on the rifle. Lower 1/3rd has the iron sights in view, but in the "lower 1/3rd" of the picture you see through your optic. Zero your irons first, no optic installed, then zero your optic. If your optic fails, you can see your irons through it, and they'll be on target. I don't like absolute co-witness because I personally feel it forces me to really get my cheek down onto the stock, where I can bring my rifle up to my shoulder and cheek to the stock more naturally and quickly when using a lower 1/3rd co-witness mount. Your mileage may vary. I have a Vortex Sparc II with lower 1/3rd mount, and it is great. My magpul MBUS are there if SHTF and my sight dies, but they stay folded down in the mean time. You do realize that you are saying that your iron sight height is too low, even though your stock was designed to match that height to provide proper cheek weld for the overwhelming majority of users, right? I agree that a folded front sight is better if you are running a dot. But my agreement is for a different reason: Folded front sight lets you run the dot with absolute cowitness, so that you do preserve the cheek weld and sight plane the designers of our rifle worked so hard to achieve. The only reason to run lower 1/3 cowitness is if you have a fixed front sight and must see over the top, or of your optic has a fixed height and you can't change it. Perhaps another way to realize the benefit of absolute cowitness height, which is 1.4" to 1.5" from rail top to centerline of the optic, is to look at the height if virtually all AR scope mounts. They will be 1.4" to 1.5" above the rail, so that the shooter has proper cheek weld, which is for absolute height irons. Only rarely can you find a higher scope mount, such as LaRue's 1.93" LT 135, which is used only when the scope eyepiece is too large or the rear folded sight too high to use the normal mount height. My question to you, sir, is what height would you run a tactical variable scope? I seriously doubt it would be higher than absolute equivalent. If not, then why are you running your rds differently if you have a folding front sight that does not impede field of view? If you don't have a fixed front sight, keep your sights (all of them, folded, rds or scope) on the same plane at absolute cowitness height and use the same cheek weld and head position every time you mount your rifle. Muscle memory takes over under stress. Keep everything as constant as possible. One optic height for everything means fewer decisions or changes to make when adrenaline takes over and mistakes get magnified. My scope is QD mounted in a standard height 1.5" one piece mount. My rds is QD mounted at the same height, absolute cowitnessed with my backups, front dight kept folded until needed. My cheekweld is as intended and is the same no matter which sighting method I use. |
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MS556! Are you asking me these questions in your post? Or someone else? No, sir! Shoot556. You actually have a 1x scope. Your built in mount is lower 1/3, so you don't have a choice, at least not from Vortex. There may be an aftermarket absolute riser. I don't know. Edit: If you do want the lower absolute height and QD capability, ADM does make a mount that does both for the Spitfire 1x. https://www.americandefensemanufacturing.com/view/product/1201/ |
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Well after zeroing in my Iron Sights and my Scope, I did notice that when I have the reticle off, the etched reticle is in view of my iron sights so that makes it very difficult to use the Iron Sights while I have the Scope mounted. That kinda bums me out as I was hoping to use the Iron sights without the etched reticle being in the way, but once I got the scope sighted in, I'm not able to use my Iron sights with the scope on it, but that's Ok. Maybe I will try another scope/red dot with my AR later that would work better with my Iron Sights.
Thanks for your time and help. |
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Well after zeroing in my Iron Sights and my Scope, I did notice that when I have the reticle off, the etched reticle is in view of my iron sights so that makes it very difficult to use the Iron Sights while I have the Scope mounted. That kinda bums me out as I was hoping to use the Iron sights without the etched reticle being in the way, but once I got the scope sighted in, I'm not able to use my Iron sights with the scope on it, but that's Ok. Maybe I will try another scope/red dot with my AR later that would work better with my Iron Sights. Thanks for your time and help. Yes. I did not understand that you have a fixed front sight |
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