Gaznazdiak wrote:I have seen military rifles with a red dot type sight mounted onto a scope, presumably as a short range, target of opportunity type arrangement.
Does anyone here have such a setup?
Is it worth the expense? Are there any non-obvious drawbacks to such a configuration?
Doesn't have to be mounted off the scope, and I prefer to separate them so whatever knocked out your primary scope has hopefully not affected your back-up as well. I've tried red dot, reflex, back-up irons, and even fine-focus torches and lasers as secondary sights. I've also mounted scopes that don't obstruct the OEM iron sights. I've always come back to back-up iron sights, but I don't shoot in the dark or poor light. The reflex and red dots lack precision even under bench conditions, but for snap shots at medium game at sub-scope ranges they'd be fine - say 30m or less. The red dot's are bulky things to be hanging off the rifle though. The reflex is much smaller. One problem for me with the reflex is that you need to have it switched on all the time, I think some red dot's require power to see a reticle as well. If I could rig up a switch on the grip so I could have it come on only when required that would work better.
I have a 2000Lm torch that can be focused down to a square-meter of light at 50m, so at very close ranges it could be effective on medium or large game, much like a laser. But both of these don't work if you have to lead your target, if you're aiming ahead of your target you can't see it. The laser is visible in daylight to 100m when target shooting, but far, far less under field conditions.
But flip-up iron sights mounted at 45-degrees to the right of the scope are very compact, and there all the time, even when you remove a broken scope, and they don't require batteries. I prefer to mount both over the action. This gives a pistol-like sight radius but doesn't require hanging the front sight off the barrel. You can also carry pic-rail back-up sights off the rifle and mount them only if your scope is knocked out, without significant loss of zero. This also true of red dot and reflex sights though.