Loads of Balls!

Item Name: Meprolight ML-10224 TRU-DOT Night Sight System for Glock 9 mm, .357 Sig, .40 & .45 GAP Pistols
Item Type: Sights
Cost:£52 including postage from Rockyourglock.com
Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Introduction

Most of us have played Call of Duty, or another game series in which the pistols had sights that glowed green faintly in darkened rooms. Until I got into airsoft I thought it was just something the developer's added for that "cool factor", however on buying a KSC Glock and reading this guide all that would change:

The Definitive Guide to the KSC Glock Platform

To my glee (and my bank account's groan) I discovered that KSC Glocks can be fitted with real sight systems, so I thought I'd give it a crack. What follows is my initial findings on these sights, and as this review is getting on for 9 months old I'll update it with my thoughts on them after all that time airsofting.

Throughout this review I use the acronym RS - meaning Real Steel, a term (often interchangeable with Real Deal) for parts and equipment manufactured for real firearms or for real combat, as opposed to for airsoft.

Background

Meprolight are a manufacturer of RS sighting systems (amongst other things) - they manufacture the tritium lamps that Glock use in their own sights. Amongst the cheapest (and according to the RS forums), brightest and (according to the majority of RS users that i could find) best night sights on the market.

Meprolight manufacture these sights in three colour options - Green, Green Front/Yellow Rear, Green Front/Orange Rear, with the orange rear being significantly more expensive.

After reading on Airsoft Retreat that KSC Glocks can take RS sights perfectly I took the plunge and bought them. They cost 52 quid including postage from rockyourglock.com, a US website that ships RS stuff (except barrels, slides, frames and complete pistols) anywhere in the world. Update - I received a message on ZeroIn Airsoft Forums the other day informing me that they do not ship tritium outside of the US - whether this is true or not I do not know.

The sights arrived 6 working days after dispatch (the same day i bought them) in a signed for bubble envelope.

Overview

The packaging

The sights come in simple packaging that includes a worldwide warranty (warranting the lamps on TRU-DOT sights for 12 years of visible glow - the longest on the market) installation instructions and a small flier for their other products.

They are manufactured from Steel, with the tritium lamps being glass with a white polymer ring behind them for bright light sighting. All of this is capped with (according to the forums, Meprolight's website is sketchy at best)an artificial sapphire which makes the sights very rugged/easy to clean.

The sights have crisp manufacturer markings, and the rear has TRU DOT in green printed on the side of the sight - this indicates the quality of the Lamps being used. The rear sight also has a batch number engraved on it's underside. The sights are square and chunky, with the front of the front sight being rounded off slightly.

The sights fitted to my KSC G18c - the front sight has a distinctive profile.

Installation

Front Sight Screw

Please note from here in (unless i say otherwise) fitting is to a PGC Glock 18C metal slide, that has never had any sight fitted to the front sight hole, and only ever had stock KSC plastic rear sights fitted.

I began with the front sight - removing the provided screw and pushing it into the front sight hole. The sight push fit almost all the way in, requiring a few taps with a hammer to seat it the last .5 of a mm. After that I wound the screw into the back by hand, using pliers to tweak it the last bit. You can use the proper glock front sight tool, but i didnt particularly fancy spending another 15 quid on that.

Update - Recently (after an estimated 5000+ rounds later) I stripped the slide completely and found that the bolt had not loosened at all - just to be sure on reassembly I added a dab of loctite 243.

The rear sight (contrary to expectations) was VERY loose, with a noticeable bit of forwards/backwards play. I tried the rear sight on the stock KSC plastic slide, and found it to be exactly the same.

I ended up developing (in conjunction with user sparrowhawk on ZeroIn) the following method, using some thin plasticard (approx 0.5mm) and an M3(coarse)x4 grub screw.

First off remove the BBU screw, and wind the grub screw into the thread insert/nut from below till it looks like so:

Next you need to cut a thin strip of plasticard/packing material that will sit behind the rear sight as can be seen here. It may need to be tapered on one side to fit, I know on mine it is a tough press fit to slide the sight in.

Having fitted the rear sight in the right place, go back under the BBU and wind the grub screw up into the underside of the sight, securing it firmly in place. After doing this I needed to cut some material off the screw holding the BBU in, but it is still firmly secured. Once again, a dab of Loctite 243 secures it all nicely.

Interestingly the sight is narrower in total width than the stock plastic sight, however it is JUST wide enough to cover the hole through which the selector grub-screw is fitted on a G18, and this is a pretty good indicator of whether the sight is central. The rear of the sight overhangs the dovetail, and there is a slight clearance between the slide and the bottom of this overhang, however it is nothing too critical.

Once installed they look like this:

Shooting/Operation

Sight Picture

Drawing and holstering the pistol with these sights was a breeze, as they are the same height as standard G17 combat sights. Drawing will result in wear on the top of the holster over time, as the rear edges of the front sight are quite sharp.

Update - after 10+ skirmishes my holster (and the sights) are both absolutely fine. The black finish has worn on the corners of the sights, but that is it.

Quick aiming with the sights is quite readily acheivable as the front sight is more slender than some night sights (the XS Big Dot system springs to mind here), and the sights transition beautifully from light-gloomy-dark. They glow very well, and produce quite crisp circles. The white polymer rings are extremely visible, and I found the combination of three dots/sillhouette to be very useable when shooting in the dark with a torch (an ASG Xenon bulb, as seen in the photos above).

The sights in profile

Update - shortly after I originally wrote this review I used this pistol alone for 6 hours at a game at Brit-Tac's (excellent, but now demolished) central Sheffield site. They performed flawlessly, allowing me to pick off targets illuminated by other people's torches - I got the kill, but they couldn't see where I was!!

Finally, the slide (when locked back) can be very easily released by raking the rear sight downwards over clothing, or by pulling back on the front of the rear sight due to its square profile, increasing the flexibility of your preferred drills.

Night Time Performance

As said before, the night time performance of the sights is very satisfying, but since writing the review last time I did some night photography which should give an idea of what these sights look like.

Indoors, low light, 30s exposure

Outside, night time, 1min exposure

Night time, torch on, 2s exposure

Digital manipulation of the previous pics.

Night time, with flash & 20s exposure

Summary

Whilst not the cheapest things in the world, I'd recommend these to anyone who has a Glock and fancies playing a few night games (the main reason I got mine) - however they are fantastically functional in daylight (and will suit transitioning from outdoors to dim interiors perfectly), so I'd also recommend them to anyone who wants a different sight picture/look for their glock. They are a breeze to install if you have something to shim the rear sight with, and they are very rigidly held in place.

For fitting to an airsoft KSC Glock I would personally rate them a 9/10, with performance/build being excellent. The only slight let down is the fit of the rear sight, which will require some shimming with an appropriate material.

Dave out.

How to start this?

Well, here's an introduction, followed by a summary of what I aim for this blog to be. My name is Dave, and I've been doing airsoft for just over a year now. I initially discovered airsoft through a friend who's team I am now a part of.

Me at Modern Airsoft Warfare

I skirmish in the east midlands for the most part, and enjoy all types of games, from high energy paintball-esque games to more formal games with dress, weapon and ammunition limits (although I'm not a big fan of milsim, my brief stint in the TA convincing me that if I wanted to be crawling through rainy military training areas instead of running around blatting off rounds like a maniac, I could just rejoin the TA and be paid to do it).

I'm a mechanical engineer in training at the moment, which tends to lend itself well to the servicing side of airsoft, and over the last year I have increasingly got into tweaking and modding guns, servicing them for my team mates/anyone who approaches me.

I've also taken on a few projects manufacturing custom parts for people - perhaps one day I'll do a couple of posts on those. I am a member of Shadow Stalkers Airsoft, in fact I am their technician/gunsmith/airsoft engineer. We play together several times a year, and we are currently in the midst of gearing up for Brit Tac's Op:OCEAN FURY at Copehill Down at the end of the month.

Enough about me, more about this blog - first off why would I make such a blog in an environment already heavily saturated with airsoft review youtube channels, blogs, facebook pages, so on and so forth?

It's simple really - whilst there are a lot of review groups out there, I've yet to find reviews of small parts/items beyond mainstream products - I'm talking about those items you see whilst browsing through online shops - you see something, and it makes you think: "That really is a good price, and it does look good in the picture - I wonder if it's any good??"

It has been my experience that a lot of these items simply don't get reviewed, at least not in the depth I'd like. Heck, even guns don't get reviewed at a level of detail that I'd like to see sometimes! So with that in mind, I aim to use this blog to provide some reviews on bits of kit that everybody has, but nobody reviews, and bits of kit that I have that I have never seen another airsoft player use.

I'll also go somewhere in between, throw up some posts about sites that I have been to, my thoughts on the kit we use (and how we use it), and some articles on tweaking your guns/building your own (both of which I have done before).

I hope that it's a success, because if half the stuff I have planned for this blog had been written when I discovered airsoft I would have saved A LOT of cash, and my hope is that it may just provide some food for thought for players new and experienced.

Dave out.

A few of the Shadow Stalkers:

At Modern Airsoft Warfare:

Loads of Balls!

Monday, March 4, 2013

Review: Meprolight ML-10224 TRU-DOT Night Sight System for Glock 9 mm, .357 Sig, .40 & .45 GAP Pistols