This has been on my mind, wondering when the pistol sight would fail me and whether – as per tradition – it would do it suddenly and at a really bad time.
In fact I was surprised when the LED just kind of faded over a couple of days. At first I thought it was my imagination but this morning it was barely visible against a sunny window and clicked right off every time I tried to dial it up. A new battery fixed it. So…
I installed the sight on the Model 69 in mid-June. From then until the yoke screw broke in early July I mostly kept the sight turned off. That was proving a colossal pain in the ass so after I fixed the pistol in September I just left it on, having already bought a moderate pile of replacement batteries. So that’s in the neighborhood of two months continuous use, always keeping in mind that I have no idea as to the actual condition of the battery the sight came with.
I marked it in my ledger, same way I keep track of a lot of other consumables. Nice to know when to expect your stuff to let you down, when it isn’t always instantly replaceable.
With reflector sights like yours, the battery life is around 5,000 hours or less, depending upon the power setting and the ambient temperatures they are exposed to. If you want something that lasts longer, you may have to look at a red dot scope. My Vortex Crossfire has a battery life of 50,000 hours on the mid-setting.
The reason is that with reflector red dot sights like the one you have, there are several emitters verses a red dot scope which only has one, so the reflector red dots go through batteries a lot faster.
While it may not be perfect, you could always get a See All® Tritium Pistol Sight. The advantage is they don’t need batteries, and they are not very pricey* if you shop their sales.
https://www.seeallopensight.com/
*They are having a 50% off sale right now.
Yeah, I went with an optic because I could no longer focus on regular pistol sights without prescription glasses. Since the Model 69 doesn’t have an optic cut I needed an adapter plate that would definitely fit the gun and an optic that would definitely fit the plate. I could only afford to do it once, so my research into optic styles was pretty limited.
I know the feeling about having trouble seeing things. My left eye is all but useless as the cataract progresses, and my right has a small storm of floaters, which makes shooting “challenging.”
Over the last few years, as the budget would let me, I’ve been replacing iron sights with optics on my firearms.
It sure sucks getting old, but the alternative is worse, I guess. 🙂
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