[56k Warning] SureSights... The XD... and a Blackhawk CQC SERPA Holster

[wfrazee]

Good day. For those without the ability to read for periods of time to understand facts, let me present the readers digest version of this post:

My Suresights are mounted on my XD.

Yay.

I fired well the first time out with them mounted.

XD with Suresights WILL fit in a blackhawk CQC SERPA Holster albeit there will be some cosmetic scratches due to contact between the top of the front sight and the bottom of the kydex in the sight channel.

The short version having now been said, lets get into the part everyone really looked at this thread for, the pictures!



This is really an optical illusion due to the fact that the camera does not have depth perception. To the eye, the front sight sits neatly on top of the rear triangle portions when properly aligned.



When properly installed, the sights fit snugly and well in the channels on the slide for such mounting. Horizontally, to the eye the rear sight actually feels slightly smaller than the old stock sights. In my initial range visit of a mere 50 rounds (hey, it was lunchtime after all and I had to get back to work), my past problems with being able to see the stock dots was easily resolved and while I have not yet had enough experience doing rapid target drills with the new sights, those that I did execute felt natural after the first round or two "learning" proper point of aim.

Ahh, but there lies the snag (pun intended). The front sight DOES make contact with the Blackhawk SERPA CQC Holster.



The result is a cosmetic scratch along the top of the sight channel in the holster.



In this photo, if you are skilled at contour recognition you can see the deeper scratch of the front sight's carry position as well as the thin scratch that tracks the top of the channel from draw and replacement of the XD. You are examining the holster at an angle, looking in from the "down" barrel face at the sight channel in the upside down holster. For those who are not used to such things, I have used some image filtering to bring out the contours from the base image.



I apologize for the size of this image however its size was neccessary for people to get a good look at exactly what is going on here. The bottom arrow points to the deeper scratch mark of where the front sight rides against the kydex in standard carry. The upper arrows point out the location of the sight channel scratch from drawing and replacing the holster. Note that this photo has been "embossed" to bring out image contours for visibility and that as you can see in the full color photo above, under normal light and visibility, these scratches are not nearly so apparent.

It is too early to determine the effect the wear will have against the sight and against the holster over time however my initial range session yielded scratches which were no more than cosmetic in nature.

Right now I am already very happy with my purchase. Oddly enough the gunsmith at Gander Mountain indicated he had installed a couple other suresights for folks in just the last couple days on XDs so hopefully we can get some range reports flowing back soon from others.

[AlaskaXD]

Thanks for the report. There are many of us that are waiting for range reports from all of you that have received your new sights. So please, get out and shoot, shoot, shoot (then post, post, post)

[nuj]

hi there,
the sure sight looks almost the same as steyrs trapizoidal sight. does it work that well in target acquisition. i have a steyr pistol and you only have to aligh the front and rear sight together and place the top of the triangle to where you want to put your bullet to go.

[wfrazee]

Actually yeah! For me, isolating the sight picture on a stock XD was really one of my biggest challenges in shooting it effectively. With suresight and 250 rounds this past weekend, my reaction times came down about 30% and my group closure actually came down 10%.

The only change to the handgun was the sights.