Zeroing my Eotech

[Tacit Blue]

Hello everyone,


I'm trying to figure out what method of Laser boresight zeroing would be best suited for my needs; I shoot mostly at a Indoor range which has a max distance of 25 yards. Then occasionally I goto BLM Land where Medium range shooting from 25-50+ occurs. Would you recommend using The U.S ARMY Zero paper?

http://www.eotech-inc.com/documents/...LBS_Target.pdf 10m Bore Sight Target for 300m Zero.


My rifle is a AR15 with a 16" Carbine length upper; with a Eotech 511. Sitting on a Yankee Hill Raiser.

I'd appreciate your guys input.

[Joe]

Most people zero their eotechs at 50 yards. This makes it zero at 50 and 200 yards. also only will be a couple inches high or low at nearby or between ranges.

[Tacit Blue]

i found this on AR15armory.com:

" If You want to shoot 15-100y for most of your shooting. With your current zero you will be ~6" high at 100y depending on barrel length and ammo. Since 25y is your zero, everything beyond that will be high, ~2.2" high at 50y, 6" at 100y, ~8" high at 150y and ~9" high at 200y. Your numbers will be worse than a Mil zero (numbers given by TS above) because that zero target you used is really a 31y zero because it requires adding elevation to zero (the z setting on the elevation knob on the carry handle iron sights, 8/3 or 6/3+ 1) and then backing down to 8/3 or 6/3 for your battlesight zero.

If you use a 50y zero, then you will be ~1.2" low at 25y, dead on at 50y, ~1.5" high at 100y, ~.5" high at 200y. See these charts for a very good description and recommendations from the Army Marksmanship Unit. AMU zeroing data "

http://www.usaac.army.mil/amu/ServiceRifle/M16-M4%20data.pdf

Looks like you were correct 50 yards is the way to go, Do they have a 50 yard target for Boresighting like Eotechs/ U.S Army on PDF?

[Joe]

Yep, thats the info I was looking at when I first bought my eotech

I'm not aware of any pdf but I do not doubt one exists. Maybe someone else will have a link or something.

[ExtremeX]

Very good info!

I’m going to change my red dot zero from 25y to 50y. After looking at the PDF link, it’s a no brainer.

[m109a6 paladin]

hmm we always zero our M4s at 25m so they will be good to 300m we use an aimpoint comp m4

[BC9696]

Depends

Frankly I think it's more important to practice and know the gun rather than anything else. My R25 (.308) is set for 100 yards (has a flip-out 2.5X magnifier) and is easily adjusted for at 25 yard and 200 yard distances. Practice, practice and more practice until the firearm is a part of you...then you're ready to hunt with it. This is the reason we all have one gun that's out "go to" weapon...we have a relationship with it. We know exactly what to expect.



After setting it at 100 yards i went to the indoor 25 yard range...here's the 1st 4 rounds.



I began adjusting up (close range practice) until I was dead center.


Regardless where you set the distance, practice with the same ammo and you will hit anything you want. Also, dial down the brightness indoors, helps a lot!

[tacticalcity]

Zero your irons first. Then while looking down your sights line up the dot so it is perfectly inline with your sights. Confirm zero by firing a group of 3-5 shots. If you try and do it the other way around you are going to take 4 times as long and burn through a lot more ammo. If you are not running irons I highly recommend it. I can tell you from personal experience even the most expensive red dot sight can fail on you. Murphy's Law is alive and well. So if it is going to fail, it will do so at the exact moment you need it the most. Irons can and will save the day. They saved mine. Not in defense of my life but kept me from missing out on a day of training that I paid a lot of money for. Heaven forbid it ever be the other way around.

I've always zeroed at 25 yards, because of how I use the rifle. It is not a "main battle" rifle, I have another rifle for that should it ever come down to it. It is a CQB rifle. 95% of my shots are all going to be within 25 yards and in a CQB run and gun enviorment things get much more complicated than just the 1.5" difference the chart refers to. It ends up becoming closer to 3-4 inches within 10 yards or closer when you factor in height over bore issues. What that means is the closer you get to the target the physical distance between the dot on your optic from center of the barrel's bore starts to play a role in point of aim vs. point of impact. Within 10 yards if you want to hit the target in the eye you have to aim at the very top of his skull. If you aim at his eye you end up hitting him in the chin. That is when zero'd at 25 yards. If you were zero'd at 50 you would have to aim several inches above the targets head just to hit him in the eye. You're simply not going to be able to make those kinds of manual adjustments on the fly. Manually adjusting for normal height over bore when zero'd at 25 yards is complicated enough.

My point is you should zero for where the overwhelming majority of your shots are going to be taken from. If you are NEVER going to take a 200 yard shot, might possible take few 50-100 yard shots, but are going to be taking a massive amount of shots within 25 yards...then zeroing for anything above 25 yards is just plain silly. In urban enviorments like suburbs or cities then 25 yards is the max you should be zero'd at from a defense minded perspective. If you plan on taking any carbine classes, you also want to be zero'd at 25 yards as 95% of the shots you will take in that class will be inside 25, most inside 10.

However, if your rifle is a range whore...or your going to be fighing in open fields, and not an urban enviorment like a city, then 50 yards starts to make more sense. If your neightboors house is 400 yards or more away from yours...and you are surrounded by farm land and open fields, then you are going to be taking a lot of long distance shots.

What the Army does for their main battle rifles simply does not apply to the majority of civilian shooters here in America. While they do a lot of CQB, their manuals are setup with open field battles with long distances in mind. The army still thinks in terms of long distance marksmanship type terms, rather than run and gun CQB type terms. In Iraq, there was considerably more CQB type fighting happening than they were comfortable with. Their doctrine simply was not setup for it. While they still see a good deal of CQB in Afghanistan, they are also running into the opposite problem...a need for long distance capabilities that exceed the abilities of the rifles they currently have.

A much more practical approach is to see what your local SWAT team does. Do they zero at 25 or 50 and why? I've never seen a SWAT team zero beyond 25. But then again, I'm not in the middle of the sticks. Odds are if you ever have to break out the rifle and use it to save your life, it will be in a very up close and personal way.

However, if you are bench rest guy...then zeroing at 50 makes a lot of sense. It all comes down to how you plan to use the rifle.

[Joe]

If you zero at 50 yards. The shot at 25 yards will be less than one inch low and the shots between 50 and 225 yards will only be up to 2" high. If you zero at 25 yards, the shots between 25-225 yards will be up to 7" high.

50 yard zero makes much more sense to me since the bullet trajectory will be much flatter. But of course everyone is free to do what they want.

[Mikegrande]

Noticed your rig, with what appears to be a QD mount for the magnifier. I'm looking to equip my new AR with a dot that will co-witness with my Magpull flip-up irons. Any thoughts now on using the EoTech 557.G23FTS, which is a one piece mount, combining the dot with the flip to side magnifier, vs using two separate units as you have? Thanks.