I use red-dot sights for Bullseye shooting. A PDP-3 on a Ruger MkII and an Optima 2000 on a Kimber 45. I am scoring MUCH better with a red-dot sight than iron sights, but still have a ways to go on my shooting.
The PDP-3 has a very small dot, and it seems to shake much more than the Optima 2000, which has a very large dot. I like the Optima better than the PDP-3, even though the PDP-3 went on easier and hasn't given me a single problem while the Optima has been one challenge after another.
I had to buy the EGW mount because Tasco doesn't have a Kimber mount. When I tried to screw the sight to the EGW mount I found out that the EGW mount isn't as thick as the Tasco mounts, so the screws are too long and have to be cut down (these are allen screws with a special thin head so it's a little hard to just replace them). Then I realized that the EGW mount doesn't have the locating pins the Tasco mounts have so everytime I clean the gun I have to re-zero the sights. And zeroing the sights is strange because you do it "backwards" - if the center of the group is to the right of the aiming point you turn the adjustment to the right - the instructions refer to moving the dot to the bullet holes instead of moving the bullet holes to the aiming point like most scopes. And when I first started using it it seemed that the adjustments always took a few shoots before they would take effect - like the internal springs weren't strong enough to actually move the settings, and you had to shoot and let the recoil shake the sight up before the red-dot would move to the new aiming point; this seems to have gone away lately. Now I've discovered that I used all of my elevation adjustment getting the sight zero'ed at 50 ft - and when I recently shot my first outdoor match at 50 yards I couldn't adjust the sight to get zeroed. SO now I'm working on some shims to enable me to get zero'ed at 50 yards. Also the little plastic window does tend to get dirty being mounted on a semi-auto with the brass & any powder residue etc getting tossed around just in front of it - I don't think that a revolver would have this problem.
Still I really like the Optima 2000 - especially for semi-autos. It mounts to the slide, so play between the slide and frame doesn't point the sight somewhere else, which can happen on a frame mounted sight. It doesn't have the problems of a heavy slide mounted sight creating jams and forcing you to change recoil springs because the weight of the sight slows the slide down too much. And so far it has taken the recoil battering without any problems. The elevation and windage adjustments seem to have a much greater range than most other sights, especially iron sights. As I said I have recently had problems with this and found that I had a vertical range of almost 24" at 50 feet with this sight. It was just mounted so I was at the end of the adjustment range. Many of the problems I have had with this sight have been actually caused by the EGW mount, so stick to the Tasco mounts and I don't think you will have half the problems I have had.
