Everyone says dry fire, dry fire, dry fire, and then do some more dry firing to improve your fundamentals, and positional shooting skills. If this is the case, how come most shooters don’t do it?
I believe that most guys don’t dry fire because they can’t do it in the comfort of their own home without having to put their cross hairs on their neighbor’s house or focus on something down the street. Depending on where you live, you could get a visit by your local PD.
We all know most scopes are not designed to focus down to 10 to 12 feet, which is the distance that can be found in any house or apartment hallway. Most of the scopes I have used won’t even focus down at 20 feet clearly and parallax free to enable me to really focus on the sight picture while dry firing.
Chuck from Reno, Nevada has developed a new gadget that will make dry firing indoors a whole new experience. Chuck calls his little invention the I.O.T.A, Indoor Optical Training Aid. The guys in our club have been the guinea pigs for the last several months for this neat gadget that will allow a shooter to focus a 20X scope down to 10 feet, clearly and parallax free. The sight picture is so clear and focused that you can actually see the fibers on a piece of paper at 10 feet on 20X.
The unit itself is rather simple, and works flawlessly. Each I.O.T.A is made for a specific objective diameter of a particular optic. The one Chuck made for me is designed for my Premier 5-25X. The unit comes completely assembled and ready to go. All the shooter has to do is take off their existing objective lens cover and replace it with the I.O.T.A. No other modification is needed to your scope in order to use the I.O.T.A.
BAM! Now you can focus down to about 10 feet on 20X with your Premier 5-25X. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
Here is my dry firing setup in my bedroom. All I needed was 10 feet from the scope to the target.
I used a moving box with a few small dots for my point of aim. There is a ½” dot that I use for positional practice, a ¼”” dot I use for speed drills, and a little dot I put on the box with a sharpie for prone dry firing practice.
Here are a few pictures taken through the scope to give you an idea of what the sight picture looks like. To be fair to the I.O.T.A, I suck at taking pictures like this. It took me 45 freaking minutes to get these. When you are actually behind the scope, the sight picture is crystal clear. I had my Premier set at 20X - 25X focused on a target 10 feet away
Now I am able to dry fire with a clear and parallax free sight picture inside the comfort of my own home.
After having the chance to play with the I.O.T.A for a bit, I came up with the target pictured below. It has dots small enough for slow fire prone, speed drills, hold over drills, and positional practice. The I.O.T.A can also be used to ensure your reticle is lined up correctly via a plumb line. You will be amazed how clearly you can focus on a thin piece of thread at 10 feet.
I believe Chuck will be offering these for around $60.00 shipped. The price is right considering the cost of match ammo and components these days. Chuck goes by 264shooter on the Hide, or can be reached at
[email protected]. He was hesitant about putting this out there for sale in the mainstream, but I think the I.O.T.A. can help all of us improve our shooting while save a few bucks on ammo.
