Sidearms & Scatterguns SIRT Trainer Pistol

[woojos]

Does anybody have one of these?

Is it a useful training aid?

What's the trigger feel like?

I've been getting more into USPSA and IDPA, and luckily there are a few active clubs within an hour from me, so I can compete at a minimum twice a month which is about all my schedule will allow. I'm still taking it slow, but I'd like to have a more dedicated dry fire practice routine.

I really have no problem just dry firing the gun, but I'd like an autoreset trigger and the laser is a nice feedback mechanism.

 

[OF&B]

I'm kind of surprised nobody is using these. I've had one for several years and it's an extremely effective training too.

Potential training scars are
- Looking through the sights for the laser becoming habitual
- Believing you're as fast with recoil as without it
- If you're still riding the reset, the heavy trigger on the SIRT will have you breaking shots early for awhile. This isn't a problem if you have a duty trigger in your real gun.

Simple enough to beat
- Only use the red laser for diagnostics, turn it off for most of your dry fire. Set both the red and green to halo around the front sight when the sight alignment is perfect. The game then becomes hiding the laser while focusing on the front sight
- Remember your cadence from live fire and work on perfect form at that cadence
- Start sweeping and throwing away the trigger. Riding the reset is a beginning to intermediate level technique

It'll teach you things about your grip and press that would be tough to figure out without it. You can now practice splits and transitions for real. A bunch of third scale targets on the wall are good for this. As you mentioned, the laser introduces a level of accountability you don't have with just the front sight. It's inert, so you don't have to secure it between uses which makes training that much more accessible. It'll take whatever your using for sights on your real gun.

You'll never get the trigger below 3.5 - 4.0#, it's primarily intended for LE and Military.

You can take it to the range to clean up your form between live fire sessions.

I was using a 22 conversion a lot to drive my live fire volume up, but am down to just the SIRT these days because of the ammo situation.

 

[Wyfox]

We use them in training a lot, well worth having it as a training tool.

 

[matgyver]

Of&b nailed all the key points.
I'd add:
The trigger is not similar enough to replace dryfire drills.

Looking for the laser dot does nothing for calling shots.

The solution I found was a much cheaper airsoft gas gun. It gives you a little bit of recoil and helps you learn to see the front sight rise. In fact, seeing that front sight at the break of the shot never happened for me until lots of time behind the trigger of that airsoft. Guess the slower recoil impulse trained my brain to process what my eyes were seeing.

Take a look over on the Brian Enos forum if you haven't already. Lots of great stuff specific to the sport there.