wally
Member
I'd been playing around with optical sights on my Norinco using a Leupold mount that replaces the right side grip panel (real POS, but that's another story) and can see the merit in them, but haven't been real satisified with the mounts I've seen so far for 1911 handguns.
That all changed when a fellow at the club showed up at the plate rack with a tricked out Para and an Optima 2000 Red Dot sight. After shooting it, I knew the J-Point (current version of the Optima) would be worth the expense so I ordered one. Cost of gunsmithing, quality mount and cheap optical sight wouldn't be much less than the J-point and mount base was.
Next I picked up a full size RIA. I've passed on these in the past because I need better than the GI style sights it comes with, but in this case the standard GI dovetail was just the tickect for the J-Point mount and I'd be ignoring the front sight anyways.
Put 100 rounds thru it before messing with it. No problems using the mag it came with, but I noticed most of my range mags would not lock the slide back. A quick swap of the slide lock lever with the one in my Norinco cured the problem. So a quick call to Armscor in Pahrump, NV had a replacement slide lock on its way (it beat the J-point and mount by one day). Very happy with the RIA customer service!
Changed grips, pounded out the stock sight and installed the J-Point. Was trivial to sight in and boy is it fun at the plate rack! Got over 500 rounds thru it now with zero problems since I replaced the slide lock lever despite my motly assortment of 27 range mags that I preload with 200 rounds to attack the plates.
RIA trigger is much better than my Norinco and compares very favorably to my Kimber TLE, accuracy with the Jpoint seems better than the Norinco was with any of the opticals.
One very nice thing about the J-Point is you could use it on a defence gun since there is no switch. A cover blocks a light sensor that sets the dot brightness based on ambient light level. Its designed so you can hook a short laynard to it and your holster and have the cover pop off during the draw to activate the sight.
If the batteries are dead, you can still see the front sight and use the center notch that retains the cover as an emergency rear sight -- this was about 5" high at 10 yrds when I tried, so its a viable backup and probably would be much better with a taller Colt style front sight.
I put the Norinco back into its original config as I could easily sell it as a used gun for more than I paid circa 1993.
Now I have my Armscor 1911-A2 9mm Widebody for cheap shooting without reloading, and the RIA & J-point combo for when I've had time to reload .45ACP. How long can I stand it before I end up with another 9mm 1911 with a J-point on it? Life's been good!
--wally.
