You didn’t think I had forgotten about it, did you?

I got to thinking about the RMR (maybe it’ll come with me to class soon). Specifically, it really does seem to improve my shooting. Now, I frequent certain forums, and I recall a long discussion from 2014 about issues with the RMR becoming unusable in the rain. Basically, everything got soaked and you’d get a starburst effect all over the optic. This denied you the aiming point of the red dot and made use of irons very difficult. Or so it was claimed. There were pictures. Of course, not everybody had the same experience. Some had no problems in the rain.

And of course, there are other issues. How heavy is ‘heavy rain’? Does RainX help? Did Trijicon make tweaks? How are the eyes of the person doing the shooting? Cameras often don’t show sight pictures well.

Time for some experiential learning of my own. I’ve become a fan of trying things myself and forming an opinion for me. Even if it is more expensive. We have some accounts of rain making the things not work, and some of rain not being an issue. Plus, it’s been about two years, so Trijicon may have quietly rolled improvements into the optic to correct any problems there might be. Let’s find out for ourselves!

Alas, I don’t see much rain in my near future. And I’d then have to go out in the rain, and hope it was good, pouring rain to get a good test. So I thought for a minute, and came up with the next best thing: the shower.

No, I didn’t start shooting in the shower. Don’t be an idiot. But that gave me a heavy stream of water for me to test sight picture. So I started up the shower (yay hot water), cleared my Glockblaster (a few times), and proceeded to soak it.

I tried all kinds of angles relative to the stream of water. I cycled the slide. I got everything good and wet. And through it all, I still had a usable dot to aim with. I also had no problem using my backup irons through the soaked RMR window.

Awesome! To be honest, I didn’t think it would be a big problem for the concealed carry use case, since the pistol spends its time under a jacket. But this does give me confidence for the next rainy match, where I can do some more testing.

So there we go. Preliminary testing shows that getting your RMR soaked will not impede its usefulness as a sighting unit. I’m not sure about other people, or about small changes or about where you live. I wasn’t there to see their problems or check the finer points of design at the factory. And I’m not you. But I can get behind this fancy technology.