Optics

At this point I began looking for 1) an optic that would function well in a slide mount and 2) a mount that would play to my strengths. The pics attached are very rough initial sketches and i'm far from being a talented photoshop gangsta, so bear with me.

Through research, my list dwindled down to the C-more STS or the Leupod Delta-point. Price basically made the decision for me. I settled on the STS. Now I had to figure out how to mount it.

I have used traditional slide mounts in the past, and found it difficult to get the dot on target as fast as I would like. I practice primarily with an iron sighted .22 pistol, and having the HUD so high above the slide was giving me problems (primary issue is that the dot is so high and the base of the dot is so bulky that it eliminates any other visual references like the front sight or the front portion of the slide. secondly, because I practice with iron sights, trying to adjust my point of aim off the draw was just taking too much time and effort)). Looking around the shooting world for inspiration, I noticed a lot of people using 90degree optic mounts for their Cmore slide rides, and decided to borrow the concept and adapt it to the M&Ps rear right dovetail. This way, I keep the slide and front sight in my peripheral vision as references and keep the dot as close to the bore as possible. Fortunately, the left side of the STS is flat and facilitates this. What I came up was this (not to perfect scale, I know):

Now I have to find someone with better machining skills than me to make it a reality. If it works out the way I hope it does, it will eventually be refined into a more competition oriented version along these lines:

Updates to come if/when I get ahold of the real thing. Clearly there will be some spring and load tuning work happening concurrently, so it should be a relatively meaty update. Aiming through a backward D will surely take some getting used to, but as I'm more comfortable shooting right-to-left than left-to-right it still plays to my strengths. In theory this is what it should look like: