You know what’s needed an update in the shooting world? Dry firing. Dry fire has long been a boring, but effective training method to improve and keep your skills with a firearm sharp. Salted Earth is a new company doing big things in the world of dry fire shooting. The Atlas 8 Dry Fire trainer is an electric target system that uses laser dry fire pistols.
What’s in the box
Salted Earth carries a variety of different tiered kits. I received the Tier 2 kit which includes the Atlas 8 Dry Fire Trainer target, the SIRT pistol, a charger, carrying case, magnetic back system, and of course the instructions. Salted Earth sent me an additional target you see in these pictures.
I haven’t started serious training with the Atlas 8 Dry Fire trainer but I’ve been experimenting with a variety of modes. There are 8 total modes, each aiming to train a different skill. The modes include,
- A time reaction mode
- Accuracy mode (Shooting an increasingly smaller target)
- Memory mode (A pattern is displayed and then you shoot the pattern displayed.)
- Crowd (A shoot or not shoot scenario with smiley and frown faces.
- Reload (A timed reload test)
- Heat Map (A map displaying where you shoot, allows you to practice group accuracy.)
- Multi (You shoot the target a random number of times before you succeed)
- Shoot Tree (A digital Dueling tree that works with two targets to simulate a dueling tree.)
The Atlas 8 Dry Fire Trainer
The system is quite responsive and reacts to both my Laser Ammo Sure strike cartridge and the provided SIRT Pistol. The reaction of the target is in both visual and audible cues. The different modes of the Atlas 8 Dry fire target are easy to navigate and the system responds to the manual controls. There is also a quick selection mode that allows you to simply shoot the mode you want to play. Four modes are displayed in the quick selection screen.
One cool feature is the ability to mount a magnet to the rear of the target. This allows you to stick the target in a variety of places. As you can see by my pictures it also makes a great fridge magnet. It’s also convenient for putting targets in different, and sometimes odd places.
To make it more dynamic the target has a 1/4-20 UNC mount on the bottom of the device so it can be attached to basically any camera tripod or RAM mount.
Get your 15 minutes in.
I try my hardest to get my 15 minutes of training in a day, and with an interesting and dynamic system like the Atlas 8 Dry Fire trainer I may be more enthused about it. Having real feedback from a target is bound to keep things a bit more interesting that aiming at a light switch on the wall.
