Night Vision kit

[cavninja]

I've been looking around trying to find some affordable and useable night vision kit. I'd prefer a monocle, that way if something goes belly up, then there's always the Mk1 eye ball to rely on!

I've found this:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/on-promotion-PVS-14-style-digital-night-vision-mount-on-the-helmet-for-rifle-scope-for/1519917126.html

 

You can basically get a Gen 2 type monocle, and the helmet bracket and if you need it the strap to fit on a standard helmet for under £150! I know it's not going to be perfect, I'm hoping to find something to give the edge in low light, dark interior conditions. Of course If you could get something that worked well in a fully dark environment, along side an IR torch and laser! Then you really could own the night!

 

If any one has used the item I've found or got any info on any NVG kit, please let me know, cheers guys

[straffham]

I picked up a compact NV monocular (1.5mag x 32 iirc) from my local Aldi a couple of years ago, not with the specific intention for airsoft but it was only around £70. Think its Gen 2, fairly lightweight, uses ambient light and has built in infrared as well which is like turning on a torch! As it has a mounting for tripods I attached a short QD RIS mount to it and when attached to an M4 the front sight lines up with the monocular so can be used to aim, voila, night gun!

Drawbacks with this or any NV that doesn't seal around your eyes are that the green light from the image will light your face/goggles/mask up in the dark presenting a nice juicy target and the red light from the IR is fairly bright (though that can be switched off and just used briefly for an enhanced image). It is good fun to use and with an IR lazer, lens shield (and maybe a tracer unit) it would be awesome, but you wouldn't last 2 minutes in a game sadly! Will try to get pics up later.

[Airsoft_Mr B]

Don't forget you need to pay tax and import duty and everything on top of that

[jcheeseright]

Having played with gen1 I can honestly say that you're better off with your eyes 99% of the time. That pvs14-alike on aliexpress is actually a small tv camera hooked up to some fairly shonky plastic lenses and a large array of IR LEDs, a guy on UKAZ had one and he claimed the field of view was about 10 degrees and it was about 1.5x magnified.

 

A proper set of gen1 (with an actual intensifier tube) will set you back a few hundred quid, but you're genuinely better off with your eyes and a half decent torch.

 

For a gen2 monocular you're looking at £1,000+ and while they're usable, you can pick up a second hand gen3 monocular for £1,500 ish.

 

From bitter experience i can say that with night vision kit it's very much a case of buy nice or buy twice.

[Chock]

I bought a pair of these for a bit of a laugh to use at Trojan's indoors CQB site:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/400728582224?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

Not that I'm suggesting these as an alternative. But ironically for something that is basically a cheap toy, they do actually work very well; the IR light is quite subdued, and does not give your position away, and even if it did, they can actually be used with that switched off and you still get a fair image. Ben Franklin, the guy who runs Trojan at Stockport, saw me show up with them and said he had one of these too and that it worked surprisingly well at that site, but he'd apparently bust his (not surprising since they are really only cheap plastic and would almost certainly break if you dropped them on a stone floor). He was right though, as I'd suspected, on the totally dark levels in CQB, they definitely do offer an advantage, particularly useful on totally dark stairwells to prevent you from tripping and breaking your neck lol. Being binoculars - so not being helmet mounted - I cut off the sh*tty strap they came with and added a decent long webbing strap so that they could hang out of the way of my M4 on its three-point sling, but even then it is a fairly cumbersome arrangement in the confines of interiors, however, when I stayed put in cover to observe a choke point, they really did give me quite an edge as unlike a tac light, they allowed me to remain concealed without giving my position away, as i would do when flicking a tac light on and off, although as you probably know, sometimes flicking your light on to pull people into an ambush is not a bad tactic, so stealth isn't always the way to go.

 

I suspect the ones you linked to would be very useful for dark CQB when mounted on the sight rail of a short M4, or even offset on the left alongside the sights to use more for observation. Just be certain that you're gonna use them a lot, as it is quite a chunk of change for something if you aren't going to use them much, and if you are, then you might wanna go all the way and spend some more.

[cavninja]

JC, you're spot on mate, after a bit of research i've found it's basically a small digital camera, so in light conditions, you get a colour image and in dark it's black and white, its approx x2 mag and you observe it on a small tv screen. With the expesnse and difficulty in obtaining the real deal stuff, (i did find some genuine PNSVG 18s for sale in the US for $38,000!!! ) it may be an option, albeit a potentially fragile and not a 100% effective option.

Hmmmmm I guess I'll have to see how bad the holes burns in my poscket?!!

[cavninja]

Here's a pretty good review and comparison of the Canis Latrans vs the real steal version:

 

 

Sums up what we've been saying on here

[jcheeseright]

yeah, feedback I've had is that as a head mounted unit it's more or less unusable.

 

if you don't mind shelling out a bit extra there's a fella on UKAZ shifting a pulsar gen1 set for a reasonable price:
http://www.ukairsoftzone.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/15646-night-vision-monocular/

though as I said earlier, quite often gen1 is only just better than the naked eye, especially if you want to be entirely passive and not use IR illumination.

[Ian_Gere]

There is no visible light from proper IR illuminators, either IR LED or an incandescent or xenon bulb behind a proper filter.

 

I have a set of surplus Soviet PNV-57A tank driver's NV which I've equipped with a pouched 12V LA battery. It works fine in the back bedroom, but whether this will translate into success during a skirmish has yet to be seen. I wouldn't bother for dark CQB unless I was going to a known site, as part of a team, with a plan for how to use them in a predetermined tactic. For woodland night games however, I expect to find them very useful. It will take some practice using them however, because each eyepiece is focussed individually and they are a bit fishbowl-y anyway. Using the IR illuminator they come with turns total dark into monochrome green complete visibility though, so yeah, if i can step over things that go crunch in the night and my opposition cannot, I will have an advantage...

 

The transformer does make a very quiet sound. This is not something the average adult, with their clothing and gear making a noise, nevermind their breath, would notice, but a yoot... quite possibly. I'm going with a distraction device, which I intend to make similarly subtle so as to confuse the issue, rather than something blatant which would alert the opposition to my presence if not my location.

 

I am concerned about 'green glow face', but I believe it should be possible to attach a shield to the goggles to hide this if it turns out to be an issue - they do come with some 50mm-ish rubber circular eyepieces though, so it may well not be...

 

Of course, despite the sub £100 price tag, 70's Soviet equipment is not for everybody, however if anyone states that Soviet NV X-rays your eyes, I will ban them from posting for a period consistent with the stupidity of the rest of their post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm only half joking...

[team flex]

Soviet nv xrays your eyes I believe?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please spare me ....

[jcheeseright]

wouldn't worry about the green backsplash from NVGs, even without rubber seals it's very difficult for people to see from any kind of distance.

[straffham]

Some pics of the Newton 3 x 42 night vision monocular I mentioned earlier in the thread, its a while since I'd looked at it so forgot the spec! As mentioned it was bought from Aldi for about £70 iirc a couple of years ago for general use, wildlife etc (enter crude accusations here!). Although obviously not military it is designed for "sports use", is rubber armoured and its not impossible to mount it on a ris attachment as I have done.

 

 

The last image isn't great quality as I had to hold my phone camera to the viewfinder (biggest drawback is there is no output socket/USB connection for recording), but you get the idea, thats my back garden wall which is very dark as no lights were on, not quite pitch black, with the Image intensifier switched on, which looks like a bright torch beam when viewed with the eye. The bright spot at top is a house window 150+ metres away across a field. The monocular will pick out that same house in reasonable detail so airsoft ranges would be a breeze. Field of view is fairly restricted as with any magnified scope. Without the IR on, visibility and clarity are still good, though not as good as with it on, obviously. It is fully adjustable for focus.

 

Some stats taken from the box:

Visual magnification: x3

Objective lens: 42mm

Resolution 36 lines/mm

Angular field of view 20 degrees

Viewing range 250m

eyepiece adjustment; diopter +/-4

Illuminator range 100m

length 165mm

width 55mm

height 83mm

weight 430g

 

Its not without drawbacks from an airsoft point of view, such as the glow from the eyepiece lighting up your face, but with ingenuity it may be possible to overcome them.

Not sure if Aldi still do these but may be worth asking if you fancy one.

[Baz JJ]

The main problem with cheap NV is the field of view.

You can get a reasonable response from hunting NV if you use a black light illuminator, but it would be pretty poor for rifle aiming use unless you use it for spotting and providing corrections to a sniper shooting blind or just doing "stag" at night where you can detect approaching OPFORs - Can you get IR BBs ?

 

Ive tried to use mine to walk through a completely pitch black forest and keep to a defined pathway. Very difficult and disorientating with a monocular.

 

Was quite cool to approach a fox in blackness from downwind and get within 10-15m before his natural senses detected me.

 

Incidentally, the IR illuminator on the scope shows a dull red closer up. The black light is invisible but you need a powerful torch to penetrate the filter with any range.

[jcheeseright]

IR BBs are a no-go unfortunately, a few of us have looked extensively and no one makes them. Understandable as it'd be a pretty niche market.

 

I've found that a decent IR illuminator backlights the BBs enough that they can be seen in flight for a bit through NVG. Much like shining a bright torch helps see where white BBs are going during the evening.

 

Proper tracers show up really well obviously, and the 'flash' from the tracer unit if you're facing it looks cool as fuck, but the problem with tracers is that they work both ways!

[straffham]

The main problem with cheap NV is the field of view.

You can get a reasonable response from hunting NV if you use a black light illuminator, but it would be pretty poor for rifle aiming use unless you use it for spotting and providing corrections to a sniper shooting blind or just doing "stag" at night where you can detect approaching OPFORs - Can you get IR BBs ?

 

Ive tried to use mine to walk through a completely pitch black forest and keep to a defined pathway. Very difficult and disorientating with a monocular.

 

Was quite cool to approach a fox in blackness from downwind and get within 10-15m before his natural senses detected me.

 

Incidentally, the IR illuminator on the scope shows a dull red closer up. The black light is invisible but you need a powerful torch to penetrate the filter with any range.

yeah the illuminator does glow red so is quite visible in the dark, but it can be used without it, works well in starlight. When mounted on my M16 it does align well with the front sight, its not perfect but is a lot more accurate than firing blind in the dark using iron sights, equally the green back glow is much reduced without the illuminator, certainly no worse than using say a red dot sight, and possibly better. Forgot to mention it also has anti-flash technology too.

I would agree that the best use would be for covert observation, sniper assistance and stag in woodland games.