Night vision Fun

[Scythe13]

Had a little fun yesterday with my night vision.

Having it stuck to the back of my scope allowed me to shoot in the dark! Common sense.

The problem is, I was scanning the area at 4x magnification.

Solution...have a seperate night vision hand system for close up scanning of the area.

[SecretPrepper]

Do you have any depth perception issues with your NV?

[Devonian]

What type of NV set up have you got?

[T-oddity]

Depth perception is one of the main issues I have with my night vision gear on my rifle, considered an ir laser when money permits until then I find myself spotting with a powerful led torch to get an idea of range, sort of defeats the idea of using nv gear dun it!

[Scythe13]

I'm going to be meetig with SD to do a video on creating the NV system I use for ratting. It's only a small cheap system, but the idea is to make something that can produce 90% of the result from 10% of the price. So it's just a cheap home build.

For any night vision system out there, range finding is always the biggest problem.

My trick, I put out small markers of range, then I try and get a high vantage point to better seperate the target and marker ranges. Even just standing up, providing you can be quiet enough, can really help. You'll get a better idea of distances from a better elevation. But again, without the markers....I got nothing.

For ratting, I only use short ranges as I get into the chicken areas or underneath them when I'm ratting. So there's little to no elevation drop. As long as the crosshairs is on the rat, it'll die. That's the kind of distance I shoot rats at.

[Steve]

If you have a built in IR illuminator, as most cheap NV systems do, you can make your range indicators of reflective tape or, more stealthy, burnt sticks. The charred end of a stick shows as a really black object in the generally greenish washed-out image and doesn't spook wildlife.

Cheap NV systems really benefit from extra IR illumination, I have a couple of ways. First and smallest is an 80mW Dipol IR laser which mounts on the scope, it is adjustable from spot to flood so you can tweak it to match the field of view of your scope. Mounting the laser on the scope is way better than having it mounted on the NV unit itself, because if the NV unit is moved slightly off line as you use it the IR Laser is moved right off the target. You can also mount it on the rifle somewhere, but I have found scope mounted is best. If you use a laser tape a piece of tube to the front to keep raindrops off the lens as this ruins the beam and ends the hunt - no way you can dry it in the field.

Second system I use is simply a sheet or IR filter plastic clipped over a Lightforce halogen spotlight, also scope mounted but much bigger than a laser or LED illuminator and also requires a heavy battery pack. However, when I switch it on the field lights up like daylight ( through the NV ) which makes shooting much easier. My Lightforce has a dimmer switch built into the cable which I can use to slowly raise the light level, this spooks rabbits and foxes less than simply switching it on full power.

Both my light sources are visible to the naked eye as a dull red glow, because my early Gen1+ NV only works with near infra red. More modern digital units are sensitive to light further from the visible spectrum so the illuminators can be totally invisible.