Question about Gen 1

[kd5rov]

For all you Gen 1 owners out there, what kind of preformance do you get when you use your NV Rig without the IR illuminater on say... a stary night? and how well can you see People/animals at a ditance? I'm looking for good preformance out to about 100+ yards under stary/moonlight conditions.

thanks in advance
Ryan

 

[_mike_]

Hi Ryan,
I have a Night Owl Optics Gen 1 (Russian) I think it's model NOCC3, it was a Christmas present a couple of years ago. I pretty much have to use the IR illuminator to really see much more than a blurry outline, even on full moon no-cloud nights. But even with the IR on, it's not all that great.

Basically, with IR I can kind of make out what I'm looking at if it's not too far away. Without IR, I can see something but I'm mostly guessing at what it is.

We live in the woods, no neighbors, no street lights. I don't think my particular model would do too well at 100+ yards. Although you will get the shiny eye reflection back at you when you aim it at an animal. I think the limiting factor has more to do with magnification. I think if it had more than 3X magnification it would do much better.



Mike

 

[llvo]

I have a Russian Gen. 1 NV monocular.
http://www.romz.ru/english/?h=1
Model NZT-46

It works surprisingly well on half/full moon.(HK's a bright city. So, even in the countryside there are some lights reflected back from the clouds.) I'll say it let me see a person 100m away and identify a person at 30m. I can see much further, i.e. hills at a distance. Unless I tried a gen2/3, this gen1 works well enough.

ALthough I haven't tried it at a dark starry sky, I am pretty sure that you'll need at least a Gen.2 for this condition.

Gen1 under $150 is a good deal for beginners.
Make sure you tried it personally before you purchase it, though.

 

[Frangible]

That is a truck through a gen 1 tube. Gen 1 doesn't see any better than a dark adjusted eye, it just can use IR illumination.

I can't say it's impressed me, but that's just my opinion.

 

[_mike_]

Frangible,

Yeah, Gen I is pretty weak. It's ok for around my property to tell what's roaming around and then light it up with a spotlight if necessary. But it's more a novelty item than a really useful tool. From what I have heard Gen II or III would be a better option.

Mike

 

[gwbaltzell]

I have a Bushnell 26-0102 Russian made that is barely better than night adapted vision and less detail unless the IR is on. Half to full moon improves both but you don't really need equipment at these levels. Also have a very old kit built around a "Gen 0" 6302 tube. Must have IR for it to work.

My page Night Vision - The Red Myth speaks about some research I did about unaided night vision.

George

 

[llvo]

Frangible, it seems that the picture is not properly focused. How far was that truck?

My russian gen.1 doesn't seem that bad.
Billy

 

[kd5rov]

Thanks Guy's for all the info and for anwsering my question. I think I'll get a Gen 1 to play around with, Gen II are to pricey for me. Thanks again.

Ryan

 

[Doug3581]

From a full-moon to down to around about half a full-moon, they work okay--they work about as well as half-decent 7x50 regular binoculars would. Less than that and they don't work well without illumination--and all the built-in illuminators that I have yet seen were visible-red, not invisible IR. On a moonless night you can't see any farther than the illumination goes, which is maybe 15 or 20 feet.
.....
As far as "general sneakiness" goes, I have been looking at different IR lighting options and it appears the best way is just to use red light and perhaps put an extension tube on the flashlight to limit its visibility from the side. The NV is much more sensitive to visible light than IR, and as you filter out more and more visible light, the NV scope sees less and less also. But--a gen-1 NV scope can see red light that is much too dim for people's eyes to really see, and for goofing around, that is the gen-1 scope's value.
......-In a tactical situation they're pretty useless. In a war/combat situation for example, you'd be a lot better off with a conventional 3-9X50mm unpowered riflescope than ANY gen-1 riflescope.
------
Another option I have toyed with (and others might think of also) is using a really huge lens --which would make the scope less convenient to use, but I could accept that somewhat-- except that the lenses for NV scopes are very fast, F/1.2 and shorter, and most c-mount CCTV lenses have found, surplus or new, are f/1.6 and higher. And any F/1.6 lens will automatically be dimmer than a F/1.2, so you will probably never find a reflector lens that will screw right on there and really help; any lens you used would need a much bigger objective than the short-focal-length lens it was replacing. Occasionally you will see surplus lenses for various gen-2 and gen-3 scopes, but they can't be used on gen-1 scopes because of the different physical dimensions of the NV tubes used.
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[Frangible]

If you don't want to buy Gen 2, I'd highly recommend a Sony camcorder with Nightshot instead of a Gen 1 tube. All a Gen 1 lets you do is see an infrared flashlight... the camcorder can do that for about the same price with much higher image quality, a larger field of view, and also records video and zooms.

 

[Doug3581]

YEs but if you want a head-mounted unit, can you do that with a videocamera nowadays? Seems like most I have seen had a regular optical viewfinder and a flip-out LCD screen. The optical finder is made to be held up to your eye, but the screen isn't.....
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[Frangible]

Headmounts are relatively expensive, I just can't see dumping that much cash into something that just lets you see an IR flashlight.

I'd imagine you could headmount a camcorder, the new mini-DVs are pretty small/light, but it'd be ugly.

Here's a Gen 2 monocular for only $689. I can't imagine the optics are particularily high quality, but hey:

http://www.x20.org/nightvision/usnvs2.htm

The cheapest I saw a Gen 1 headmount for was $350. Why not save up another $300 and get something that's vastly superior?

Just imo.

 

[Doug3581]

I would ask on "the other NV forum" before ordering one of those--ATN sells a gen-2 for $700 but it is a "D"-grade tube. The prime-grade tube one is $1100, and several companies seem to sell gen-2's for $900-$1100. The lower grade tube will have problems: dark spots, misalignment or poor gain. .....The page for the USNVS2 does not say that it uses a lower-grade tube, but judging from the price I would assume that it does. (I also see they have a gen-3 for $1400, what many other places sel their gen-2's for)
~~~

 

[Frangible]

Yup, you'd definately be playing the tube lottery right there. I bought a Gen 2 "milspec" monocular that ended up being an amazingly good tube, way over milspec. Guess I got lucky. It was $1100, though.

I saw the same unit with a Gen 2+ tube in it, which mine's actually pretty close to, but it was $1500.

You can get an ITT Gen 3 "commercial" unit for about $1700. You can of course, spend even more than that, on Gen 3 milspec at $3k+, or so-called Gen 4 "gated/filmless" at $5k+. However I wonder how much better that stuff truly is. It seems after you get past 2 and the low end gen 3 you pay a lot of money for not too big of a difference on spec sheets.

No one does night vision reviews or posts comparison photos, so it's nearly impossible to compare the full breadth of them without a lot of personal experience.

I personally don't regret buying a Gen 2, but I guess it depends what you want to use it for, and how much outdoors use you'll do.

 

[Doug3581]

Yea--people try to post photos of this and that, it's nice but it's darn near pointless. If they're using different cameras and film, or even different digital cameras, which can be all over the place more so than film can. You'd need the same test conditions, camera, settings and film for all to do any fair comparisions, else there's not a lot of point really.....
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