Basics of Night Vision Setup

[Music] [Music] [Music] if you've ever watched your buddy eat crap under night vision and you have this expression going at the subscribe button if you want that to happen also subscribe as well like comment guys these things help me out quite a bit the comments section is always out of control if you're joining us for the first time welcome I want to take to get in this video really quickly to thank a couple of really big contributors that helped to make it happen so we have us night-vision TNBC and of course sharpshooting indoor range and gun shop they let me shoot indoors under night-vision and then the two other companies helped to advise me on tactical kind of aspects of all this there's a lot of information here and I'm gonna do my best to convey all of it guys before we get into it there are multiple ways of support my channel we have of course gun mag warehouse who are big supporters go in there support them get those mags we have Alonso defense group it belts and t-shirts that show that you're maybe afraid of girls but definitely not afraid of the dark maybe a little still afraid of dark but now the night vision you won't and finally guys Ellie axe ammunition get yourself that ammo just can't cut his grand thumb for all of those and I appreciate you guys so today we're gonna talk about night vision and we're gonna be talking about not specific devices or tactics or TTP's or anything like that we're gonna be talking about a basic set up what you're going to experience as you get it set up what you need and that type of stuff because I see a lot of misinformation or not a whole lot of complete information so hopefully this video will be enough for you guys to get yourselves set up or at least point you in the right direction if you're thinking about night vision I get a lot of questions when it comes to night vision as far as what is the cheapest night vision I can buy there's some very cheap night vision you can buy but there is not good cheap night vision so when it comes to night vision guys unfortunately this is a buy once cry once it is not inexpensive you're talking a couple thousand dollars at the very least for a basic unit that's going to give you the type of functionality that you typically expect out of a night vision unit now of course you can buy cheaper stuff but it's not my recommendation as of this video now I'm sure that some of it will perform fine but just know for this we're kind of talking about kind of modern night vision units so or in me going along with that so again it's expensive and I get that but if you're looking to get into it it's pretty cool and this video is not for you no military or it's a little bit for law enforcement but this is I'm mostly making this video for civilians because it is well within your rights as the United States citizen to own night-vision and to shoot under night-vision and to have a good time and that's all about freedom and we're not gonna get too political there but that's right so it's kind of cool it's a cool thing that we get to do so let's have fun doing it okay night vision the first question is is should I get mono dual or pan Oh first off panel is ridiculous you're not gonna spend forty two thousand dollars and Plus you need to be government led to get those so let's let's kind of out we're not gonna worry about that now mono verse dual that is always been the question because dual night-vision you know binocular night-vision costs a lot more money than dual you know a good binocular night-vision set is gonna be costing you at minimum around eight to nine thousand dollars that's very expensive that's about as much as some people spend on their cars in fact a lot more well as a mono tube like at pvs-14 usually runs for a good unit around 3,000 or so it's a lot more doable maybe even closer to 2,000 for certain units so it's a lot more doable for most people now as far as which is superior that's a good question as well theoretically both mono in dual night-vision devices offer you a 40 degree field of view in fact the dual doesn't offer you much more of a 40 degree because both tubes are within eyesight so it should just be 4 degrees maybe like 41 or 42 but for all intensive purposes they offer about the same field of view so which do you get well duels are obviously going to be better binocular night vision is easier on the eyes and the reason for that is you have both eyes seen the image and it's just easier for your brain to accept now there's a lot of science that goes behind it but with a mano you're gonna have that monocular over one eye so when I see no black and when I seen green or white and it's there's a conflict between your brain and nobody kind of explains that better than John Lovell so I spent a lot of time talk time talking with him about this very issue and what it really comes down to is yeah it's definitely easier to move and do things under binocular night-vision but what it really comes down to is training so you know you give to people you know by now and a duel and a mano and you set them on like an obstacle course are shooting an event the duel guys probably do better most of the times it's easier for the brain to accept that type of stuff but if you give you know nubia by now and then you give somebody with a lot of training a mano the guy that the mano is gonna crush it because he has that training so the biggest thing is to practice and actually use the stuff that you have and that's my biggest recommendation now as far as night vision is concerned guys realize that night vision allows you to see in the dark and it does that by amplifying ambient light thousands of times so if you're in an environment where there is no light it's not gonna be able to do that and there are certain things you can do to kind of get around that we'll talk about those in the future but just so you understand how the night vision works in general and we're not gonna get anything crazy anything like that we're staying open source all this information so monitor stool do the nicest one that you can afford that's my recommendation it comes to that as far as the night vision device itself so if you're gonna be going for binocular night vision devices there's a lot of different devices that you can spend your money on anything from a PBS 15 to sentinels from t NBC to the Harris dual night vision devices there's so many different ones and they all are slightly different and now the purpose of this video is in to compare any of those devices in fact we'll be having another video directly comparing different night-vision devices but suffice to say do your research and final which one's gonna work for you and it would behoove you to do your research since you're gonna be dropping probably a minimum around nine thousand dollars on a dual night vision system now for a monocular when it comes to it pretty much the go-to is gonna be a pvs-14 which is a great monocular the biggest thing that it comes down to with any of these monocular night Division devices that you're buying is that you buy from a reputable manufacturer you can hop on eBay right now and probably find a pvs-14 for like sixteen hundred dollars in your life Wow Grantham is a liar because this thing is only fourteen hundred dollars and he said it would be like three thousand well yes and here's the thing is you might get lucky and you might get a nice pvs-14 or you might get a pvs-14 with not american-made tubes in it and tubes are the actual part of the night vision device it amplifies the light you might get a really cheap Russian tube and then you're out a lot of money all because you didn't buy from reputable manufacturer so yeah you might get lucky but I definitely do recommend buying from a reputable manufacturers and those reputable manufacturers and that I typically recommend our us night vision and TNBC so again buy from a reputable manufacturer I know it's a little bit more money but there's a warranty behind it because nothing sucks more than damaging your unit and having no warranty and then you're paying a lot of out-of-pocket and I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of people buying you know night vision on eBay and then they get it and it's a wrong to where they get it and then it's not working it won't turn on but there's nobody that can turn to for that warranty work and so they end up sending it to tnbc or the us night vision and they up end up repairing it and replacing the tube and it cost them just as much as they would have spent to have just bought it from them in the first place so violence cry once when it comes to this type of stuff now when it comes to night vision there are currently three generations of night vision some people will argue and say there's a fourth generation but officially there's only three generations of night vision typically what you think of when you think of night vision you think of a gen 3 unit nice clean picture all that type of stuff now Gen 1 and Gen 2 they do work but they are extremely poor compared to Gen 3 units and people argue and be like I've seen Gen 2 tubes that are amazing and there are some amazing Gen 2 tubes but Gen 3 are superior in every way so I always recommend the gen 3 with the latest generation receive on the most 8 I believe as of this video now with in Gen 3 units you have kind of two different color palette options you have green and you white boss fur now white phosphor phosphor is a little bit of a misnomer because if you look through it's not really white it's more kind of a bluish hue and a lot of people get really tied up in white phosphorus or they're like I need to have a white phosphorus that's way better than green and most time it is but I've seen people who will buy Gentoo white foster if you like thank God I have white phosphorus as they should have just bought the green in Gen 3 because it's still going to be superior to a gin too that's why fostering and white foster is just the color when it comes to green verse why foster when most people are thinking of white foster they're thinking of tubes from the L 3 L 3 is a company that makes unfilmed tubes and we're not gonna get too much into the weeds other than to say that unfilmed technology gives you a very good picture through the tube now with white phosphorous not specifically better but what it is is it gives you a better color palette so it's easier to see everything versus the greens and the blacks that you had an older night vision so for me personally I get less eye strain I get don't get tension headaches quite as quickly and all that type of stuff when I'm looking under white foster for multiple hours you know eight nine hours plus so white posture is always gonna cost a little bit more but if you can afford it I would definitely recommend putting the coin towards a white phosphorus as it's gonna be a little bit more pleasing to the eye and just easier to look through and see things and that's my typical recommendation now once you've selected your unit you selected green versus white foster you need to think of a mounting option so there are multiple different mounting options out there there are skull crushers and there are helmets you can't so you do the handheld as well but for kind of my recommendation ice typically recommend helmet mounted it's a little bit more comfortable now within helmet so you have ballistic and non ballistic now we're not gonna get into that in this video I have another video talking about Howlett's you can go ahead and check that out and see all that goodness but in this case I am using a ops core maritime helmet this is a ballistic helmet they are not cheap this one runs around 1,500 or so dollars now you can get less expensive helmets like teen Wendy ballistic which are excellent and tech flux with helmets which are excellent as well you can do the cry airframe so there are a lot of ballistic helmets out there you seem to find one that fits your head now within your helmets you need to find a mount for it so typically what I recommend is a very good mount cuz a lot of people will spend $3,000 on night vision or 8,000 9,000 a mic oh my gosh I have like no money left and all sudden they realize they need a mount and they're like I'm just gonna get the cheapest mount possible but you're really screwing yourself if you don't get a good mountain let me explain why so right here I have a Wilcox of g20 for mount this is one of my most recommended mounts that I would say to get and the reason for that is a good mount is going to be stable the unit is not going to wobble on it and further it's going to allow a lot of adjustment so you need to get that night vision so it's right over your eye or both eyes or all that type of thing so the g20 for amount allows you to raise or lower the height it allows you to change the distance from your eye with the night vision device and you can also change the angle of the tube on your eyes now it seems like a lot of adjustment but I promise you that you need it another great thing with the g20 400 well as well is it has a breakaway feature so when this is mounted to your head and let's say you're driving in the back of a pickup shooting coyotes or something like that or doing something crazy that's fun with night vision and a branch snags your night vision so a couple things are gonna happen one the night vision is gonna break or two your necks gonna break so what's great about the g20 for mount is the mount will break away under sufficient pressure that way your night vision or neck don't break it kind of saves yourself a little bit which is why I always recommend putting a little bit of money into your mount now they're not cheap there's typically around four or five hundred dollars and I understand it's a pill to swallow but at the same time having a good set amount to make sure that it's directly over your eye that's good and that you're not gonna kill yourself when something bad happens that's pretty priceless so I would definitely recommend getting a good now now if you can't if you don't want to get a g24 there are other mounts out there like the g11 there are others as well but that is what I'm going to typically recommend and what it comes along with that as well is going to be the suspension system in your helmet so it's important to have a good suspension system luxe line are warm dial the cam fit system from team Lindy are all excellent systems and again not to in the weeds of it because I have a video in helmets but find one that's going to keep that nice and snug on your head and be comfortable because there's nothing worse than having a hot but when you're wearing night vision and just kidding all those weird bruises on your forehead you look weird that's true about it from their solutions it's a good story so again make sure that you're setting yourself up with good peripherals now as far as mounting goes I know somebody's gonna bring it up they're gonna say hey I want to take my pvs-14 and I want to mount it to my gun with one of the mounts and that's doable some pvs-14 units are rated to take the recoil of 5 5 6 or 7 6 - and all that type of stuff but I think that's more a problem than it's ever a solution I do not recommend mounting the PPS 14 to a weapon and I'm sure I'm gonna get some hate for that but I almost always go with the helmet mounted now there are night-vision systems they are made to be mounted directly to a weapon in front or behind of an optic depending on the device used and we're not gonna get too much into those that's kind of a more in-depth long-range kind of discussion but they are definitely amused do your research on that and see if that is a good fit for you but typically I recommend helmet mounted that is the way to go now once you have your mount your helmet all that type stuff you're gonna have your night-vision device so in here I have a binocular night vision device and I want to mount it to my helmet so I have my g24 mount so I'm simply gonna fit the little dovetail right in there it's gonna click into place now it's pretty secure it's not gonna go anywhere but never never trust that mount always have some type of a lanyard so dummy cord so whether you tie some 550 cord from the night vision device to your helmet this one is the lanyard system from t-rex arms I am a big fan of it a lot of people just trust the little bungees off the helmet and they do hold it most the time but they will fail at a wrong period of time and you'll lose your night vision and there's nothing worse than losing you know three four ten thousand dollar piece of gear so dummy cord your night vision from talking the guys at us night vision they can't tell me the number of times that people have gone how you know coyote hunting or something like that and they've been hand-holding they're PBS 14s and then they drop it during the night and they never find it and then they're out $3,000 so always lanyard that somehow to yourself to make sure that you don't lose it that's a very important now once you have your night vision mounted under your helmet what's going to be important is think about all that weight up front so because you have all this night vision weight up front it's going to pull the helmet forward now there are multiple options to kind of counterbalance that and it's very important that you do so otherwise you're gonna be very uncomfortable for light or night vision devices sometimes a battery pack is simple enough to make sure to counterbalance it on very light weight units like this one otherwise with heavier units you might need some type of counterweight this is an ops core counterweight there are multiple ones out there you have one some T and VC and others I like the ops core one quite a bit so you can simply adjust how many weights that you had in there to get the amount of weight that you needed back to ensure that you properly counterbalance that system so you can see right here simple little weights and you can slide them out and put different ones in all that type of stuff and you can correctly balance that so make sure that you have a correct counterweight otherwise your life will be kind of a little bit of a living hell so make sure you have counter weights otherwise it's going to be a bad day now when it comes to monocular if you choose to get a monocular you might have the question of what I do I put the monocular over because it could only be under one so my best advice is that most people are doing it over their non-dominant eye so if I am right eye dominant that means I do mostly everything with my right eye of shoe right all that kind of stuff then I'm probably gonna put over my left eye now if I left eye dominant over my right eye but also kind of depends on what shoulder you shooting off of so let me explain for a moment typically people are putting on the non-dominant eye the eye that they're not typically you look into an optic with that way they can aim the IR laser they can shoot doing that and then with their unaided eye they can look at the lighting conditions and kind of see what everything is looking like not under night vision and if they have to if they have to use a white light and they need to look through their optic they can do that with their shooting eye so again it's gonna depend now the easy kind of way around that is to get a Wilcox mount to the Wilcox adapter and that way you can simply press a button and swing the monocular from either eye and that way you can't solve the problem and that's what I would typically recommend okay so we have our helmet we have a night vision you have our mount it's good everything's looking good now the question is is what do I do now okay I do with it so let's talk about that let's talk a little bit about use the first thing that we need to do is we need to adjust it right so we need to get this adjusted to our eyes we need to get this the correct length away now there are multiple ways that we can handle this some people choose to not wear eye pro when they have night vision on and some people do that is kind of up to you I would recommend eye Pro behind your night vision the I Pro will kind of put the night vision a little bit more off of your face and you'll have a smaller sight picture than if you don't have it and get it all the way up to you that's going to be your call when it comes to that now once you have it adjusted so you have the height adjustment so you can see directly through the tubes you have it at the correct angle so it's not going weird you need to adjust the interior interpupillary distance that is going to be the distance between these two tubes or that one tube to make sure that is directly over your pupils so on most units is some type of screw mechanism that will set them wet to the correct distance apart now in the case of this particular night vision device which is from l3 it's a simple screw mechanism that once you set it when you rotate them back down onto your ice the screw stopped them from going any further that way you can have them set the correct distance another cool thing about this particular unit and many other dueled night vision devices not all them but some is that they can rotate out what that means is that when I'm not using it I can rotate it up and out of the way and I don't always have to use the mount to pop them up further if I just want to use them as a monocular I can have one down and one up that way I can use it and that helps me kind of look at lighting conditions and that type of thing and that's getting a little bit into the weeds but realize that dual night vision is just superior as I talked about earlier so once you've set interpupillary distance what you need to do is you need to focus on so when it comes to a monocular you're just going to focus the front and then you're gonna focus the back now when you're focusing in the front what you want to do is whatever environment that you're gonna be working in or you know doing your work in so if you're in a CQB class you're gonna want to focus that at about the maximum distance so around seven feet or so depending on the environment if you're out hunting you're probably gonna focus it a little bit further so for hunting or something like that what I typically do is I'll look at a faraway object that I can easily identify let's say a car and I will focus my front objective onto it until that car is crystal clear then I'll go to my doctor dieter adjustment I'll adjust that to make sure it's good and then on my other eye I'll do the other adjustment so again I'm closing one eye doing the adjustment close the other eye doing the adjustment and then I'm gonna be good to go so again left eye front back right eye front back doesn't have to be left and right can be right and left doesn't matter pointing his front back front back and that applies to a lot of things in life and once you have those adjusted everything should be pretty crystal clear now realize that night vision has a very thin kind of focus point so what that means is if I focus is super close to me things that are further away are gonna be fuzzy or if I focus it far away then things that are very close are gonna be fuzzy and that's kind of just going to be the fact of life when it comes to night vision and there are some devices out there that allow you to have a greater kind of focal length but they do that by limiting light somewhat so it's a little bit darker so if that's good if that's something that you're comfortable with you can definitely do that just understand the trade-offs that comes to so I can a bright environment that might be something that might be acceptable to you one of those devices is from mat Bach and I've used it and it definitely does work in certain environments so you need to figure out if that's going to be acceptable for what you are doing so again it's gonna be up to you guys and what you're doing through night vision now again this is gonna come down to training but a lot of night-vision devices can only focus so close that means that you know past a certain distance it's it's gonna be out of focus no matter what so on this particular unit that I have right here from l3 they can only focus as close as 18 inches what that means is anything within 18 inches from those goggles is going to be fuzzy so if I'm trying to do map reading or trying to tourniquet somebody and that type of stuff if you're doing something crazy like that that could be a problem in your knee you're gonna need to make sure that you're doing it enough training to ensure that you're still good to go with doing that type thing something as simple as changing the magazine on a gun can be a very difficult under night-vision so again training is what it comes down to [Music] so you have everything to just that everything's good and you're like this is so amazing I'm blown away right now I'm glad I could follow along these instructions with tactical Blue's Clues and you're looking through it and you see like a little black Fleck and wherever you look that black Fleck is in the same position you're like is that in my tube yes that is in your tube and those are blemishes and blemishes are just inherent to the manufacturing process of night vision those aren't indicative at all of manufacturing quality it just happens this is part of the night vision kind of manufacturing process so if you have one don't freak out too much it's just it's just a part of it now you might be looking through in a kind of a brighter environment maybe a lights on you see headlights or something like that as you're looking through you see this faint kind of mmm honeycomb kind of hexagonal pattern you're like oh my gosh is my night vision broken it's not that is called fixed pattern noise and it is just normal night vision so don't freak out when you see that type of thing now you also might be looking at a headlight and you're like oh no I'm gonna blind myself well no because there is a feature on night vision called Auto gating Auto gating basically makes sure that when you're looking at something that's very bright that the night vision tube doesn't damage itself now that being said don't just take your night vision device leave it on and set it down somewhere and leave it on and just let it look at something very bright because what's gonna happen is you're gonna have image burnin so you need to be constantly moving and looking at different things you're not meant to just look at one bright object for a long period of time once you have burnin that's just burned into the tube so make sure that you turn your tubes off and I don't turn your tubes on during the day they can handle it for a little bit but it's a good rule not to do that now if you do want to do some train with night vision during the day and that does have some applications what you need to do is you need to have day cap filters basically it's just a little cap that goes over the front with a small little pinhole that allows in enough light so that the night vision functions but not so much that it damages itself ok now we're kind of getting into the cool stuff shooting shooting under night vision is interesting for some caveats most shooting under night-vision is done with a IR laser and now you can argue that but most shooting is done with an IR laser it's just easier to use it's very instinctual and it's it can be seen by the naked eye it can only be seen under night-vision now it comes along with a higher laser is an IR illuminator because like I talked about at the very beginning of the video night vision works by amplifying visible light if you don't have enough visible light what you can use is that IR illuminator which again cannot be seen by the naked eye to help illuminate the scene and you can see a couple different videos where I'm using an IR illuminator so they're absolutely necessary in some of those very dark areas say in your mom's basement in a dark forest with a you know cloud cover and that type of things it can be very bright like if you have a night night where the moon is bright I mean that is super bright under night-vision but there are definitely instances where you need to have a higher illuminator now many night-vision devices have a built-in IR illuminator and I've heard a lot of people say hey I just shoot with that built-in IR illuminator that's freaking crazy don't do that that one thought brighten up it doesn't have enough throw if you're shooting with a rifle or a pistol you're gonna get splash off your hands and it's gonna be super bright don't do it have a dedicated unit on your rifle there are multiple different IR devices on the market currently and I know it's very confusing to look at but a couple ones I would recommend and we will be doing a huge IR laser ire illuminator comparison video in the very near future you have something like the PEC 15 or the at PLC you have the D ball you have the us night vision triad you have the hollow Sun I believe it's the ls3 21g you have the B Myers mall now understand with all these devices that is that they are expensive they do cost a little bit of money typically around a thousand at the very least the Myers mall cost twenty five hundred dollars and they all have kind of a pluses and minuses and we'll be talking about that but the point is find one that suits your needs for what you're doing with night vision you can aim through an optic and fire especially if that optic has some type of night vision setting so let's say like an endpoint red dot you can definitely look through that when it's on the night vision setting and you can take your shots now if it doesn't have a night vision setting the problem is going to be is that the dot is gonna be too bright in your night vision and it's going to wash out that whatever target you're trying to shoot at so it's very important to have a night vision setting if you're planning on shooting through your optic using your night vision now be aware it is very difficult it takes a lot of training to be able to shoot through an optic while wearing night vision just because of distances and getting it lined up right now when it comes to pistol work it is much easier to shoot a pistol that has an optic on it versus a pistol of iron sights so if you are doing a lot of nitrogen shoot with a pistol I would highly recommend some type of optic typically a tree an armoire would be a very good option so we've gone over a lot of stuff when it comes to night vision today and I've barely even scratched the surface of the information that I want to give you guys but I wanted to make this video a primer that if you wanted to kind of get into night vision and get started kind of want to give you a basic set up of what you need to make sure that you were effective with your night vision so night vision is freaking sick and it's really cool that in the United States that we are able to own this own latest gen technology and shoot under it and have a good time and that's one of our rights so if this interests you get out there and shoot because it's really really fun now with everything guys it's important that you get training when it comes to night vision training that is very specialized and not a whole lot of people offer it now if I could uh you know recommend some people who I'd recommend would be Green Line tactical with Don Edwards very well-regarded you have press tech consulting you have bill hours with tap rack tactical all are really good guys who have excellent reputations in the community and wheel to give you good training on night vision guys night vision looks cool as we know the whole point of everything is looking cool now you'll only look cool if you're not eating crap and doing stupid stuff so make sure you get that training so that you look cool into night vision guys I appreciate you guys I know this was a long video thank you for staying tuned through it we have many more videos coming in night vision it's a cool little topic and I want to make it more popular because it is super fun get out there get training have fun guys and I've got nothing else for you okay one more thing for you guys so I keep getting questions about airsoft like do I hate airsoft do I love their soft you know what am I thoughts on it honestly if I was a kid in airsoft it's kind of more popular and where it is today I probably would have played it it seems like a fun sport I've never done it or anything like that I hope to do it in the future you know and kind of see that community and how it's working but um you know just understand where they're at like I don't see I don't see a problem of it imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so that's kind of how I see airsoft things so your problem it looks like fun so you know more power to the men shooting plastic bb's at each other that sounds kind of fun I mean that's pretty much what you could do with the UTM s and that super freakin fun so get out there guys do your stuff who cares what people think just have a good time

Channel: Garand Thumb

Views: 863,260

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Keywords: garand, thumb, garand thumb, night vision, sage dynamics, special forces, night vision basics, what night vision to buy, how to use night vision, best night vision, nvg, nv

Id: 51C1-SNAlhk

Length: 30min 17sec (1817 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 05 2018