Add night-vision to rifle scope, and rifle:

[Lucky]

I've seen two basic ideas for this: #1) you clip the NV to the back of the scope eyepiece. But this requires you to either move the scope forward or move the stock backward, right?

#2)You mount the NV in front of the optics, but there's some complicated magic which goes on and it requires a special gizmo, and you need rails and stuff out front to do it.

Which is advised? If you go for #1, can you do it with just and ordinary H-S precision extendable stock, will that be enough LOP? And if you go with #1 how do you stop your eye from getting bashed by the NV, which has far less eye relief than a scope??

 

[elmerfudd]

In my experience it's all kind of half-assed. If you really want to do it right, you should either get a NV scope, or optics that are designed to work with NV like an EOTech. There are several problems with using a conventional scope. First, you either have to attach it to the scope, or try to line everything up and hold things in place which can be difficult. It also moves your head about 5" further back which means your hold will suffer. If you're using any significant magnification and your NV is less than Gen3, you will need extra illumination. Then you've got the recoil issues. On a rimfire or airgun it doesn't matter, but with a larger centerfire it would be a serious problem.

IR lasers work well enough, but for killing raccoons or possums I'd rather have a scope. You can convert any green light laser by removing the MCA and the IR filter, but don't plan on doing any precision shooting with it. The resulting laser will just be too bright and it's beam too large. On the plus side though they make one heck of an illuminator so long as you don't try to view it through a scope. The real deal are only available to police and military.

 

[MCgunner]

My half assed po-boy answer to the problem.....:banghead: My night hog hunting set up.

 

[Lucky]

Elmer that's what I imagined, that the clip-on back of the scope set-ups would be fraught with problems. But the front-mount ones, that have that special image-shifting converter deal, any info on those?

The big problem I see is that once you get a scope good and properly, exactly zeroed, you just don't want to dismount it and re-mount another, and do it over and over again. Takes time and money and isn't the funnest thing to shoot. True some can zero in 3 shots, but I'm nit-picky.

As for the laser, could you elaborate please? I'm very interested, as I have Gen2 and it works just fine imo, can see fine, but was looking at getting Da Torch illuminator and wonder if a laser like you described would be as good. Does removing this bit make it into a wide cone of light, like a flashlight?


MCgunner looks like it works, so good enough eh.

 

[elmerfudd]

Green light lasers all start as IR lasers. They have a tiny little green crystal called the MCA in line after the laser that cuts the lasers frequency in half and changes it to a green light. Once you remove that crystal, you have an IR laser, although it's far from a great sight system. So for about $80 you can get a rudimentary laser sight. You could probably score hits on a man size torso with one up to 100 yards, but forget about any precision shooting.

As near as I can tell there is nothing illegal about doing this. IR lasers appear to be illegal to sell for reasons of consumer safety, not national security. Essentially you have a very bright laser that's invisible to the naked eye and could cause eye damage if it or it's reflection were to hit your eye. I'd recommend only using one with a pressure switch. That way it's only turned on while you're using it.

 

[elmerfudd]

As far as turning it into a cone of light, think of it as more like halfway between a flashlight and a normal laser. It's a far more focused beam, but at 50 yards about the best I could do was a dot about one foot in diameter. Now I'm sure you could do better than that if you were really willing to put some time and money into it. I found directions over at AR15.com on how to convert a military grade laser sight to IR using the correct diode, but since it would have cost around $500 I didn't pursue it.

 

[MCgunner]

Well, I still want a night vision monocle of some sort. If the moon ain't out and it's pitch dark, I hear 'em walkin' around and gruntin' and squeelin', but can't see squat to tell what's going on, where they are. If there's a bright moon and I can at least see movement, works a lot better. AND, if the moon is really bright, tha scope has an illuminated reticle that works fantastic in full moonlight, don't even need the spot light.

The light is good to about 100 yards. My feeder is only 42 yards, so no problems there. No, it ain't a 1500-2000 dollar night vision scope, but hell, the rifle was only 75 bucks before I scoped it and put the stock on it, LOL! If I could afford a good 3rd gen night vision scope, I'd put in on my 7 mag, move the Weatherby Supreme off that one to my .257 Roberts to replace the Bushnell and then all my rifles would have decent quality scopes and I'd not have to worry about switching out a scope, just take the day gun for the day and the night gun for the night. But, what decent night vision is running now, no way. I wish it'd follow digital cameras and drop in price, but I guess there's not as much demand for night vision as for cameras. Bummer.

 

[Lucky]

You can get Gen1 tubes that are compatible with all PVS14 gear (but not good for head-wear, because they are not actually true 1x magnification). I've only got a gen1 spotting scope and a gen2+ monocular, but the Gen1 is technically a clearer picture (and a bigger lens though), if you only have enough illumination.

Anyway anyone could get a gen1 monocular and pop it on a scope no problem, then use illumination and you're good to go. Scope mount would just cost a few times more than the monocular, that's all.

strong illuminators
http://www.ar15.com/content/products/lights/irIlluminatorShootOut.html


Elmer that's great info. I made a red-laser into IR, just with a home-made filter. For use on M1a with KAC front rails, and wearing NV monocular. But for a long-range rifle 2 feet-wide every 100 yards or so would be just fine! If you could PM me any details of the laser you used or what you did it'd be appreciated.

 

[Lucky]

Done some more reading and forgot to mention that one guy said he did OK using a head-mount monocular to look through his scope, sort-of solving the eye-relief problem and recoil (mounting nV behind the scope reduces eye-relief to nothing). Just that there's a lot of fiddling to get used to the right head position. I'm going to try it next weekend.

 

[elmerfudd]

I've done the same thing, but I was using rimfires and airguns. Basically you just put the lens of the monocular against the eyepiece of the scope and it works in a clumsy sort of way. Now if you were using a centerfire, you'd have some problems as the recoil would be smashing your scope, monocular and likely your eye together. It's also not a really great method since it takes time to put the two together and get a visible sight picture, if you have your built in illuminator turned on, it will be blocked by the turrets and bell housing on the scope and it moves your head back to an awkward location. It works much better with low powered scopes. There is the old rule of thumb concerning scopes, that your pupil can only dilate so far and if the ratio of the diameter of the objective lens divided by the magnification is more than 7 that the scope won't get any brighter. So a 4x32mm scope would have a ratio of 8 and increasing the objective lens to 40mm wouldn't make it brighter. I suspect that this rule is not true when using night vision. I haven't done a whole lot of experimentation, but it seems to me that my 3-12x52mm scope is brighter on 3x than my 2-7x32mm scope on 3x and both are much brighter than my 6-24x40mm scope on 6x.

Concerning the laser, I bought the green light laser that Dave's Collectables sells. Basically you just take the whole thing apart. Eventually you'll get down to a brass tube a little smaller than a .308 case with a small circuit board and electrical input on one side and a plastic lens on the other side. This is the laser assembly. The tube screws together in the center and you just unscrew it and separate the two halves. One side is just a tube with a lens in it. Just set this one aside. The second side has the laser, a lens and the MCA. The MCA looks like a tiny square of colored glass. You want to remove this. You might have to remove the lens first to get at it and if that's the case then you'll have to glue the lens back in again afterward. Also some lasers have infrared filters on them and you'll want to remove those too. Now just reassemble everything. The tube with the forward lens that you set aside in the beginning is what you use to focus your laser beam. The front lens should be inside of a threaded sleeve and by screwing it in or out you adjust the focus. Once you've done it once, it's pretty simple.

 

[Lucky]

In case the internet ever crashes I'm saving your words for posterity, thanks again man and happy New Year.

 

[LR-308Hunter]

If you have the cash ATN makes a conversion (ATN PS22-HPT Night Vision Weapon Sights) kit that turns your regular day time scope into a night vision, i am not sure as to how well it does work but according to the company it sounds cool. i'm saving my money to get one and try it

 

[Zak Smith]

AN/PVS-22 mounted in front of the scope objective.