CHEAP Night Vision?

[oneworld]

these are wickid
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...113816026&rd=1

[mfalcone15]

i would say for night play, dont trust anyone unless u know them specifically, or you left the base with them. "i'm on the red team" means nothing. All of the games i've ever played, the refs wear lighted vests at night. If you see a ref walking around somewhere, chances are he is with a mission group. unless you know that u have a mission in that area, go clear it out. Use a flashlight as little as possible. You eyes will completely adjust after 20mins in darkness, putting a light on will make you go back into that process. As for the ATN cougar you posted, it could possibly be a good starting unit, it is Gen I and has a recognition range of 100m, but after owning a Gen I, i would say IF you can, try and get atleast Gen II., Gen I is better than no night vision. Having the ability to turn the unit on w/o the IR helps a lot, not only so you are not sporting the red IR dot, but personally at the last game, i could see the field better with the IR off, than i could with it on. There was a little bit of a haze on the field, but plenty of moonlight, so it worked out well for me. For anyone looking at NVD, personally i would say go with a monocular, it leaves your other eye perfectly adjusted to the dark. When i take the night vision off of the eye i am using it on, i can not see a thing. But its all preference. some people prefer bi-ocular setups, so to each his own.

[Burphel]

Geeze, you want me to give away all my tricks? Ok, maybe a few more.

Well, mfalcone pointed out another big tip: don't trust anyone you don't *know* for sure is on your side. In most rules, it's perfectly legal to lie about your team affiliation. Passwords get intercepted. If you don't personally know someone or see their armband color, assume they're bad guys.

Another tip is to wear camo at night. A lot of people think black is a good idea. The problem being that the stuff around you will all reflect some amount of light, and you won't. You've just sillouhetted yourself. It doesn't have to be anything special, although I'm told the new Marpat is particularly hard to spot, even with good night vision. Also stay away from dye-subbed jersies. Believe it or not, most of them show up as a white-out on night vision gear. Even black ones. My best guess is that they simply don't add dyes that affect the IR spectrum.

On a similar note, nighttime is one of the best times to try out 'paitnball sniper' tactics. You'll never get the extra range of a true sniper, but at night the extra detection difficulties make ghillie suits and long crawls much more feasable. At night, all hits you feel are an elimination at most games, a rule ghillie wearers are bound to at any time, so at night you don't lose anything by wearing one. They'll also keep you nice and warm. Ghillies are one of the few ways you can absolutely beat even the best night vision (until somebody pony's up for thermal goggles).

Last tip is to know your limits and know when to quit. Falling asleep on a paintball field is a *bad* idea. Aside from all the flying things, it's a good way to die of hypothermia if it's even mildly cold or wet out. If you need some coffee or cocoa to warm up and wake up, or just need to sack out for the night, do it. It's not wimping out, it's doing the smart thing.

[mfalcone15]

yea, i got stuck on guard duty my first scenario game, it was at EMR, and our base was the big castle. i was bored, and a bit tired, so i sat down and leaned back against the wall, not 5 minutes later after i had closed my eyes, paintballs hitting right next to me. scared the crap out of me. see me and my friend were taking turns using a q-beam to scan the woods, so it was hit turn, and i guess there was some people in the woods that decided to take a shot at him, lol

[Evil Bob]

It takes the average person 30 minutes for their eyes to fully adapt to night time conditions, one camera flash will ruin that in an instant. When the gear shuts off, you need to turn it on again, this gives the other guy a few seconds to operate in which you cannot see at all.

Gen II and III systems have a threshold cutoff to help prevent damage to the gear, but it will still ruin your nighttime vision from the brief flare of bright light due to the display being saturated. Gen III are usually prohibitively expensive, usually in the $2k-$5k range depending upon the make and model. It all depends upon how badly you want to be able to see and how much detail you want. The better the generation, the clearer the resulting picture.

I've used NVG's for many years in the military predominately in night time operations, both weapon and helmet mounted, both have their pros and cons to any given situation.


Weapon mounted:

PRO: NVG is typically sighted along the round flight path so you can hit what you see.
CON: NVG sees only where the barrel is pointed, aka "tunnel vision", you only see where the marker is pointed.


Helmet mounted:

PRO: You see everything you look at.
CON: Keeping them comfortably on your eyes can be a pain, usually requiring a very uncomfortable harness system and alot of added weight to your skull.


Best of both worlds: Look to what the miltary does for night operations on their gear. The configuration that the M4 is typically outfitted for is DOT sight on weapon (usually reflex sight), helmet mounted NVG. DOT sight gives you an aiming reference for where the rounds are supposed to go, helmet mounted NVG allows you to see more then just your weapon sees.

The above option usually has the weapon mounting multiple illumination sources rangeing from high intensity LED "blaster" lights for blinding and/or flooding lighting an area to overwhelm an enemies night vision to aiming aids using either/both visible and non visible lasers. You can get by with a mini mag light a $20 tactical on/off switch stickied to the battery pack on your e/xmag. For those of you with cash to burn look at SureFire, they aint cheap, but they really light the area up. Which ever route you go, I highly recommend the remote on/off switched that is activated by squeezing, momentary lighting is your best friend, it allows you to spot your target quickly without the need of the light being on the whole time, making you less of a continual target in the dark.

-Evil Bob