Gun Thread: November 7th Edition!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Welp, not much to report this week. I have a yuuuge backlog of winterization chores to do at the el farmo, but some stuff came up that kept me from heading down this past week as I had intended to do. I do have a couple of shooting buddies who are itching to come down, so maybe this coming weekend. Stay tuned!

With that, let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

So I was sitting at the TXMoMe, minding my own bidness when our pal hogmartin ever so casually strolls onto the carport with night vision goggles on his head. Actually he had a helmet on his head and the NVG were attached to the helmet, but you know what I mean. Anyhoo, he slaps the whole contraption onto my cartoonishly large and bulbous cranium, and Ho-lee-shit! All of a sudden I can see stuff in the dark! And the stars! The night sky becomes a whole lot more interesting with the light from stars and galaxies and UFOs and shit all magnified. Also, for some reason, the ladies seem very attracted to a guy who can see in the dark, and all of a sudden, as hogmartin demonstrated the setup for others, he was surrounded by a veritable cloud of 'ette's. Just FYI for you single guys out there.

So what gives with night vision, anyway? What is this strange magic that allows us to see in the dark? Your technology frightens and confuses me! So I asked Mr. Popular if he'd give us the low-down and he willingly obliged!

There are two primary kinds of night vision. Thermal detects heat emissions from objects -- it doesn't need any ambient light to work. It'll let you see a hog or coyote on a moonless night through brush and fog, so it's a good choice for night hunting. You can also use it for things like finding where you might be losing heat from your house so you know where to put insulation or weather stripping. What it isn't good for is identifying visual contrast or things that are about as warm as the background. It's not hard to trip on a branch across a forest path that's the same temperature as the surrounding ground and brush, so thermal isn't great for walking around in the dark.

The other kind of night vision amplifies ambient light and displays it as a monochrome image (green or "white"). A "dark" scene is usually still lit by faint light from the moon and stars, LED indicators and clock radios, distant city lights and headlights, and infrared from security cameras, it's just too dim for human eyes to make a usable image from it. The technology has come through a few generations since it was originally developed in WWII, but what you're looking for is third-generation (which is what the US military has used for at least 20 years). This makes it easier to compare the spec sheets for the various tubes, so you have an idea of what you're getting.

One note on third-generation -- there's a tube on the market called the Photonis Echo. It's not truly a 3rd-generation tube, but it's probably the only one that actually works really well out of the "advanced 2nd generation" or "generation 2+" or whatever trade name cheap tubes get marketed as. It's not as good as a true 3rd gen, but it's VERY good and for a few hundred dollars less than an equivalent 3rd, it could be a good budget option.

I'd recommend avoiding the off-the-shelf NODs from sporting goods stores like Cabela's or Sportsman's Guide. Not that I don't trust the vendors, but the manufacturers rarely have spec sheets (or even list specs), the housings might not be standard (and therefore hard to mount), and so on.

Night kitty!

The main components of a kit are the optic (tube and housing), mount (the flippy bracket that attaches it to your head), the headgear (bump helmet, ballistic helmet, or skullcrusher), a counterweight (adds weight to the back of the headgear so you don't strain your neck). You can also add all kinds of IR strobes and illuminators (invisible to the naked eye but show up in the NODs). If you're going to be shooting with it, you'll need either an IR laser to mount to your weapon, or a weapon optic with a night vision setting (much dimmer than the usual reticle). Steiner makes the current go-to weapon laser (the DBAL and variants); you get a visible red or green laser that you can use to sight in during daylight, then you can switch to a coaxial IR laser for night shooting (it'll shoot to the same point). Weapon optics can be tricky -- the NODs will be focused to infinity, so a weapon sight might be too close to sight properly. You might have to experiment to get this right, or selectively focus near and far. There are also iris devices (the Tarsiers) that narrow the aperture of the NODs; just like a camera, a narrower aperture gives you a wider depth of field so you can have the optic and the target in focus. But just like a camera, you get less light from a narrower aperture, so you may need to turn up the gain, and it might just be unusable if there's not enough ambient light.

For a budget build, a good choice would be a single PVS-14 3rd generation with a Photonis Echo in a PVS-14 housing, with J-arm mount on a bump helmet. Gooningear.com has such a package for $3,680 right now. That will give you a single optic over a single eye with a budget (but very serviceable) tube. A step up would be to choose an Elbit or L3 tube in that package, or to consider a binocular package (which gives you an independent optic for each eye). Apollogearco.com has an RNVG (ruggedized night vision goggle, a binocular package) for $6,995 with true 3rd gen Elbit white phosphor tubes right now, but note that you're on the hook for the helmet and mount.

When you're getting ready to buy, it's a good idea to call and talk with the vendor. These are the people who buy tubes, inspect them, package them into housings, purge them, and do all the setup and QC. The websites often don't update fast enough to show what's in stock, and they might have a lightly-used mount or IR illuminator that they'll offer at a discount. There are four that I've seen spoken highly of:

Apollo Gear Co: I got my panobridge L3 package (two PVS-14s on an adjustable bridge mount with helmet and Comtacs) from Ryan at Apollo. Very patient, knowledgeable, and highly recommended.

Goonin Gear: when I was getting my stuff, it was a tossup between these guys, Apollo, and Steele.

Steele Industries: No personal experience, but well spoken-of.

Kosher Surplus: same.

Final suggestions
- Identify your likely use-case and budget. If you plan on hunting hogs and coyotes at night, get a weapon-mounted thermal scope. If you want to look at the stars, a single-tube with good specs and few blems would be good. If you want something for social situations, head-mounted light amplification is a good choice; blems don't matter so much but other features (auto-gating, white phosphor) do. If you have money to burn, consider dual-tubes with hybrid thermal on a ballistic helmet.

- Don't cheap out on the actual optic. Buy once, cry once. A single PVS-14 with a decent Gen 3 green phosphor tube or a Photonis Echo beats ten muddy Bass Pro "Gen 2+" any day.

- Don't feel like you need to get all the accessories right away though. You can even get a single PVS-14 with no head mount at all, and use it hand-held. Nothing wrong with that.

Hogmartin wraps up this excellent bitch-slapping of knowledge by providing a link to a video on a budget NV setup by T-Rex Arms.

Whoa, Bro! Very nicely done! Thank You!!

First up, our pal and delightful 'ette Screaming in Digital sends a report on a recent trip to the range! It was my absolute pleasure to meet SiD in person in Texas recently, and clearly she can shoot!

.22 S&W Combat Masterpiece and a few rounds on each target with a S&W model 1917 (45 auto rim) at 20 feet, mostly aiming in the center but for a few shots I aimed top left.

Nicely done, Screaming in Digital! Hope to see more of your target work soon!

Next up, our pal SenatorMark4 sends us pics of his Texas attire and shooting irons from the TXMoMe. All those who were there will agree it was a real pleasure to meet him and we all appreciate his generosity in sharing his guns and ammo during the event.

I've included pictures of my costume and tools for the event. Ruger Alaskan .44 mag and Smith 629-6 Custom. The 200 rounds of ammo I brought to burn up only got half used, which is a blessing in this reality. When we had a family place our pistol target was a steel disc plow at 150 yards. Two friends and I would shoot 1000 rounds of .44 mag each weekend. Back then, we could load 1000 fully jacketed 300g silhouette bullets for about $130. Of course, as we burned them up, we had to have a factory re-making them. Kids! I always loaded Unique because it was a full load and we could detect an error before it got to scary BOOM. They were really good and attentive to the job. Back then, when I was steady on my feet, I could hit about 30% all day long at that 150 yard disc. One day I hit 67% on my 300+ rounds.

Thanks SenatorMark4! Great to see the kids at the reloading bench. Hope to see you in Texas next year!

Next up, our pal Warlord sends in a heads up on a great buy!

Are you aware that Springfield Armory has just brought out a new improved copy of the Browning Hi-Power ? MSRP of $699! No magazine safety! I know what I'm buying myself for Christmas!!!

Next, our pal redc1c4 sends an article which attempts to settle the age old debate which is better, 9mm or .45ACP?

I am often asked for recommendations on rifle scopes. Throughout my shooting career, I always used Nightforce products because of their quality construction and glass clarity, even before they became a team sponsor. I still stand by the opinion they are the best combination of quality and value, however, they are really pricey, and not everyone wants or needs to spend $2K on a riflescope. So what is the best scope under $500? The following video attempts to answer the question.

Gun Basics 101
The question of whether ammo 'expires' comes up from time to time, and here's a video on that very topic.

Are you storing ammo the wrong way? A big part of the answer above involves proper storage, and here's a video on that.

The Romeo y Julieta Media Noche is one of my favorites and wont break the bank, with a box of 20 5"x 54 Robustos at about $130. Great construction and very even burn. As a matter of fact, I am enjoying one now!

Link-O-Rama

I'm really very seriously not kidding around anymore. Buy Ammo
AmmoSeek - online ammo search tool
GunBot - online ammo search tool
SG Ammo
Palmetto State Armory
Georgia Arms
AmmoMan
Target Sports USA
Bud's Gun Shop

This week's entry is from our pal WTM

Illustration from an adventure magazine of the late 1940's. Imagine this appearing in a magazine today.

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That's it for this week - have you been to the range?

posted by Weasel at 07:00 PM

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