Thread: Cheap thermal or night vision

Hey
Any one on here bought thermal or night vision of AliExpress or wish or knows of someone who has. I know it’ll be crap at best but want something to tie me over for a year.

Originally Posted by msingleton

Hey
Any one on here bought thermal or night vision of AliExpress or wish or knows of someone who has. I know it’ll be crap at best but want something to tie me over for a year.

Stop dreaming

A bag of carrots is the only cheap night vision I know of.

I bought a Pulsar thermal for $2300 after seeing it at the AKL Showgrounds earlier this year. It's great for possuming as well as seeing where heat leaks from the mansion :-) when it's colder.

Don't waste time with cheap night vision.

I've used night optics at work for 11 years and train people on how to use them. Basically with night vision you get what you pay for and the cheap stuff is just a gimmick that doesn't really work well for actual use.

With night optics you have analog and you have digital. The military has not gone to digital yet because it's a battery hog and heavier.

for hunting from what I have seen thermal beats nightvision in terms of usefulness.

Tell me more please Guys - I look after pest control at the Te Puna Quarry Park - we have most of the pests under good control - but rabbits have got us beat!!
They decimate plants around the gardens - volunteers put new plants in one day - rabbits eat them that night - mesh surrounds look crap, Treepel deterrent works for a while, poison is too risky where children and dogs are around - we gas rabbit burrows if they are active but they are difficult to find. The little buggars sit and look at me when I walk past but run for cover as soon as the contractors turn on a spotlight at night.
Council will not allow anyone but an approved contractor to shoot rabbits - and then only at night (understandable in a public park) - they start at 10pm and go to about 2am - $330 per shoot - four shoots this year produced 53 rabbits at about $23 each. I reckon they would be lucky to get 50% of the rabbit population because we see plenty of live ones the next day. Contractors tell me the rabbits are very skittery when the spotlights are turned on and think that someone is spotlighting or dogging them.
I reckon the contractor we use should be using thermal scopes - but they reckon they are too expensive ($9k to $12k) and not that effective.
I know that DRC who do all of PNCC pest control over large areas are finding thermal imaging very effective.
I reckon we need to find a shooter who has thermal imaging gear and who would like to shoot rabbits at a reasonable cost for a Community organisation - if they had the right gear and procedures Council would probably approve.
Any thoughts about type, costs and availability.

Brought one of those Guide thermals that GC sell, works for what I need max 300 metres. Watched a fallow stag the other night, easily identified against other stock in paddock. Does all I want.

Get analogue 1st generation night vision for lowest cost. These are the ones that intensify natural light but will also show up NIR - near infrared - light. And so you can illuminate rabbits with NIR spotlights. It will reflect off their retinas too, like with a normal spotlight.

Far infrared light is the heat/thermal spectrum, just to clarify. Thermal is expensive but will locate animals much quicker, but if they are so hard to locate, are there enough of them around to be pests??? Thermal is great if the possums or rabbits arm up with night vision and shoot back at you, since they can't locate you by your spotlight like when you use NIR. If the pests are unarmed and with no night vision gear there is no real disadvantage to using a LED NIR spotlight.

You can in theory use a USB camera mounted behind your normal rifle scope and rig something up so you can see the image on a mobile phone, but you'll need to have a NIR light mounted on the scope, also you'd need to first open the camera and remove its NIR filter (all digital cameras filter out NIR to reduce blur, that filter is what often makes digital cameras look a bit red when you stare into the lens). USB cameras are cheap as and you can make Heath Robinson proud. (o:

Originally Posted by time out

Tell me more please Guys - I look after pest control at the Te Puna Quarry Park - we have most of the pests under good control - but rabbits have got us beat!!
They decimate plants around the gardens - volunteers put new plants in one day - rabbits eat them that night - mesh surrounds look crap, Treepel deterrent works for a while, poison is too risky where children and dogs are around - we gas rabbit burrows if they are active but they are difficult to find. The little buggars sit and look at me when I walk past but run for cover as soon as the contractors turn on a spotlight at night.
Council will not allow anyone but an approved contractor to shoot rabbits - and then only at night (understandable in a public park) - they start at 10pm and go to about 2am - $330 per shoot - four shoots this year produced 53 rabbits at about $23 each. I reckon they would be lucky to get 50% of the rabbit population because we see plenty of live ones the next day. Contractors tell me the rabbits are very skittery when the spotlights are turned on and think that someone is spotlighting or dogging them.
I reckon the contractor we use should be using thermal scopes - but they reckon they are too expensive ($9k to $12k) and not that effective.
I know that DRC who do all of PNCC pest control over large areas are finding thermal imaging very effective.
I reckon we need to find a shooter who has thermal imaging gear and who would like to shoot rabbits at a reasonable cost for a Community organisation - if they had the right gear and procedures Council would probably approve.
Any thoughts about type, costs and availability.

The advantage of thermal is that it helps cut through some vegetation but on the lower cost thermal it doesn't seem to have much range or image quality. I don't have a huge amount of experience with thermal except for very high end military helmet worn optics which work pretty damn well. The latest US military optics have thermal and analog night vision in one unit and you can switch between the two or blend the image together. Those optics are not yet in general use.

I think regular night vision would probably work fine for popping rabbits at 50-100 meters. Here is an informative 12 minute primer on digital versus analog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFDNEjJ0cME

Since you don't have any tactical considerations, you can add IR illumination and some of the lower cost digital scopes may get it done.

I was looking at bringing a couple of Pards in for evaluation, as I thought it would be a good device for pest control on farms. However, when I got the specs it has a Class 4 IR laser illuminator. I checked with Customs who confirmed it would be seized. Customs referred me to the Ministry of Health (yep, strange but true!) who issue permits for importing and distributing lasers, and they said that they wouldn't issue a permit for a Class 4 laser because it can cause permanent eye damage, and being IR, there is no way of knowing if it is turned on or not. Little wonder they display a bright image.

I haven't yet, I've got a 4K ATN on order to compare with the new Pulsar Digi. Colour digital sights are usually pretty hopeless at night because the sensors are optimised for white light not NIR.

Just thrown a pard nv008 on my .22lr bunny rig. First impressions are good. Sighting in was super easy, it's roughly the same weight as the scope that came off the rifle.
Yet to have it out in total darkness, or put it through it's paces.
It's going to take some getting used to with the scope mounting location - it's a long way back, as the eye relief is about 1"
Optically it's resolution is not as good as a good rifle scope - you are looking at an image on a 800x600 pixel screen. Low light without the IR illuminator is better than a scope for static objects when you are using a bipod, but unsuppported not so good as the refresh rate slows down with diminishing light input.
Flicking on the IR Illuminator got the screen refresh back to where it needed to be.
Will update when I have had time to actually use it in anger.

Very odd looking.

Took it out last night to the orchard that I thought had no rabbits left in it. Turns out there were plenty of rabbits, but all were very aware of what a spotlight means.
IR illuminator was set to it's lowest setting, and shooting rabbits out to 50M was not an issue at all.
Walking around in the dark, and looking through a scope with 6x mag at the lowest setting, took some getting used to.
I clipped the Maxtoch onto the side of the scope, so I could see where I was going on the way to and from the orchard.

https://shooting-nz.s3.ap-southeast-...ard-rabbit.mp4