long distance night shoots

General Firearms Precision Rifle - Bolt Gun
1

So, it’s been a year since this thread where I first got some decent NV. I’ve been using them probably once/week or so all year. They’ve really been great during the winter because they let me go shoot after I get off work, even though it gets dark before 5pm in the winter.

Anyway, the past 5 or so nights in a row, I’ve been going out every night shooting and stretching the distance with some targets a little past 1000 yrds. The nice thing about shooting at night is the wind goes dead calm around here when the sun sets but it gets really hard to see the target with high magnification at dusk. Of course, the NV solves that problem but at the same time, the PVS-27 only support up to 12x magnification, so I have to dial down quite a bit from the through-the-scope pic below which was taken at 25x.

So first is a day-light pic of the target. the cow’s about 500 yrds and I often have to wait for them to cross, which can take a while as they’re not usually in any kind of hurry. i often pass the waiting time by taking pics, so it seems most of my pics have cows in them…

Next is a close up of a 3-round internet group on a 30" tall IPSC silhouette. the head shot was from 520 yrds. the kidney group is pretty tight, but the location is really really irritating as i think my scope is wandering. There definitely wasn’t any wind, and I had .3 left on the gun (and yeah, it’s .3 left not .3 right… i checked several times) from the previous night which had me centered up, but the next night i was off again. I think I’m going to check my zero tomorrow at 100 yrds.

The paint on that target looks a little funky because it has a layer of orange ground-marking paint, followed by a layer of neon-green ground-marking paint, followed by several layers of the cheap 98 cent black spray paint from wally world. It makes impacts easier to see from a distance because they tend to knock off bigger circles of paint, even though it looks odd up close.

The last pic is some of the gear I have been playing with. the NV is the PVS-27, purchased from TNVC. I’ll try to take some through-the-scope pics of it tomorrow night.

Some things I have noticed about long-range shooting at night over the past year:
[ul]
[li]ambient light makes a huge difference
[/li][li]illuminators make a huge difference and some are way better than others
[/li][li]it’s a PITA to have to focus both the NV and the parallax
[/li][li]despite ^^^^ when focused at 1000+ yrd targets, I can still easily see cows of any color at 500 yrds in the dark. I was initially concerned that I might not, and one might walk between me and the target at the wrong instant.
[/li][li]very rare to spot impacts, and you can forget about trace
[/li][li]PVS-27s are a friggin mill stone! I feel like I’m working out every time I move with my rifle
[/li][li]black targets stand out. (pro-tip for the ninja/balaclava guys…)
[/li][li]everything sounds louder at night. a lot louder. (on the positive side, it’s very easy to hear the steel ring from past 1000 yrds.)
[/li][li]teamwork makes a huge difference at night, with a spotter running illuminator for you
[/li][li]ergonomics on the PVS-27 seem like they were done by same guy who invented the AK47. nothing is in the right spot. nothing is easy to adjust or manipulate. it still works though.
[/li][li]surprisingly good battery life. buy bulk AA lithium batteries. it’s worth it.
[/li][li]i have yet to find a decent range finder at night. the $2000 PLRF05 Terrapin is awesome but it’s “NV mode” is just for eyeballing at dusk, not for using PVS14 or similar like the “NV” settings on Aimpoints and eotechs. The PLRF10s have a mount that lets you hook the PVS14 to them but so far I’ve heard they’re not effective past a few hundred yards, which isnt’ worth doing
[/li][li]NV mode on the kestrel 4000NV is similarly lame.
[/li][/ul]



2

Damn you and two of my other pals who have clip ons:D…like yourself, I know I would get my monies worth out of that piece of equipment, but the initial start up is high as balls on a giraffe.

Talk about having too damn much fun…oh well, at least you gave us a great report and a little piece of NC-17 action.

If you ever need a wing man, I’ll be your huckleberry…I’m truly a night owl, have rifles, and am willing to travel:p

3

I was asking IGUNZ about NV products th other day. Cost is brutal but it’s very tempting and extremely cool.

Good report and keep them coming.

4

trident, I was actually thinking about hosting a NV shoot that would run kind of like a match, in that there would be several stages set up to test various aspects of shooting at night, but it would be more like evaluation than competition and shooters could run the stages as many times as they want just to try to figure out how to work with their equipment to overcome various practical challenges. I have had discussions with a couple vendors about it, to provide some demo gear etc.

I may yet do it. In the meantime, if you’re going to be in the mid-TN area, feel free to email and we’ll go out!

5

I understand that it would be quite a bit of work for yourself and perhaps a few others in order to organize not only a night shoot, but one with a few pieces of high dollar equipment to demo.

For a guy like me that would be a huge and wonderful opportunity because I can put myself in good conscience into the category of serious potential buyer of a Gen III clip on device, however there is no way in hell I could even come close to pulling the trigger on one without ever trying a single model out in the field.

I’m right below in Bama…so that’s music to my ears hearing that your in TN.

The only thing that really makes me envious is seeing a Gen III clip on device for use in front of magnified daytime optics like your awesome setup above. Happy switches and suppressors are neat and all…but personally I think turning night into day, and engaging torso sized targets at 1000m is arguably the coolest damn thing you can do with a rifle:cool:

eta…I’d enjoy making the videos from these night sessions perhaps as much as shooting them…you should really try and get some footage of what your doing as it’s extremely rare, and extremely badass.

6

I was able to go shoot and take some pictures this evening. For reference, a picture of the two targets during the day, from 500-600 yrds at roughly 12x and again from 1000-1100 yards at 25x. The near one is a full size IPSC and the far one is a bigdogsteel snipershide target which has a spring-reset reactive head (i think 6"x9"), and also a reactive chest plate (12"x16") (I took this one off the prize table from K&M earlier this year). Obviously these are iphone quality photos that have been resized and jpg compressed so they all look a bit better in person than the photos reflect. As an example, note the IPSC head looks taller in the top photo. This is because I put two rounds in the brain area from 500 after I took the first pic, which from 1000 just blur the target into the dirt above. Seriously, the iphone photos do a much better job in daylight than they do of the NV shots. The NV shots aren’t quite as blurry in person as they appear in the pics.


now, same shots (both 1000+yrd not 500) in the dark

(note I’m at 12x power here)

I also took a few while the sun was setting for comparison…

Now you see why I said black targets show up well in NV… I looked for a cow to take a pic of through the NV so you could see what fur looks like, but as luck would have it they got camera shy after dark. Maybe next time.

and a close up of the snipershide target… illuminated by my truck headlights
the hit on the right side of the head was from 600 yrds in daylight, still trying to figure out what’s wrong with my scope’s windage. From 1100 in the dark, I was 2 for 3 on the body. (note the two spots on the top are bolts, not impacts)

and some more gratuitous gear pics of my firing position while waiting for the sun to set and cows to move





7

Man that is wild stuff in regards to painting the targets black…the first guy who did that must have just gotten frustrated after trying every single other color under the rainbow before saying…“f**k it, let’s try black”:smiley:

With that incredibly long barrel and then suppressor I know you don’t have to worry about “blurping” or however you want to phrase it when the muzzle flash temporarily blinds units especially like the PVS21s, but I wonder how that unit would do on a SPR or Recce rifle, or dare I say a 16" MWS or EMC.

I’d love to run my NXSc compacts with that unit, and I bet they would go together very nicely.

Thanks for the great update and especially those pics…as far as I’m concerned your living the dream with this stuff. More so if your just out there enjoying all this by yourself, and exploring this topic on completely your own time in BFE.

8

I only shoot suppressed in the dark, so as not to bother the neighbors excessively. (Behind my firing point is a golf course with several houses prob 800 yrds away.) So I don’t get any muzzle flash and have never blinded the unit. However, this is what it looks like on a KAC (ban-era not EM though). I wouldn’t put this on an AR15. There are much smaller scopes for that.

yeah, sometimes I bring new shooters out, but mostly it’s just me and the cows and coyotes. Nice and quiet. We did have a night stage at my Fall Team Match though (http://precisionmultigun.com/ click the “Fall 2011” link and scroll down past the sponsor list) Takes forever to run 70+ shooters through though and we had almost 100 shooters in the Spring match last month so we decided to skip it. It’s fun though. We had shooter/spotter with 2x PVS-27s and 4 pop-up targets along a woodline that they had to locate and shoot.

9

I’m saving those pics for the next guy who blows me shit about my refusal to leave anything black. I’ve tried to explain it a few times, but the proof is in the pictures. Black sticks out like a diamond in a goat’s ass, and it’s worse under NV.

10

Taliv, you have some great looking gear! I was in the same situation with my vectronix terrapin and being a bit bummed out about there not being an actual night setting.

So what have you done to range targets in the dark? Are you just shooting at known ranges? Also not to throw your thread off track or anything but have you ever used a spotting scope coupled to a NVD?

11

uhh, well, i haven’t really solved that problem yet in a practical way. just for “range” shooting, i can hang an IR (or regular) cyalume stick that i can see to point the range finder.

i use a leupold mk 4 compact spotter which is 12-40x60. and my PVS-27’s max magnification is 12x. So they just BARELY overlap. i plan to get (eventually) a badger mount that allows you to mount the clip on in front of it. it’s ridiculously expensive though, so i haven’t purchased it yet. will post pics when i do.

12

Consider the APO SSAR as well as the Badger if all you’re looking to do is mount the clip-on. Low weight/smaller overall footprint.

I’m picking up a CNVD-LR in a couple months and will be going with the SSAR and adding a TIM-17 if I need to clip stuff onto the spotter. Keep in mind this is all based on the idea that the cost will be marginally comparable to the Badger.

ETA: Mine will eventually look like this, but the PLRF will be lower since I’m not using a riser to mount a PEQ-15.

13

johnnyc, yeah i was just about to buy a CNVD-LR too. maybe a couple months now. Ashbury stuff is absurdly priced. I think that mount below will cost you 2x as much as badger, just for the SSAR and TIM.

14

Thanks for the reply. I am in the market for a spotter right now and am likely going to go with the leupold, just trying to decide if it would be worth it to couple it with NV (PVS14).

ETA: Like Johnny I was planning to use the TIM and mount my PLRF to the top of it.

15

the mounts to put 14s behind the ocular lens are not prohibitively expensive. but i’ve been told by numerous people that sell them “you can do it, but you won’t be happy with it”. i’m a big fan of learning from the mistakes of others.

if you guys get the ashbury stuff or find a good NV-spotting setup, definitely post a review.

16

This really stems from the light loss you get going through all of the optics of the spotter then the PVS-14. If you’re not on a two-way range, you can use lots of supplemental IR to make up for some of it.

The problem is that either way you go you’re making a compromise. You can use the full magnification range with the Badger SNAP, but you need lots of supplemental IR. You can use a CNVD-LR or PVS-27 out front, but are limited in your magnification ability. It’s a mixed bag, but the SNAP is cheap enough that if you’ve already got a PVS-14, it’s worth messing around with just for funzies.

17

I appreciate the thoughts guys! I do already have a pvs14 so I will give it a try and see how it works when I get the spotter/rangefinder setup. Also I am just a regular guy shooting steel and having a good time so if it takes some extra IR illumination no biggie.

I look forward to seeing how your setup turns out Johnny and thanks Taliv for the good thread and info!

18

Fun stuff, isn’t it? Though I’m intimately familiar with all this equipment (thanks taxpayers), I can only imagine how great it must be to personally own it.

I don’t know just how deep your pockets go, but if price is no object, consider the following:

IMO, the ultimate setup for low-light, semi-passive long range target interdiction is a Long Range Thermal Video Imaging System (LRTV) or similar, combined with clip-on NV. Your spotter / observer ID’s the target with the Thermal Viewer, then blips the IR Laser on target. Even though the shooter can’t see shit, especially not the target, since there’s no active IR illumination besides the focused laser, he may engage the target simply by aiming at the spotter’s IR marker (which is relatively low profile compared to an IR flood).

There’s just something incredibly cool about engaging a target you can’t even see. Try it if you ever get a chance.

19

I want! Is this basically what the MELIOS became?

20

Here’s a rundown:

http://www.vectronix.us/userupload/2495_2007_LRTV.pdf

I have no idea if it’s available for civilian purchase, though in hindsight I suspect not. Unit price, if I recall correctly, is somewhere around $20,000.