This just came in but I am pretty happy with it, so far. I was a little concerned with the fact that many people said that the reticle disappears in low light. Well, it does… but I mean it has to be black! With no lights in the house and just some light from the street lights coming threw the windows I can pick it up pretty easily. I went in my garage with zero light coming in, and yeh the reticle disapears totally. But if you some white light you pick up the reticle again, but its black, so its a little slower. In my opinion unless you are operating in an enviorment where you will be inside buildings this is a great sight. The glass is crystal clear and I like the reticle alot. The green still stands out even against trees. I suck at taking pics, so it would not do it any justice.
I am gonna buy some mini chem lights and a scopefly and see if that works in no light conditions. The mini chem lights last something like 5 hrs and are dirt cheap, so if it works thats an easy fix. But this is going on a range gun so its more of a curiosity thing.
I’ve gotten to the point that I think it has just about everything to do with the eyes of the user, particularly in regard to how quickly their eyes may or may not adjust to total darkness. It’s a trend that we’ve noticed and played around with. Variations in the individual’s depth perception is a factor, as is any presence of color-blindness. There’s different degrees and color-shifts of color-blindness, and it’s possible for one to not see certain specific wavelengths or range of wavelengths, just as it’s possible no not hear certain sound frequencies. Add possible undiagnosed astigmatism, etc. etc.
The tritium isn’t super-mondo-turbo bright, nor is it meant to be. Some folks have eyes that do not quickly adjust going from light-to-dark, and vice versa, and the trend is for somebody to jump in a basement/garage/trash dumpster with lid, take a look, claim to not see the reticle and jump right back out…variations on that theme. This is with the TA31 RCO, TA11, TA33 and TA648 variants with either red or green reticles.
Looking over team notes, out of 800+ Marines (total population of general RCO training = 5400+) taught over the past 2.5yrs that we KNOW we tried this with, all of 33 have been completely unable to see the chevron of an RCO, even after a 15min period of allowing their eyes to adjust somewhat to the darkness, whereas their budies who didn’t report the effect could see the reticle in that optic just fine under the same conditions. Perhaps not the most scientific of methods, but I’d confidently call that a pretty low occurance.
So, I wouldn’t say that it’s not something to consider, but in my head having the reticle not show in complete dark is a statistically insignificant worry…until it happens when you reeeeeeealy need it to be there. Further reason to get your eye behind one to see if it works for you or not PRIOR to dropping the $$$ on one. I think that folks talking about this being an issue with the device is unjust.
