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Night Vision Goggles


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The goggles I have used wouldn't help you much seeing wires but you can see the poles, towers, etc associated with them. Learn a phrase and remember it: "All roads have wires"

 

After flying with a good set of goggles you will never want to fly unaided again.

 

After flying the old version of the -64A's Night Vision System (NVS, ie FLIR) for a few years and going back to goggles I got pretty unsettled. After a few minutes I realized how much stuff I was NOT seeing with the FLIR. Both have their advantages, on a dark night in AFG the goggles we had weren't so good.

 

BLUF: Goggles=Good!

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Goggles are WAY better than unaided, however, you have to understand their limitations. "All roads have wires" is great advice. Goggles do not magically make wires visible at night. How often have you not seen wires during the day, even though you can see the tower and know the wires are there? Even some line towers can be invisible at night. If the tower has little or no reflectivity, you might not even see the tower. There are places the Sierra Club has successfully lobbied to have towers acid washed, so that they oxidize and don't stand out against the landscape. During my last goggle recurrency, we orbited a peak we knew one of these towers was on. It took several orbits, and you could never see the tower, until I turned on the landing light.

 

Goggles DO turn the "black holes" into definable terrain, and they make off-airport work at night "doable" and a whole lot safer.

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Goggles help tremedously with situational awareness, terrain avoidance, emergencies, off airport landings, etc., however they do not help with seeing wires or avoiding IIMC.

 

You can't see wires during the day, nor at night. Like at night before, the wire's shadow from the searchlight is what makes them visable. Works with the goggles even better. With NVGs you can see the paths cut in the trees and poles at lot better.

 

With towers, you can't see them. Even worse, it's easier for the lights on the towers to wash into the background. Unaided, the tower lights are usually much brighter or a different color. Under the goggles, the lights are the same intensity and same color.

 

You cannot see haze or light clouds either (unless they are thick/fog.) Since the goggles intensify the light 6K times, it pulls the light straight through the bad viz. Same goes with precip. You'll start to see flickers (goggles get "fuzzy" picture), and that's precip. The nav lights or the beacon is reflecting of the precip and you're seeing the light.

 

You'll see other traffic from 100+ miles away. So, you have to look unaided, and if you can still see them, then you can recognize the lights and get a judgement of their distance. 90% of the time, you can't see them unaided, which means they are a long ways away.

 

Sooooooo, what you have to do is constantly be using your unaided vision. The goggles don't strap onto your head like a scuba mask, they are hanging off your helmet at an adjustable distance in front of your eyes. Since they're focused on far distance, you can't see the instruments, so you have to be able to look under them.

 

I wear them about 1" - 1.5" in front of my eyes and slightly high. I can see the panel, GPS, & out the sides. I frequently raise my chin about a 1/2 inch to see straight out ahead unaided. As mentioned, so you can see the different colors of lights and dropping viz. I will point the searchlight out front to see if we have any precip. It looks like you're going into light speed when you do.

 

The wildest thing I've seen is the bugs. I didn't know spiders and such migrated. They cast a large web and let the wind carry them. At 3000-4000' about a month ago, we flew through millions of them over the course of an hour. It looked like a snowstorm with the searchlight on and under the NVGs. Turn the light off and I would have never known they were there.

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Bugs can get intense at night. I've turned on the landing lights and been startled by hundreds of them going under me. For precip, I shine a light on the windshield. In light rain at night, it can be impossible to tell you're in it otherwise. Visibility through precip and fog is better at night, since the light isn't scattered as much as sunlight is, coming through the entire atmosphere. If I'm going to fly an instrument approach to minimums, I always prefer doing it in the dark, because the approach lights show up better through whatever is limiting the visibility.

 

I have no NVG experience, since they weren't in use when I got out of the Army, but we should be getting them within the next year, and I'm looking forward to them. Anything that helps me getting into and out of black holes at night is welcome. We do have some monoculars, and while I haven't used them in flight, I've tried them around the base, and they allow me to see the barbed-wire fences and powerlines in the area. With the ambient light and the monoculars, the wires can be seen clearly, but I have no idea how well they show up in flight, that's a different regime entirely.

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Question for anybody who has experience using these alien looking things.

 

- Do night vision goggles enable the ability to see power lines at night, hazardous objects, etc?

 

Or are they just a bit better than not having any night aid at all?

 

Just a question from a curious dreamer.

 

Can I assume you've seen the battery commercial concerning a helicopter crew and NVGs? If so, it's NOTHING like the picture they show. (They have the wires and towers highlighted in the 'goggle view'. Like they're glowing under goggles, and should you hit one with duracell batteries in your battery pack, you must be an idiot).

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Can I assume you've seen the battery commercial concerning a helicopter crew and NVGs? If so, it's NOTHING like the picture they show. (They have the wires and towers highlighted in the 'goggle view'. Like they're glowing under goggles, and should you hit one with duracell batteries in your battery pack, you must be an idiot).

 

Yeah, it has an EMS helicopter doing search & rescue after a tornado.

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...The wildest thing I've seen is the bugs. I didn't know spiders and such migrated. They cast a large web and let the wind carry them. At 3000-4000' about a month ago, we flew through millions of them over the course of an hour. It looked like a snowstorm with the searchlight on and under the NVGs. Turn the light off and I would have never known they were there.

 

My God, you just gave me nightmares.

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A few quick things. Horizontal lines(powerlines or other objects with horizontal features) tend to be harder to see. Vertical lines in towers, poles or buildings are easier.

 

You will not see the actual power line in most cases unless you have full moon light. Use of the search light will often times reveal the actual lines depending on your altitude. You will see the poles and towers though. The ground in most cases is easy to see and yes depth perception is off.

 

However, when landing at the end of the approach on set down we have to have an object for reference is look from underneith the NVGs. This object will help keep drifting to a minimum and help in dusty conditions. If we at any time loose sight of the object then a go around is done. I for one set the heading bug on the HSI with my planned go around route. Should I get brown out I will execute an "ITO"(Instrument take off) along my planned route. Never ever ever ever continue the approach in brown out. It will end very bad. NVGs will NOT help in this case.

 

So, while you can see very well with goggles they do have some limits. Once you learn about these limits and get used to the goggles you will be happy to have them. I would much rather have them when my engine goes out over the dark desert than autorotate without them.

 

You will notice that star lighting, moon lighting or the lack of will dramaticaly change your ability to see things. With a full moon you can actualy see the ground without NVGs if your eyes have adapted. With NVGs its as bright as day. When there is little moon or stars it can be quite dark even with the NVGs.

 

NVGs are not the end all be all but a great tool to add to the bag of tricks to make us safer and more effective.

 

JD

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i have tons on nvg experience. I was a 240 gunner on a humvee for 12 months in iraq. 60% of the stuff we did was at night. I've was even cross trained on how to work on them.

 

I can say this... It really depends on the tube that is in the nvg itself. All the other stuff is just plastics and lenses. It's the tube that gets the work done. You want a generation 3 tube.

We used AN/PVS 7b and AN/PVS 7d (2 eye type) I"ve used them both. I swear you could pick up 20 different pairs and you'll find like half work like crap and the other half are great. What i'm talking about is the one with good tubes the colors are brigter and can be used with less light. The tubes have experation dates on them and they have only a limited amount of hrs persay.

 

When i got to Iraq, in 2003 i was lucky enough to use a pair of an/pvs14's which are great monocular(one eye type). The Advantage to the pvs 14 is that you can still maintain your night sight with your non lensed eye. It's like coming in from sunny outside to a dark house. It's hard to see for a few min. I can tell you that if for some reason you need to raise your goggles off your face while trying to land or something it'll be the same way.

 

Also, the 2 eye typs like the pvs 7b's really mess with your head when your walking because the depth perception is really different compared to normal. The monoculars (pvs 14) you don't have that problem.

 

The biggest thing with nvg newbies is that they can't mount them right to thier helmet and get them lined up with thier eyes comfortably for long periods.

 

Hope this helps

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