Well, I went to the Springfield, Massachusetts gun show last weekend and in a purely insane moment I met a good salesman who convinced me that I needed a night vision device. I bought a Pulsar N500 digital night vision scope. I have absolutely no need of a night vision scope but one never knows when it will come in handy. About 23 hours after the purchase Hurricane Sandy blew through town and knocked out all of the local electric service. It was as black at night as it gets around here.
I have several Surefire flashlights as well as candles and oil lamps so we were never truly in the dark but it did give me a chance to play around with the night vision scope inside my home and outside on the street the without visibly looking like a neighborhood stalker.
The scope is really just a modified digital infrared camera that shows images in black and white. It works okay and I could see the black and white world around me. The scope has 4x magnification is provided with as IR light source (small flashlight type device) for pitch blackness otherwise it’s a passive light gathering instrument. When I use the light source I find that the IR light is reflected back off to leaves any other thing that’s prone to reflect light. It’s a bit confusing sometimes to figure out exactly what I’m looking at when the light source is on.
In pitch blackness with the IR light source I could easily identify every item in my kitchen. I also can use the scope during daytime as you could with any black and white camera. I don’t get the fine detail as I would with a traditional rifle scope but within 100 yards I could easily see and shoot a target. It’s different. However with my Swaroski 6X42 rifle scope and some strong moonlight I could probably do just as well at night and easily better during daylight hours. With the cloud cover and little to no ambient light that we experienced after the storm the scope would get me by nicely within a 100 yards or so if I were out hunting critters.
Have any of you fellows played around with Pulsar N500 scope and if so what's your opinion of it?