I loved my Tanto. I really did. But new offering came out since then I couldn't pass up. I was in the army and have YEARS under a PVS-14 ( some time under PVS-15s) and one thing I learned to love was manual gain. It didnt exactly bother me I didnt have it with the Tanto as ABC is actually pretty good, but its at max gain. My rule of thumb I learned with setting gain is turn the device down as far as you can. Match its gain setting to pretty much the same brightness as your unaided eye, then slow boost the gain until you can see into the deepest shadows of your environment and leave it. Alot of times, youll be at 50% gain following this rule. Its already dark out, you will see everything. Your eye will adjust. And when you need more gain? You have 50% of your device ready to get increased even more. Makes you learn your device can see in extreme low light better than you thought it could. I swapped my L3 tube into the new RVM-14 housing. All aluminum vs 3d Printed. Only 30 grams heavier than the Tanto. Manual gain. Onboard illuminator. Overall a better housing with all the bells and whistles, and still maintaining that low profile. I also think the better option today for going for a true scalable housing system is the LLI MH1 as now they offer their MH-14 and the power bridge now. This gives you a TRUE Dual housing at the end of the day. Both the RVM-14 and the MH-14...are 100 bucks cheaper than the Tanto (kinda blows my mind). The tanto is irrelevant at this point. I do beleive they are releasing the Tanto 2.0 now though which will be fiber injection molded now and apparently will be cheaper than the original.
One thing not mentioned about the Tanto housing is the lack of a tie in point to secure the device to a helmet. I noticed in your video that you have it attached to a J-Arm and then the J-arm has a lanyard attached to it. That's probably just as good, but I did manage to snap a J-Arm in a fall and the only thing that stopped my PVS-14 hitting the ground was the $.02 of paracord running from the -14 to my MICH. In any case, it would be nice if future versions of the Tanto housing had a tie in point added. Luckily, Nocturn did add attachments points on the Daisho.
This is the route I’m going down I currently have a tanto housing on back order, because I’m U.K. based I’ve found this is the more economical route to go as any ITAR kit comes with a major premium outside of the US, plus trying to do things on a ‘budget’ it can quickly become a nightmare
IF I already had a PVS-14 and extra bits, I’d be tempted to go with the makeshift 14 duals. Otherwise it makes much more sense to go with the Tanto setup.
As far as manual gain, if you don't have it you can use a Chad 30 or mattbok tasier Iris as a gain control. U get more noise than with actual gain control but it definitely works.
good point, I noticed that too. Most people are using the manual gain and then also using an iris anyway. Very good point that manual gain is ideal but there are work arounds! -Walsh
We would check Green hand held NVG’s out of the armory for night ops in the USBP which was 2/3’s the shifts we worked. Walking with them killed natural night vision and made everything look 2 dimensional when walking. A year before I moved on they issued monoculars that could be worn on your head. So, one eye went two dimensional green, the other was in the dark. So, my knowledge ends about 2003. So, I am an old retired dog eager to learn new tricks.
Stereo NV increases SNR by at least 1.3x because the stereo visual system is ideal for seeing through the noise of a channel. According to a military study, when it becomes extremely dark, binocular users tripped less, and walked faster. If you are thinking about buying, green phosphor is more efficient and sharper as it does not introduce chromatic aberration. People might find WP nicer, but P43 green is best fit for the task.
At about 8:00 talking about the Boomslang wider field of view. Cold Harbor Media did a phenomenal review and showed that how far in front of your eye the unit was determined how fast you lose the extra wide vision. Let's put it this way, if you wear glasses you probably aren't getting anything extra and more than likely losing field of view over regular Carson glass.
Good note! The boomslangs dont' work well with FPV type recording devices like the brown bear I use so those lenses aren't ideal for me either. It's certainly a trade off
Coming from a guy that loves having manual gain on his pvs-14. I hate having to wait for my eye to adjust. If nocturn managed to come out with a tanto that had a manual gain I'd buy it today. I never ever use the on board illuminator for the pvs-14.
I run my Tanto with a Butler Creek cap on the objective with a 3/16" center hole drilled. Essentially, it does the same thing for me. Then again, I have a Photonis tube, so the gain issue isn't as big of a problem for me.
yea I run the front aperture iris to control gain and focus so it's certainly doable without manual gain control. The aperture thingy is pretty awesome.
ehhh I'd highly recommend trying that setup out first. You just kinda hope and pray your mind makes sense of it. Plus the thermal is usually like 1.2x so it's a half zoom headache. It's definitely NOT a magical solution Nods for navigation...thermal on your rifle. No brain owwies -Walsh
@@ThinLineDefenseCo that’s why your a Wizard. It was for independent use or maybe dual. Thermal to scan and IR for navigation. I really like the Thermal because of no emissions. I a world that is near peer… emissions are a death sentence
There are some cool setups I have seen with PVS-14 paired with Thermal. I don’t have any experience with that setup but it looks like it has some pretty cool capabilities.
yea but 100% try that first. Most thermal monoculars are 1.2-1.5 magnification and NV is 1x. So they images won't overlay and it's pretty much a headache machine. Some people are okay but most people swap one up and one down when they switch from NV to thermal and vice versa. A far better setup is to just do a thermal clip on that you can use with your red dot or scope. Then NV for navigation....thermal for spotting. -Walsh
You said you didn't really see a need for the on-board illuminator. I think this comes from the current focus of using IR for shooting on the flat range. Especially for civilians. I served in the 80's and 90's. We never once shot anything with IR. However, we did use it for dismounted movement... and a LOT of driving. For driving, we had IR headlights on the vehicles. For dismounted movement you needed the IR illuminator when there was no moonlight. I guess it depends on what you're doing. If you're mostly attending shooting classes, go ahead and use your rifle mounted illuminator. If you're serious about using it in the real world, for real world stuff, you need an on-board illuminator. You really don't want to be flashing around a weapon mounted light (white or IR) when moving on foot. It's a bad habit because you forget about muzzle control.
No, more so saying most of the helmet setups use IR lights that are tons better than the crap one included with the pvs-14. It would be just be really weird to use the pvs-14 illuminator unless you had no idea what you were doing
If I have the money to skip straight to duals, would it make sense to pick up duals in this format or a dedicated device instead? I kinda think of this in reverse. Instead of having monocular that you can upgrade to duals, have moderately priced duals that you can piece them out to a battle buddy if you team up in the short term or to 2x battle buddies when you upgrade your duals in the long term.
So I’m in this issue currently. Me and a buddy are the only ones with nods. He has 2 pvs14s and we shared them for a while. Now I have duals and he still has to share with our other buddy. But we can include more people because we don’t have enough nvgs so now im In the predicament of looking at getting a pvs14 so we can run a 4 man range day with nods.
Do what we're doing. Walsh bought PVS14...then I'll buy that from him and he gets duals...now two people are good. Then I save up, buy duals and sell my PVS14 to another teammate...etc. - Jason
Binoculars ought to be in "collimation" (not the correct use of the term) in order to prevent eye strain. Aligning monoculars and keeping them that way is often troublesome, and it won't be possible to boresight them. Even binocular housings can be out of spec or badly designed and cause problems. Not to mention, every time you add a movement axis like articulation, you increase risk. That's why ANVIS binoculars are fixed in the horizontal plane and do not articulate.
For some situations yes but you won't be useless without it You can also control gain with a front iris that is preferable anyway so *shrug* I can take it or leave it since I know more now about how it all works -Walsh
having independent power controls like on a pvs14 gives your flexibility especially running it on a panobridge. you make it seem like its crazy or annoying but its quite functional once you're in the 3d world in the dark...
@@ThinLineDefenseCo if you have 2 PVS14s that is independent power controls. Many times if easy to just flip a pod to the side and shut the power, especially when you enter higher lit areas.
Actual locking IPD stops, and maybe a pano version would make me want to grab this immediately Either way, still better than the PVS-7s I had back in the day But for the time being I'm sticking with a monocular, cause duals are too rich for my blood
@ThinLineDefenseCo I forsee a trend in the market. Pano bridges with boomslang objectives and choice of the big 3 (Carson, RPO 2.0, RPO 3.0) ocular lense. Content on this will drive demand through the roof. My $0.02.
Great video. I think the only benefit of the PVS-14 nowadays is the ability to use both MX-10160 and MX-11769 tubes, where a Tanto will only fit the 10160 aviation type, which are getting increasingly hard to find with the wars right now. Yes, you can technically convert them, but running a soldering iron on a $1500 tube makes me squeamish. The Israel-Hamas war pretty much killed the supply of civilian Elbit tubes overnight. All of the manufacturers are trying to push Gen 2+ and Chinese tubes onto the market now. Such a bad time to even get into NV right now. Sad.
That is correct! Think I meant to say depth perception 40 for both mono and duals unless there is a panning feature... which needs to lock so it doesn't bump and make your brain go sideways Appreciate the correction! Always learning -Walsh
You still technically get a little more fov because you have a nod on your left eye which is obviously further to the left then the right nod, so you get that small boost in vision to the left peripheral and they overlap in the middle. Kinda like 40 and 40 overlapping from about 38 degrees and there are 2 degrees left and right you gain.
The panned daisho makes no sense to me. You cant easily share a tanto. Would need the daisho and 2 j arms to split it because you don't want to run a single angled tube. I feel like thats the while point of the daisho is so you can share a tube, if you wanted a fixed pan just make a fixed dual setup that doesn't split up. Dear nocturn make them panable and not fixed pan.
I think the non-fixed became an issue with folks bumping one side and then it's downtown crazy town with their vision. I hear you though, like lockable positions. Lock pan or lock forward -Walsh
My night vision journey is beginning and I'm hoping that your content HELPS. So much to learn and so many options. Thank you Walsh! With any luck we'll see each other at NRA or GUNCON. Be safe! 🤙🪖👮🙏🇺🇲
Martin! You're doing this haha we can waste large swaths of cash together hahah I'll be at GunCon but I missed NRA :/ catch you there! Tell Agency I want to fiddle with that rifle again. -Walsh
Thank you for part 1 in this 6 part series of NVG!
hahah what are the other 5 parts?? I mean...I'm probably in for it. I say we do the PBJRPG next!
-Walsh
I loved my Tanto. I really did. But new offering came out since then I couldn't pass up. I was in the army and have YEARS under a PVS-14 ( some time under PVS-15s) and one thing I learned to love was manual gain. It didnt exactly bother me I didnt have it with the Tanto as ABC is actually pretty good, but its at max gain. My rule of thumb I learned with setting gain is turn the device down as far as you can. Match its gain setting to pretty much the same brightness as your unaided eye, then slow boost the gain until you can see into the deepest shadows of your environment and leave it. Alot of times, youll be at 50% gain following this rule. Its already dark out, you will see everything. Your eye will adjust. And when you need more gain? You have 50% of your device ready to get increased even more. Makes you learn your device can see in extreme low light better than you thought it could. I swapped my L3 tube into the new RVM-14 housing. All aluminum vs 3d Printed. Only 30 grams heavier than the Tanto. Manual gain. Onboard illuminator. Overall a better housing with all the bells and whistles, and still maintaining that low profile. I also think the better option today for going for a true scalable housing system is the LLI MH1 as now they offer their MH-14 and the power bridge now. This gives you a TRUE Dual housing at the end of the day. Both the RVM-14 and the MH-14...are 100 bucks cheaper than the Tanto (kinda blows my mind). The tanto is irrelevant at this point. I do beleive they are releasing the Tanto 2.0 now though which will be fiber injection molded now and apparently will be cheaper than the original.
One thing not mentioned about the Tanto housing is the lack of a tie in point to secure the device to a helmet. I noticed in your video that you have it attached to a J-Arm and then the J-arm has a lanyard attached to it. That's probably just as good, but I did manage to snap a J-Arm in a fall and the only thing that stopped my PVS-14 hitting the ground was the $.02 of paracord running from the -14 to my MICH. In any case, it would be nice if future versions of the Tanto housing had a tie in point added. Luckily, Nocturn did add attachments points on the Daisho.
Id probably just go the route of zip tying a 550 cord onto it
This is the route I’m going down I currently have a tanto housing on back order, because I’m U.K. based I’ve found this is the more economical route to go as any ITAR kit comes with a major premium outside of the US, plus trying to do things on a ‘budget’ it can quickly become a nightmare
IF I already had a PVS-14 and extra bits, I’d be tempted to go with the makeshift 14 duals.
Otherwise it makes much more sense to go with the Tanto setup.
As far as manual gain, if you don't have it you can use a Chad 30 or mattbok tasier Iris as a gain control. U get more noise than with actual gain control but it definitely works.
good point, I noticed that too. Most people are using the manual gain and then also using an iris anyway. Very good point that manual gain is ideal but there are work arounds!
-Walsh
We would check Green hand held NVG’s out of the armory for night ops in the USBP which was 2/3’s the shifts we worked. Walking with them killed natural night vision and made everything look 2 dimensional when walking. A year before I moved on they issued monoculars that could be worn on your head. So, one eye went two dimensional green, the other was in the dark. So, my knowledge ends about 2003.
So, I am an old retired dog eager to learn new tricks.
Stereo NV increases SNR by at least 1.3x because the stereo visual system is ideal for seeing through the noise of a channel. According to a military study, when it becomes extremely dark, binocular users tripped less, and walked faster. If you are thinking about buying, green phosphor is more efficient and sharper as it does not introduce chromatic aberration. People might find WP nicer, but P43 green is best fit for the task.
At about 8:00 talking about the Boomslang wider field of view. Cold Harbor Media did a phenomenal review and showed that how far in front of your eye the unit was determined how fast you lose the extra wide vision. Let's put it this way, if you wear glasses you probably aren't getting anything extra and more than likely losing field of view over regular Carson glass.
Good note! The boomslangs dont' work well with FPV type recording devices like the brown bear I use so those lenses aren't ideal for me either. It's certainly a trade off
Coming from a guy that loves having manual gain on his pvs-14. I hate having to wait for my eye to adjust. If nocturn managed to come out with a tanto that had a manual gain I'd buy it today. I never ever use the on board illuminator for the pvs-14.
They do have the manticore duals that has manual gain. It’s an awesome setup.
I run my Tanto with a Butler Creek cap on the objective with a 3/16" center hole drilled. Essentially, it does the same thing for me. Then again, I have a Photonis tube, so the gain issue isn't as big of a problem for me.
yea I run the front aperture iris to control gain and focus so it's certainly doable without manual gain control. The aperture thingy is pretty awesome.
@@ThinLineDefenseCo I have to look into it.
I got mine at Custom Night Vision. BNVD-31 L3 WP. They are great but in hindsight. Should have gone with the Panobridge with a 14 and a thermal
ehhh I'd highly recommend trying that setup out first. You just kinda hope and pray your mind makes sense of it.
Plus the thermal is usually like 1.2x so it's a half zoom headache. It's definitely NOT a magical solution
Nods for navigation...thermal on your rifle. No brain owwies
-Walsh
@@ThinLineDefenseCo that’s why your a Wizard. It was for independent use or maybe dual. Thermal to scan and IR for navigation. I really like the Thermal because of no emissions. I a world that is near peer… emissions are a death sentence
There are some cool setups I have seen with PVS-14 paired with Thermal. I don’t have any experience with that setup but it looks like it has some pretty cool capabilities.
yea but 100% try that first. Most thermal monoculars are 1.2-1.5 magnification and NV is 1x. So they images won't overlay and it's pretty much a headache machine. Some people are okay but most people swap one up and one down when they switch from NV to thermal and vice versa.
A far better setup is to just do a thermal clip on that you can use with your red dot or scope. Then NV for navigation....thermal for spotting.
-Walsh
I was looking into doing a pvs14 starter kit to save money is this a good idea?
Walsh the Wizard is back!
pew pew! I mean....lightning bolt!
You said you didn't really see a need for the on-board illuminator. I think this comes from the current focus of using IR for shooting on the flat range. Especially for civilians. I served in the 80's and 90's. We never once shot anything with IR. However, we did use it for dismounted movement... and a LOT of driving. For driving, we had IR headlights on the vehicles. For dismounted movement you needed the IR illuminator when there was no moonlight. I guess it depends on what you're doing. If you're mostly attending shooting classes, go ahead and use your rifle mounted illuminator. If you're serious about using it in the real world, for real world stuff, you need an on-board illuminator. You really don't want to be flashing around a weapon mounted light (white or IR) when moving on foot. It's a bad habit because you forget about muzzle control.
No, more so saying most of the helmet setups use IR lights that are tons better than the crap one included with the pvs-14.
It would be just be really weird to use the pvs-14 illuminator unless you had no idea what you were doing
@@ThinLineDefenseCo Sometimes you need to do surgery in the dark or read a map. Think.
@@ThinLineDefenseCo the pvs14 illuminator is dim for a good reason. Provides just enough illumination to navigate and complete small tasks
If I have the money to skip straight to duals, would it make sense to pick up duals in this format or a dedicated device instead? I kinda think of this in reverse. Instead of having monocular that you can upgrade to duals, have moderately priced duals that you can piece them out to a battle buddy if you team up in the short term or to 2x battle buddies when you upgrade your duals in the long term.
So I’m in this issue currently. Me and a buddy are the only ones with nods. He has 2 pvs14s and we shared them for a while. Now I have duals and he still has to share with our other buddy. But we can include more people because we don’t have enough nvgs so now im In the predicament of looking at getting a pvs14 so we can run a 4 man range day with nods.
Do what we're doing. Walsh bought PVS14...then I'll buy that from him and he gets duals...now two people are good. Then I save up, buy duals and sell my PVS14 to another teammate...etc.
- Jason
Binoculars ought to be in "collimation" (not the correct use of the term) in order to prevent eye strain. Aligning monoculars and keeping them that way is often troublesome, and it won't be possible to boresight them. Even binocular housings can be out of spec or badly designed and cause problems. Not to mention, every time you add a movement axis like articulation, you increase risk. That's why ANVIS binoculars are fixed in the horizontal plane and do not articulate.
Emanuel Gain is a must have!
For some situations yes but you won't be useless without it
You can also control gain with a front iris that is preferable anyway so *shrug* I can take it or leave it since I know more now about how it all works
-Walsh
Why? Who even is Emanuel Gain?
twitter.com/iamegain
@@ThinLineDefenseCo he has auto gain tubes.
Everything Nocturn is fucking gold son
having independent power controls like on a pvs14 gives your flexibility especially running it on a panobridge. you make it seem like its crazy or annoying but its quite functional once you're in the 3d world in the dark...
I'm not following... you'd rather mess with either eye instead of having independent pod shutoff?
I don't get why you'd want that.
@@ThinLineDefenseCo if you have 2 PVS14s that is independent power controls. Many times if easy to just flip a pod to the side and shut the power, especially when you enter higher lit areas.
Actual locking IPD stops, and maybe a pano version would make me want to grab this immediately
Either way, still better than the PVS-7s I had back in the day
But for the time being I'm sticking with a monocular, cause duals are too rich for my blood
They just dropped the pano version
yea, I think right before I recorded this one lol so....lets do that one next!
-Walsh
@ThinLineDefenseCo I forsee a trend in the market.
Pano bridges with boomslang objectives and choice of the big 3 (Carson, RPO 2.0, RPO 3.0) ocular lense.
Content on this will drive demand through the roof.
My $0.02.
Funny. I just got 2 omni 7 pvs 14s. Night vision might be one of the coolest things I've ever experienced
Great video. I think the only benefit of the PVS-14 nowadays is the ability to use both MX-10160 and MX-11769 tubes, where a Tanto will only fit the 10160 aviation type, which are getting increasingly hard to find with the wars right now. Yes, you can technically convert them, but running a soldering iron on a $1500 tube makes me squeamish.
The Israel-Hamas war pretty much killed the supply of civilian Elbit tubes overnight. All of the manufacturers are trying to push Gen 2+ and Chinese tubes onto the market now.
Such a bad time to even get into NV right now. Sad.
Oh that's interesting. I didn't realize that.
What do you mean dual tubes give you an extra field of view? Doesn’t it still stay at 40 degrees regardless whether it’s 1 or 2 tubes you have on
That is correct! Think I meant to say depth perception
40 for both mono and duals unless there is a panning feature... which needs to lock so it doesn't bump and make your brain go sideways
Appreciate the correction! Always learning
-Walsh
You still technically get a little more fov because you have a nod on your left eye which is obviously further to the left then the right nod, so you get that small boost in vision to the left peripheral and they overlap in the middle. Kinda like 40 and 40 overlapping from about 38 degrees and there are 2 degrees left and right you gain.
@@Jake-ne8fp that actually sounds reasonable and makes quite a bit of sense
PBJRPG
haha when I said it I was like "I'm going to have to make this now aren't I..."
You calling out T.Rex kind of messed up don’t you think?
who?
@@ThinLineDefenseCo T.Rex Arms
I'm sorry. This video is 6 months old....what are we talking about
The panned daisho makes no sense to me. You cant easily share a tanto. Would need the daisho and 2 j arms to split it because you don't want to run a single angled tube. I feel like thats the while point of the daisho is so you can share a tube, if you wanted a fixed pan just make a fixed dual setup that doesn't split up.
Dear nocturn make them panable and not fixed pan.
I think the non-fixed became an issue with folks bumping one side and then it's downtown crazy town with their vision. I hear you though, like lockable positions.
Lock pan or lock forward
-Walsh
"Tldco" doesn't work as a code on the Daisho.
hmmm I'll find out what's up
Try it now, Fixed
thanks for heads up btw!
Nice helmet stand. :)
it's very fancy lol
Thanks for the help on that!
-Walsh
My night vision journey is beginning and I'm hoping that your content HELPS. So much to learn and so many options. Thank you Walsh! With any luck we'll see each other at NRA or GUNCON. Be safe! 🤙🪖👮🙏🇺🇲
Martin! You're doing this haha we can waste large swaths of cash together hahah
I'll be at GunCon but I missed NRA :/ catch you there! Tell Agency I want to fiddle with that rifle again.
-Walsh
named after japanese swords im sold.
The NODS/Thermal journey is FRAKING expensive!Still not more than Fishing!!!🐟
i like playing pb&j rpg's