Night Vision Rifle Scopes: An Overview With
so many night vision rifle scopes to choose from, what are the important
features that you should be looking for? They've all got automatic overlight
protection that shuts the scope down if it's accidentally exposed to
bright light. And they all seem to feature an integrated short-range
infrared illuminator.
So what are the critical elements that you should consider to help make
an intelligent decision? The following list - specific to night vision
rifle scopes - should help.
Field of View and Magnification Just as you find with day scopes the same tradeoff between
field of view (FOV) and magnification occurs when you're using a night
vision rifle scope. Because of the inverse relationship between the
two, when magnification goes up, FOV goes down.
For daytime shooters that are looking for a high magnification scope
this is less of problem. Though your FOV will be smaller, during the
daytime you've still got full use of your eyes to quickly scan the range
before zeroing in on potential targets with your scope.
When the sun drops however it's a whole new ball game. You'll be depending
on your night scope for everything you do, from target acquisition to
final targeting. If your scope's FOV is too small you're going to have
one hell of a time trying to acquire targets.
With this in mind, don't get too hung up on trying to find a high-magnification
night vision rifle scope, particularly if you're looking at Gen1+ or
Gen2+ scopes. Concentrate instead on finding a scope that features the
widest possible field of view.
Remember, while high magnification looks great on paper it won't do
you an ounce of good if you can't reasonably acquire the targets you're
looking for.
Shot Group Adjustment When you review the specifications for your night vision
rifle scope a good measure of how finely you can adjust the scope's
Windage/Elevation (W/E) can be found by looking for the W/E "Minute
of Angle" (MOA) specifications.
Understanding this requires a basic review of MOA. Loosely defined,
if you were to fire your rifle five times into a 100-yard target and
every shot went into a one-inch circle you had drawn on the paper, then
your rifle could be said to shoot 1 MOA. (likewise, if every shot goes
into a two-inch circle at 200 yards, then you're still shooting
1 MOA).
Now assume that your night vision rifle scope had a W/E specification
of 1 MOA. This would mean that for every windage or elevation click
your shot grouping would move exactly 1 MOA circle left or right, up
or down. From this you can see that the smaller the W/E MOA the easier
it will be to fine-tune your scope's zero.
In our selection of night vision rifle scopes you will find that W/E
specifications are generally ¼ to ½ MOA.
Single Purpose Night Vision Rifle
Scope or Multi-Functional Scope While the majority of night vision rifle scopes listed on
our website are purpose-built as weapon sights, several can be configured
to serve a wide range of functions.
These include everything from camera adaptability to permit capture
of night vision photographs and video to conversion kits that permit
the scope to used as a hands-free mono-goggle system. A great solution
if you want to keep your options open.
Night Vision Rifle Scope Illuminators
Bluntly put, there's not a single integrated infrared rifle scope illuminator
that will be of any use for shots beyond 30 feet or so.
If long-range, covert illumination is what you require (and if you're
equipping yourself with a night vision rifle scope the answer to this
will always be yes) then you need the kind of serious long-range covert
and ultra-covert infrared lighting that can be found in our Night
Vision Lighting section.
Have a question about Night Vision
Rifle Scopes?
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