If you had to start over, please make recommendations.

PVS 14?
Weapon mount or head?
Aiming laser required?

Beginning my search and looking for info. Thanks for your time.

I would start with a 14 and IR laser. Lasers come in all flavors and depend on what your needs are and what setup you have with your weapon. Call TNVC and have a chat. Low pressure folks. They advise all the time without even making a sale

I think more information on intended use, distances and terrain will be important for acquiring that information.
And if you've been following the HD19a thread, ya may also need an eye exam ta check yer rods-n-cones.    d:^)  Jake..

If I had it to do over again, I'd start with thermal instead of NV.

I would recommend a PVS14 helmet mounted with an IR laser.

What are your uses and budget?

Not heavy use. I had a couple vehicle break ins, i live on a couple acres. I was doing a little walking my property at night to see what was going on and quickly realized how nice some help would be. Not specifically for SHTF type event, but Im sure it wouldnt hurt.

Would prefer to avoid a helmet for mount as trying to stay low profile.

Thanks. Is there someone I should ask for?

Do you wanna be able hunt or just see if anything's there with a concealable device?
I'm kindofa newb as well and for what you're describing it sounds a bit like ya might want something to help detect trespassers without gettin too gung ho or "spendy" over it. Are you just trying to cover your coupla acres?
I had great luck working with the guys at Ultimate Night Vision on a recent purchase and they were very helpful without being pushy. The rental program is excellent for checking out these things under your specific circumstances.
Good luck to ya either way. d:^)  Jake..

All the folks who answer the phone at TNVC are VERY well versed in night vision. Even his office manager and stock man has night vision down ! Ask for Vic , Chip , Sam or any of the others. They are all good.

I started out into night vision by posting a similar thread back in January. Ended up in short order assembling a PVS14 from ebay parts and an image intensifier I got from an arfcommer. Couldn't be happier with it. I have yet to go shooting with it, but that will be changing next month now that I've found a venue to use it at.
What I have used my PVS14 for so far is night time photography and walking/jogging in unlit public parks at night. The parks I jogged in are basically several hundred acre swaths of forest with a paved jogging trail around a lake without street lights, so I learned a lot from testing it there. The nice thing about the PVS14 is that if you have a full or partial
moon, you still have peripheral vision out of the unaided eye. You
essentially see detail with the aided eye, and fill in the background
with the unaided eye, giving you at least a little bit of situational
awareness and depth perception. In pitch black conditions you have no depth perception at all.
First, if you're doing anything where you will be moving around, get a helmet. Holding the unit gets really old after a short period of time. I went the ballistic route, but this is a poor choice unless you 1) think you will be getting shot at or 2) are too cheap to get a new helmet (ACH helmets can be had for as little as $100 if you look hard). The weight of ballistic helmets will start to bother you if you are doing anything physical, unless you are really strong.  
As far as laser sights go, I initially got the Streamlight TLR2 IR Eyesafe against the advice of the folks here. It works well once zerored, with good range on the laser and excellent illumination from the LED based illuminator. The big issue with it is that you zero it with hex keys. This is fine when zeroing a pistol at 7 yards, but is very difficult to zero with a rifle. What I ended up doing in the short run was lining it up with my daylight optic. What I did in the long run is move it to a pistol and buy a laser with a normal adjustment system. I'm hoping to zero both next week. It is damned near impossible to properly shoot a rifle by lining up a scope with the helmet mounted nods. And while you can mount the PVS14 behind an aimpoint, then you lose the ability to look around without aiming guns at the unknown.
You can attach the PVS14 to spotting scopes or to nice cameras with big, threaded lenses. I don't have a nice camera, so I jerry rigged a cell phone mount by hogging out a bump case and sandwiching it between the PVS14 and the ocular lock ring. Below are some photos of my setup, and some photos of what a cell phone camera and an ebay special PVS14 can do.
Helmet. It is an army surplus store ACH with a beat up Rhino mount from ebay.

Ghetto night vision camera.

Photos from ghetto night vision camera.
Lots of ambient light.

Little ambient light (deep forest).

Excellent ambient light.

Bright street lights

One really cool thing about night vision is you can see a lot more stars than normal. When I took this photo, I could see few if any stars due to light pollution. I can see a lot more through night vision. A buddy of mine just got a job in the sticks, and invited us to go hang out on his deserted mountain outside of town. I'm hoping to get some much better star pictures whenever I go up to visit.

 

What kind of range do you want to be able to detect at vs. get positive I.D.?  What are you going to do with the info (call the police, let out the dogs, turn on all the property lights and yell surprise)?

I'm not a lawyer but I don't think I'd be shooting anyone with my NV unless they where already shooting at me, I wouldn't want to deal with the reporters

Same here.

I did start out with thermal first. Worked out perfectly. If i could only keep one, it would be thermal. Problem is the bug bites you when you find out how fun it is, and useful. Now i have,,,,more

For detecting living, warm things in the night, nothing beats thermal. My wife stares around with the night vision,,,then i show her the deer standing 30 yards away, disguised in the trees, with the thermal,, that she missed with the night vision.

I really want to build my first PVS-14 but I am having a huge problem finding a tube.

What is the "best bang for your buck" thermal?

There is a current thread here discussing that subject.  Pulsar/Atn/Armasight.

What is your budget?   Maybe you can get both.   A gen2 D-300 is a nice nv monocular for less than a pvs14 gen 3.   One of those and a 384/336 scope would make a nice package.

Start with, What problem are you trying to solve?

For last 2 years, I have not used a laser or I2. I am 100% thermal right now.

Are you using it as a scope?  It seems the NV can be paires easily with a laser, not sure how you do similar with NV unless its a scope.

IRHunter is my primary scope, I also have some FLIR products navigation, observation, etc.

You're going to have many people tell you that you need to spend many thousands of dollars on something that might not get used much. They'll insist it be gen 3 blah blah blah.

I've got an armasight spark core that was $499 plus head gear. For $499 is perfect for around the house. Was I on a very tight budget when I bought it?  Sure. If the moon isn't out does an illuminatir help. big time?  Sure.  But for aroundvthe house it works.

With a bigger budget I'm looking at pvs-7, gen 3 used on EE.

That's still a far cry from $3000+ for the PVS-14. Even used they are $1809+

And it sounds like you're not a super operator or hunting every night.

Like I said, I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, it is the night vision forum, but $1200 can get you really good pvs-7 which should really cover what you need and more.

But if you have the money go all out. I'm not going to sit here and say I wouldn't.  It if you're on a budget it's easy to get carried away and "justify" to yourself why you "need" a $3000 unit. Cost benefit analysis.

I would get a used PVS14 or build one from parts. Those pictures I posted above were from a PVS14 I assembled from ebay parts and an image intensifier sold to me by a fellow arfcommer. I spent a grand total of $1250 on the parts and assembled it myself with advice from folks on this board. A few months of patience should easily get you a gen 3 PVS14 for $1500. You can buy them for $2000 all day long. One day soon I will have a real job, and when that happens, I'll start saving up for a TNVC binocular of some type. Until then, I'm having a hell of a good time with my ghettotacular OMNI VII autogated PVS14. There are some disadvantages to this approach. I got the tube cheap because one of the pins on the pig tail was missing. This does cause some issues, though they are always fixed with a nice solid slap.



As the poster above mentioned, if you don't want to do stuff like take photographs or have peripheral vision, the PVS7 is much easier to build cheap. There are image intensifiers out the wazoo on ebay for 300-500 bucks with parts kits going for $800.



 

Any links on how to build up a pvs14?

I built a cascade tube nvg & wouldn't mind trying a 14, but electronics are a bit outside of my field.

I read a guide from an arfcommer I found google searching, and watched this video.

Funny, I was just screwing around googling 14 kits and stumbled onto that video.  It looks easier than I thought.


ETA - are there specific tubes that will work with the 14 kits?  Can I stick a pvs 7 tube in a 14 body?

That video is by a friend we call "Stan" (not his real name). It is a good overview of the process but not complete. Good starting point but this forum is your best resource. Many guys have built there own here. We know what to avoid and the fine details to get it right.

Stan knows how to do it right but his video is a brief how to missing some stuff.