I couldn't sleep last night and was up and for some reason thinking about the past. I did some jobs with CAG that year and I was using a 14. I remember playing with their stuff and their goggles were about twice the resolution of my 14s'. I do remember a guy telling me they had the same goggles as the helicopter guys.

Yep, ANVIS.

Anvis, gpnvg, lpnvg, pvs18 etc whatever they wanted and whatever the mission required

love these. Wish I could afford my own

Looks like it was the ANVIS 9 based on memory and google image. The mission was finding or fighting bad guys in Iraq.

Looks like I can buy one for $10k today. It must of been $20k each back then.

If you want to use the ANVIS system, get Sentinels or the MOD3s with the ANVIS bridge.

ANVIS is very fragile comparatively, and it's simply a matter of time until you break them.

What's the difference between the ANVIS flight NODs and Sentinel goggles? Is it just a beefier housing?

when you are cool, you just get new ones.

LOL.

My first thought"  break 'em?  Turn 'em in for new ones.

Although I'm about to be retired...so I may start caring about how expensive and robust things are.

Much beefier housing and bridge, built in IR flood and point lights, ability to change from ANVIS to dovetail if your want, can be used handheld with a CR123, can be built with PVS-14 or AVS optics, and have the option of manual gain or not.

I really wish there was just a simple, ruggedized ANVIS housing available.  

Devices like the F5050 (AN/PVS-23), Sentinel, and MOD-3 are one thing, but they've all added "features," rather than simply being ruggedized ANVIS housings.  

Full well knowing that they're not as durable, I still prefer the simplicity, light weight, and small footprint of the ANVIS, and still prefer to use my AVS-6s most of the time, despite having a set of MOD-3s as well.  

The closest is the F5050 housing, but it's so proprietary and expensive, unlike the relatively cheap (for NV) and readily available ANVIS components that it seems like an unwise investment at this juncture, and even it deviates a good bit from the AVS-6/9, though at a glance, they're easily mistaken.  

I have also been sorely disappointed by the MOD-3B's attempt at an ANVIS bridge--I have no idea what must have been going through their heads when they came up with that bridge, to the point that after years of waiting for an ANVIS MOD-3 bridge, I've pretty much scrapped the idea entirely, and will continue to use the dovetail for the foreseeable future, unless I'm able to find a more viable way to adapt them to an ANVIS mount.  

~Augee

Nope, still 10k back then. Prices haven't moved around alot on ANVIS... Also functionally the only difference between the 6's and 9's are the front lens assemblies. Army wanted ones that didn't rotate for helo/hud use, while the Zoomies and the navy didn't care.

There was a guy building Anvis armor kits a while back, basically just some lightweight aluminim that fit over the bridge since thats 90% of the breakage. Don't know if he's still doing it, seemed like a neat idea.

Yeah, I know about the I2 Up-Armor kit, and Night Combat Solutions has been working on a machined replacement PAS, though I haven't heard much about progress with it recently.  I will probably pursue that if/when it becomes available, versus the glue-on kit.

At the same time, IMHO, reinforcing only the bridge is a band-aid, it's true that the PAS is currently the most likely part to break, but that is because it is "the weakest link," and therefore most likely to give first.  However, there are a lot of other weak points to the stock ANVIS that will remain just as vulnerable, even with a reinforced PAS.  

For me, the ideal design would at least have either an aluminum or Delrin PAS, with Delrin optical pods, and thicker/coarser adjustment screws/axles for IPD, eye-relief, and tilt adjustment, but otherwise retain the same basic functionality and form factor of the ANVIS.  The reinforcements would invariably add some weight, but not as much as Sentinels or MOD-3s.  

On a semi-related front, L3 did have a set of prototype "AVS-31s" on display this year at SHOT, basically PVS-31 MHAs installed on an ANVIS PAS, though if I could easily get '31s, it would largely be a moot point anyways.

~Augee

dont the ANVIS systems also have some type of shielding or something to protect against EMP type stuff as well?


I swear it seems like I read that on here a year or two ago.

The ANVIS goggle does not, but some tubes do. The tubes in metal boots ("silver bullet/gold bullets") are in those metal cans to attempt to limit potential radio interference from the aircraft's radios on the tube's power supply. There is some discussion of this in the tube ID thread and Ed Wilcox has told me the same thing. Not designed for nuclear origin EMP.