I am wanting to be able to use my AK with NV. I have an MRO with a 1.93 mount sitting around I'd like to use.

Anybody have any experience setting up optics for passive NV use? Probably will use an MI side rail mount.

Using NVGs as I write this. My advice is to make sure it is tall enough. My Perst-4 puked it's battery cap and battery in the middle of this Red Oktober after dark stage. I had to shift to passive aiming and my optic is too low. It was painful but I finished the stage. It is mounted on my Zenitco gas tube top rail. A riser would have helped. I'm just using a holosun red dot with the lowest mount on NVG settings.

I am probably gonna use an MI sidemount but am unsure if my 1.93 mount will be too high with the MI.

In case anybody wanted to know the absolute cowitness standard mount is perfect for passive night vision use with the MI rail. Lower 1/3 and the 1.93 were ridiculously high.

That looks like a good height for passive aiming. I've thought about a higher optic for my rifle after the issue I had and your side rail is higher than my Zenitco gas tube rail. Thanks for posting up your picture for reference and let us know how it works.

No problem! I don't know that I'd like a dot that high on the gas tube but I'm sure it would work fine. If I wasn't factoring in NV I'd prefer a low mounted dot on the gas tube, though.

I know this is not a regular AK, but I ordered a Zenitco B-18 AKS-74U top cover red dot mount. I think this gets the dot high enough for me to use passive aiming, but will have to do some testing. This mount also let's me use the iron sights still. It opened up a lot of space space for a switch if I want in the future. Its too bad Zenitco decided to do weird stuff with their laser switches making it harder to have one switch for IR laser and illuminatior.

Interesting! Is that a Perst laser? Who makes that rifle?

It's a Perst-4 laser I snagged off of ebay a few months ago. It was a lot cheaper than most you see right now. The switch is a 3d printed MLOK setup from a guy on ebay that I adapted to picatinny as my switch didnt have the picatinny adapter parts when I bought it.

I used an Arisaka light with Malkoff IR head for Red Oktober After Dark. It now has an Inforce IR light that I didn't realize was IR as I snagged it from Everygunpart.com for $60 in new condition and threw it on a different rifle. I swapped it out for weight purposes and to put the Arisaka light on a different rifle.

The rifle is an early 90s Tula kit on a No Dak Spud receiver made by Stillhouse Armory in Kentucky. I traded some AK kits with the guy to get the rifle, then did the stamp and other modifications myself. He's done some other fantastic work for me when I was in VA when I didn't have my tools to build AKs. Apartment living sucks!

Bump, as I'm Black Friday shopping for AK optics.  Am I gtg with a red dot and standard side-rail mount?  What about prism sights?  Should I use a forward-biased mount to have room for my PVS-14 to get behind the optic?

This height has worked well for me.
Attached File

This setup is perfect for hight and far enough forward that light transmission doesn't matter as much. It's a b22 rail mount so you would need a zenit rail.