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Posted: 8/20/2026 11:47:25 AM EDT
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I've had problems with smoke obscuring targets at night matches. Maybe the breeze stops dead every time I'm shooting but others on my squad don't seem to have the same problem. We go out to 180ish yds With dots or low magnification its a complete whiteout using visible light. I thought it was my handloads using 4895 but I tried some surplus British ammo I had on hand and I didn't notice meaningful difference. I know flash suppressants are added to GI spec powder and I thought this may alleviate smoke too but not in my experience. Does anyone have suggestions for overcoming "smoke blindness" when using visible light? I have three changes in mind: 1. Change powder to WC844. 2. Take the brake off and use a A2 flash hider. My thinking is the brake disburses gasses (smoke) and a flash hider would get smoke farther away from muzzle. 3. Go to visible laser. |
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SC, USA
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I don't know what light you are running, but in my experience, the gun/ammo combination matters little. I've got massive smoke clouds in humid conditions regardless of the muzzle device or ammo. If anything, I think a flash hider might be worse than a brake, as a brake should be pushing more of it out to the sides. The only thing that has helped for me is a high candela light. The more the light spills and has a big hotspot, the worse the "wall of light" is. A high candela hotspot punches through better. At 180yd I'd likely go the high candela direction anyway. Our night matches go out to about 120, so if the air is going to be dry, I might go with a slightly more spilly light. If I know it is going to be humid, I go for the high candela. |
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THANK YOU my friend for that insight! I've tried a couple of diff lights, max is 850lm Mounted at 12:00 or 11:00. Last match was a Inforce WMLx gen 2 which I think is 800 or 850lm The one time I mounted a focus-able handheld at ~1200lm with duct tape for longer a longer range stage it could see better. I made a focused hot-spot like you said. The mention of HUMIDITY is something I didn't take into account. The range had a thunderstorm hours before and it was very humid. And now that I remember, last year the same weather conditions happened at this particular location! |
Joined:
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Posts:
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EE: 100% (42)
SC, USA
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No problem; I had to learn this the hard way too. At 180yd in humid conditions, it's all about the candela, not the lumens. I looked up the second specific light you mentioned, Inforce WMLx gen 2, the internet says it has 800 lumens and 10k candela. That's a wall of light, not a beam with a hot spot. You are going to have a REALLY hard/impossible time with that at 180yd in humid conditions. To contrast, a Surefire Turbo has less than 800 lumens, but it has 90k-100k candela. Your conditions are going to be tough regardless, but you'll have a much better time with something with 90k+ candela. It's a tradeoff, I've skipped targets using the Turbos two or three times even after a walk through/I know pretty much exactly where they are, because the spill is just so minimal. This is why I'm really liking the Modlite heads right now, you get more spill than the Surefire Turbos, but still get 60-95k candela depending on which one you pick. |
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