First off I understand the differences between thin film and filmless. I also understand the perceived improvement in contrast with white vs green. Now that that's out of the way, anyone have hands on time with ITT white phos NV? How does it compare to say Photonis Echo? I know L3 is king and neither ITT or Echo will compare. I was just curious as ITT white NV can occasionally be found for decent prices...currently ITT white Sents can be found from Adams Industries and Denali Vision for $6500, same price as Echo RNVGs from NVincorporated. Related: anyone have user input on the Harris designed duals of various models and how they compare to Sentinel,BNVD, 15s, 31s, etc.?

In for the wisdom and knowledge of the experts.

always ask the almighty.. @tnvc

I am also interested in this. ITT [Harris) made great tubes in the past, so I am assuming that these will be good to go. Since L3 came out with their unfilmed WP tubes I haven't really seen any Harris around.

Any input @UNV ?

Does Harris make an unfilmed wp tube?

Sam any pics of a L3 Omni VIII vs ITT/Harris thin filmed Omni VII in different environments, since this question usually stirs up the hornets nest from other vendors/companies.

What isn't said here is that out of band illumination is already possible, so the Gen 2 Photonis 4G INTENS will have as much light as it needs that the Gen 3 won't be able to see. So low light comparisons for the sake of any sort of tactical consideration is useless.

Now unfilmed for star gazing? Yes plz, the astronomy thread still has no update guys. wtf feed us glorious pictures plz we need this. Hire a pro to take the shots with your gear!

The curious thing about this is that the 4G photocathode can perform anywhere up to around 40% better than the specs would allow for due to the effect of extended IR sensitivity over Gen3, but then even L3 have claimed their filmless can perform up to 20% better than previous Gen3 tubes for the same spec. It gets kind of complicated. Generally I use ITT as the benchmark and allow a reasonable 10% margin over-spec for Echo.

But if you add extra light, OOB, then it really changes the dynamic quite a bit.

Anyway, with respect to ITT WP, there are four flavors. Only the highest spec - WHP should be seriously considered against the Echo as specs go IMO, with S/N min 25 ( compared to echo with similar SN25 specs of course, a 31 S/N echo will probably kill it in the dark )

WP, XLS-1 and XLS-2 all appear to be lower commercial grade units from looking at the specs, with S/N as low as 16.2 - which is pretty low.

I think it's still a bit too recent to know the spread of the yield.

David.

Yes Sir, the advantages of OOB for digital NV (Photonis, Sionyx, SPI) has been settled already, and it's decidedly in the favor of new gens like the Photonis Intens.

The biggest problem has been finding a 1064 IR laser and light for my Photonis. What are you guys using besides the odd DIY Chinese LED from Amazon?

I'd be interested in your source for OOB LEDs. Link? Last time I went through this, I had to buy a legit 1060nm LED and it wasn't exactly cheap (used it as a YAG laser simulator while troubleshooting a rangefinder). There's enough IR below 950nm in the tail end to make it visible to Gen 3. Nowhere near as bright as it really is but enough so see it dead on.

Dude we have multiple threads all discussing the same projects and shit... I wrote a DIY laser illuminator thread sometime last year and I'm pretty sure I posted it here. You could bandpass a chinese green burning laser as mentioned by txdx in the other thread.

https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/infrared-led-emitters/59640?utm_adgroup=Optoelectronics&slid=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIium-jcHW3wIVCKyWCh3ayAVgEAAYASAAEgLq9_D_BwE

Marktech LED from Digikey is what I used. They also have some in a more user friendly thru-hole package for general experimenting.

Man, you guys made me google 1064nm, and I found these interesting things:
https://www.brolis-photonics.com/weapon-sights-nvgs/nir/bps14-nir-400-1100-nm

https://www.brolis-photonics.com/product/lp3x-series-nir-vis-905-1064-nm/?_route_=product/lp3x-series-nir-vis-905-1064-nm/

https://www.brolis-photonics.com/weapon-sights-nvgs/nir/bps14-nir-400-1100-nm

" 1064 nm laser pointer/illuminator providing fully covert operation which is undetectable to conventional night vision systems. "

well i hope they dont get caught out by someone in some sandbox country who is having to use an old russian first gen that might see up to 1200nm  , of course it will be better than current pointers but i would not be to complacent about it being undetectable

Gen1 can't see 1064nm. Gen0 can though, since it uses a silver oxide photocathode IIRC.

Jonelot's right about the "undetectable" bit though. On axis, Gen3 can still detect quite a lot, though the general concept is the follow the light with a bullet, so the on-axis detection should be the last thing that happens in the process. Also you can keep off-axis detection to a minimum so it's effectively undetectable, though there's some physics and physiological aspects to that as well.

I did eventually make some illuminators that were effectively undetectable even on-axis, but it's complicated and I am still doing research there. These were designed so that even that last second detection wouldn't be possible.

David