I've definitely experienced the IR washout of inks and signs.  Currently if I want to read something detailed, I use a vis light under cover.  Even with the flip down cap and good IR, I have difficulty reading map scale stuff with the PVS14, but as a few of you mentioned, I should probably adjust my focus from infinity down to something like 200yards.  It's very rare that I'm out in the open, and if I just want to star gaze, I'll adjust for that.  

I keep meaning to make a separate navigation thread, but fuck it, this thread is now navigation and deep woods movement combined at this point.
You all laminate your maps?  Or just keep it in a ziplock?  I'm guessing that lamination can make reading the map under NODs basically impossible?

Depends, A lot of dudes I know prefer to laminater their maps, I don't normally like to unless I have this stuff we got from the brit's that doesn't take up as much space. American lamination stuff is is a really thick piece of laminate with a contact adhesive. Theirs was thinner and more flexible, could even write on it with a pencil. A majority of the time though I will just fold it up so I have my area that I will be patrolling in with the grid lines visible and neatly stuff it in a thick industrial zip loc baggy 4/8mil, pro tip for that is fold a 12x12" piece of cardboard/mre box in half and tape it so it wont absorb any water, place your map on top of that and then inside of your zip loc bag. Gives you an easy flat board to work with and plot your points. Also I normally dummy cord my maps to me as well, just with a piece of 550 tied down to my kit and shoved in my cargo pocket/inside my chest rig. The draw monsters taketh with no remorse.
As pertaining to nods use with the maps though, never had any issues with the issue maps under nods with lamination unless there was some weird glare from the moon out. Some colors of map markers wont show up well at all under nods/on a map. Black is my preferred color just because it shows up under red lense, NODS, and on lume tape the best.
Which no one has really mentioned yet here so I'll throw it in. On every notebook I take to the field with me i'll have a laminated sheet of lume tape on the back of my rite in the rain notebook. Can be charged with a UV buttonlight under a cover so you don't have to use whitelight will last for a couple hours so you don't have to make a large light signature to make notes if the lume out isn't good. I do the same thing with my wrist compass, The suunto's lume stuff isnt that good so I tape a circle to the back of that as well and charge it before we head out.

Hmmmmm.  I'm pretty sure I've done fine with land nav under goggles and it's probably even an aid.  That far off strobe from a tower can be visible through some foliage and you'd never see it with the naked eye.  The sliver of moon casting shadows can be used to help maintain a bearing.  It doesn't replace all the other things you mentioned but it's not like you throw them in your ruck when you've got to navigate.

Judging by Ohio I'd say it's his one weekend a month hobby.

I'm glad to see some pros showed up here.  This is awesome stuff.  

So OK, on map lam, I don't like that thick stuff either, I use that brush on liquid shit, like Aquaseal's "Mapseal".  Good tip on the "mapboard" and zip lock bag.  I've tried all those foo foo map holders and always seem to come back to a Mk 1 Mod 0 baggie.  

Like the lum tape trick too, that's pretty fucking slick.  

And the Suunto, yeah dude you rock.  Gonna have to try all that stuff.

Any of you guys ever see that little "globe" the Brits had?  Don't know if it was lum of tritium, think it might have been tritium, but it was the same principle, a very low light source for admin.  


           

OTOH Gen1 and Gen2 units see it.

Regarding this: "Any of you guys ever see that little "globe" the Brits had?  Don't know if it was lum of tritium, think it might have been tritium, but it was the same principle, a very low light source for admin."

I have seen only the kind cast in polycarbonate, like Kitmonster sells.
There are several sources for less robust but similar items, large and small, sold on eBay as zipper pulls or key fobs and such.
But I like the thicker ones (like Kitmonster's) that I can feel and find with cold, wet hands and are made with good vials.
The bare tritium vials used to be available in many sizes. Not any more, it seems. I have read that the vials must now be enclosed in a product before sale.

For the record I was being 100% facetious.

Using the listed profile location to judge the merit of someone's post can be a recipe for disaster.

Besides, I wouldn't care if a SF Team Sergeant is retired & kicking back in an easy chair or closing out his service at one of the Regiment Retirement Home units in RC status.
His post is exceptionally sound in my experience.

No I can't recall anything like that, I recall seeing something called a lume-tube or something like that sold near some stores I used to work at. Never really interested me because no easy way to "turn off" the light or conceal it.
Closest thing I could find to it.
Think I mentioned before but my absolute favorite for when needing an actual light is the Photon micro light takes the same batteries as my petzl micro headlamp and it gets extremely dim. But a taped up chemlight with only the bottom showing or just throwing a bandana/piece of cloth over your red lense works pretty good too.

These are awesome T,T,P's.  Back in my day, when dinosaurs were still milling about, about the only thing we had was the issue GI angle-head flashlight.  You'd double up on the filters if you were real high-speed.  I remember finding this Pelican "pen light", that took AAA's, and had a red lens, which was a huge improvement at the time.  This is when we still had slant pocket jungle cammies, and all the junk went in your pockets.  So I had a notebook, "space" pen, and said pen light dummy-corded on one side, and ye old lensatic on the other.  Map sheet in cargo pocket.    

Had mamma-san move hip pockets to chest and chest pockets to arms.  Found a couple of pilot E&E pouches which I re-purposed into grunt E&E pouches.  And would you believe I still have one of my old jungle do-rags, which is now been re-purposed as the current required face covering.

Now here's a question for the panel.  When we had for-shit white (or colored as you prefer) lights, we would do the old poncho routine for nav checks n so forth.  With current light tech, is this stoopid, or still valid?

In my best 1st Sgt voice: "Now I know we all like to have a little fun, but you active guys need to stop picking on the reserve and guard types".

I remember guys doing map checks under ponchos, and clearly seeing through the poncho with 7 Bravos. Probably had something to do with the incandescent bulb? No idea about LED these days.

If you need to share info off a map it’s probably best to poncho up but a quick map check can be done with your nods on. But if you’re doing any more than a check you probably need light, just too hard to see details through tubes and good luck sharing any info if you both/all have them down.

I’d never make fun of a guard guy..unless they are so insecure they have to update their MOS from their avatar to the body of a text.  Has nothing to do with how right or wrong a person may be.

Yeah really says the guy with a photo on top Pen Y Fan.  

Moving right along, if it's so dark, like OP is saying in deep woods, would you guys risk active IR, sorta like inside a cave or something?

What’s the threat/risk/advantage tell you to do?
Hunting critters? Absolutely.
Practicing land nav or movement through restricted terrain? Maybe minimize the use to get the best practice?
Movement to the ORP? Likely
Movement forward of the ORP? Probably not.

All depends on shooter preference.

Went out with my compass and map, along with my PVS14, and experienced the IR light wash out.  The first image is my map under IR light, the only visible lines are my route pencil lines.  The second image is with blue vis light.

This was map I printed on my home printer.

Hmmm well at least your route is visible.  If you think about it, you could have a cheat sheet with just route info to refer to.  This is how the Brits trained their SF guys.  You had to hand-draw the route with waypoints, terrain features, etc along the way, and navigate with that.  Don't know if the Royal Chart Shop was on strike or what, but real good technique for U-Dub, when map sheets may not be so readily available. Or even contraband.  Much like our SF brethern, you could hard-mount a hand-drawn "nav sheet" to some backing and go forth.  

Now I fully realize, when that technique breaks down, it really breaks down.  You would have to do a full stop and poncho conference.  With a real topo.  Nothing's perfect.  And let's face it, as rough as it is, the rolling hills in Wales are essentially wide open which lends itself well to that technique.  So northern woods, 'nother kettle of fish, one each.    

I can only tell you from my experience, when I get out there and hump a few miles, I lose my mind.  It's hard to concentrate when you're so knackered you can't see straight, and the thought of being lost sends you over the edge.  Spend as much time as possible after all other mission planning to memo-rize the route.  When your brain is still functioning.  I read a novel (Pollack, "Crossfire") where these guys were conducting a HAHO jump, and had a video of the insertion route up on screen, where they could watch a continuous loop of what the terrain would look like underneath them at each altitude as they hit check points and descended.  Whether or not that was true, the technique is the same.

Ha you are way ahead of me, printing off maps from your computer.  I suppose that's how it's all done today.  Or it's loaded up on your Garmin.  All well and good, until it isn't.  Build up your map sheets as a back-up.  Better yet, build up that map sheet in your head.

A list of azimuths was all I went out with on my first few orienteering practices.  It let me just focus on the compass, but you're right, as soon as something goes amiss, you're fucked...

They are also really big on terrain models and so forth, so a lot of memorization is going on as they draw those strip maps.  But yeah they are only memorizing a narrow strip, and when it get's off that, well it get's interesting.  The difference in deep woods is you generally have no skyline, especially at night, so all that shit looks the same.  If you saw that Ranger vid I wuz talking about, they talk about literally just seeing if terrain is moving towards, or away from yer nose.  Seriously.  If you have counted terrain features (as in how many fingers should I go over before I get there) then you know you need to start looking around for something, not just keep plowing.  If your terrain is flatter, then you might have to DR that bitch and get your pace count on.  And the only way to get a good figure of merit on that is, you guessed it, get out there and average it out.  Combined with a time on march, you should get a pretty close idea of what it takes you to do 100, or 1,000m.  Most guys never get past the 100m pace line laid out on the trail.  It's a start, but sounds like your AO is gonna take some more work.  When I'm weaving through tress n shit my pace count goes to hell.  Might as well triple it right now.  It's like I'm pacing off feet not yards.  I'm lucky in that my woods are thin enough that you can look up and estimate "football fields" enough to stay close.  So if I do get hung up in some shit, I can pretty much average that out.  When it's thicker, and darker, you need to develop a "time on march", which is just how long does it normally take to move this crap, and tie that to some pace count if possible.

New to NV. How is following rustic forest trails in northern woods with heavy canopy? Trails are pretty well known in daylight, and I'm hoping to do a lot of trail walking under NV. Will IR be absolutely necessary?

On the first night you step into the canopy you will probably be disappointed with the night vision.  My trails are narrow but I am very very familiar with them. The first night I stepped out with NV, I was disoriented within 20 yards.
Now I have spent a bit over a year patrolling and hiking through truly thick forest/briars/euyonymus/fallen trees/streams etc... You definitely get much much better at it. I can follow all of my trails without thought on all but the darkest nights.  Bushwhacking can be difficult when your monocular is chock-full-o-leaves, but it's achievable and a compass gives you confidence in direction while doing it.
IR is not necessary, but you have to have it with you just in case, along with a visible light in case you really get in trouble.

Some people seem to think it's more risk and difficulty than it's worth, but that's your calculation to make.

I don’t think anyone can really answer that absolutely. Moon phase/weather/canopy/contrast of the trail will all play a part.

In practicality, being able to control those trails around my property is the raison d'etre for N.V.
I don't realistically ever think it will be necessary but it'll be fun to get it down anyway.

There's varying levels of bushwhacking available too from relatively clean floor to tanglefoot riots, so great terrain to practice and learn. I just hope I don't run across a game warden, lol.  It'd be awkward to say the least.




I guess like any training, varying conditions need experience.

Yeah, I'm seeing two threads develop here, the basically go out and figure out your AO, and the tips of the trade.  Both are very good, and I'm digging it all.

And yeah the artificial difficulty for training value, vs the "real world" technique.  Officers usually like one, NCO's the other.  Finding a balance.  You are training like an officer and getting answers from NCO's, so yeah not necessarily MF-ing it but counseling, suggesting, advising it.        

It seems asking if active IR is necessary, is sorta like asking how's this date gonna turn out.  Lots of variables there.  Speaking strictly for my area, if I have a woodland trail, with intermittent overhead cover (as in not triple canopy), it all depends on overcast or clear, moon phase or none, clear or fog, rain or dry.  So let's say 1/4 moon, clear, and dry.  Probably would not need any active IR.  On the other hand, no moon, overcast, drizzling rain.  Maybe.  And again, as someone pointed out, forward of the ORP, or at least your objective area, if you have one.  As always, the enemy gets a vote here as well.  

So to expand on that. let's say you are doing an "area reconnaissance", meaning you are going to walk a route and just see what's there.  If I'm near my "cabin" or whatever, I'm not gonna do the "jungle night stalk" 100m from home.  But, if I get to some interesting places, where you might bump into something, then you're gonna dial that in.  So if you use a little illum to sort yourself out initially, or to help with some navs, ok, but further along in the patrol (and nearer to potential danger areas), you'd want to re-consider that.

Let's say you have a point target in mind.  Tonight you are going to do a "point recon".  Now again, you may play grab-ass to get going, but then you settle in.  You select an Objective Rally Point, where you might drop rucks, rig for surveillance and otherwise get set up for the task at hand.  From here forward, it's all A game.  You quietly move into position and wait.  And observe.  And record.  When you're done, you return to the ORP, rig for travel again, and return to base.  The closer to home, if some active is needed, you might use it.  In fact, it makes a dandy signaling device, if you're into that kind of thing.  If you're by yourself, the ORP might be optional, but again, flip the switch in your mind.

I'm not seeing any wrist compasses with declination adjustment, how do you work with that in the field without making calculations?

I've never used wrist compasses but you'll just have to do the math. Once you know your declination, then add or subtract as needed.

Never did military stuff but found out pretty quick playing with NV in the forest that a blue headlamp clipped somewhere pointed at my feet is the way to go. Use the blue headlamp as a lamp unto your feet and the little green circle as a way to see in the distance

Well Augee, you know I wuz a zero myself so three fingers are pointing right back at me.  When I hear OP say stuff like I'm gonna train on this hard shit here so I have an edge on the competition, I hear myself, lo, those many years ago.  And I also hear all those NCO eyeballs clicking.

We used to have this discussion about whether you need to train to be miserable.  Now some thought yeah, get on down in it.  Others thought that just comes with std harassment package so why add to the thing.  And there's probably truth on both sides.  Young ossifers coming out of mamma's bosom and their college frat, have vastly different backgrounds form that young NCO, growing up in some shit hole and coming up the hard way through the ranks.  So one guy is out looking for shit, while the other has been in it all his life.

I think this brings me to the Royal Marine's way of growing officers.  You start out as a 3d Lt in a line Bn.  You are given the lowest job on the ladder and work your way up, as you master each position.  At the end of the year, all senior NCO's and officers take a vote on you.  If you fail, you are chucked out of the unit, and serve your time as an enlisted man.  Now that's how you level the playing field.  Our young 2/Lt now understands the suck factor and can lead accordingly.  

So I guess this thing is where you are at along the road; if you need your ass kicked, certainly feel free to get out there and do it; if you've BTDT, then perhaps you already got the good news and just need a little sustainment training.  I find I still enjoy a good challenge, such as a hard ruck march.  It just seems to keep me in the right frame of mind.

This forum was a great jumping off point for my NVG training when I first got started. There are posts recommending walking on stepping stones to get used to the new perception issues, posts about working on menial home tasks to improve your abilities to focus near and far, and generally I have tried to continue to build on those concepts of walking before running for my personal development.  I am still finding fun challenges with my NVG, and each one raises my competence and confidence for the future.  Having the skill or the experience doesn't mean you have to or will need to use it.
To quote a manual for another hobby of mine
'There's always another way, usually a better one.'

Ha yeah you're doing it right; don't let the old timers razz you too much.  

Maybe sometimes navigating in deep woods might point out the weaknesses of your wizard eyes, which is a lesson onto itself.  If you go into shit thinking you've got the all-seeing eye of Mordor and you can't really see shit, well, it might be a bad day for the home team.  Good to explore that corner of the envelope now.

Wizard eyes are a great tool to have in the toolbox for when you need it. They are not some magical talisman that will make you suddenly an expert. That's why we train and train hard. I often tell new users to do exactly that, mundane tasks around the house, walk the dog, take out the trash. Our training at Bragg was navigating at night without NODs simply because not everyone were issued night vision. Squad leaders and above usually had them. Once you get comfortable moving at night in total dark then you'll truly appreciate having NVGs even if their performance isn't all that great under the trees. Because if you're used to seeing absolute dark then any image no matter how bad, will be much more useful.  

One of the hardest things I've noticed is for people to do is to just wait for your eyes to adjust to the dark naturally. That means waiting at least a half hour outside without using any supplemental lighting, none, nada, not even a red light. Simple things like using your peripheral vision rather than looking directly where you want will help out. We had a few older Sergeants that were stone cold killers at night even without night vision. Our platoon Sergeant was a Vietnam Vet and he trained us in night time tactics from some of his experiences in Vietnam.

The human eye is really much better at night than we give ourselves credit for. In my experience many people just want the easy fix and they see NVGs as the ultimate easy answer. After really learning how to move at night, and finally getting a set issued, I really didn't even use them all that much as I felt they were more awkward to use. After getting some time under my belt on several different types of NVGs, I learned how to use them more effectively and I'll never be without a good set and a backup.  

Bottom line, learn the basics and learn them well.

Good post. Same here - '86-'90 (two Vietnam Vets in the Company), '91, and '99-'02 with 5's, 7's and 14's...that didn't get used for movement much. All natural vision for night movements. Another thing to think about, is moving at night may not be smart in certain environments - we had 1 KIA, and 3 WIA in Panama, when a dead tree fell down one leg of a Patrol Base that was set up at about 0300. Other units have had guys walk off jungle "cliffs" hidden by thick vegetation.

Ok Sea Story time.  Now this is no shit...  You know most training exercises are pretty dynamic; you don't train "dead time", you train for the moving parts.  Well that's pretty much how I got my ass waxed one night.  At Quantico they teach you to react to contact, and you're moving this squad here, and that base of fire there.   You know, go, go, go.  Well the Company Gunny was an old Vietnam hand.  He took a few clerks out and ambushed our ass.  Now what the different wuz, he just lit us up, and then sat and waited.  Wasn't used to that.  We're like where's the contact?  Where'd they go?  Running around trying to get orga-binized.  While the gunny is quietly waiting in the bush.  He would cause casualties, freeze in place, and then quietly melt away in the ensuing corn-fusion.

That lesson taught me a lot that night.  This was standard VC tactics I wuz being introduced to.  Young plt ldrs are taught to react, move, kick ass!  Knowing this, they exploited it as a weakness.  

I went up against this Gunny later on after he taught me this lesson.  This time we also froze in place.  The squads were pre-briefed on this shit.  I trusted them to know what to do, so I wasn't running around shouting orders and what-not.  We waited his ass out.  He quietly skulked off.   I was thinking ha, not this time, Nguyen.

Now the take-away on this.  With NV, you might not be able to pull this kind of shit off, but then again, in deep woods, you just might.  It's all still line of sight.

That's awesome! That sounds pretty much like how our Platoon Sergeant trained us when we were Opfor. Ambush our opponents overwhelming firepower, then get low, stay still and be quiet. A lot of what he trained us was to get our positions dig a shallow "grave" and cover yourself up as much as possible for camouflage. After we were set up, he would then go out to the ambush site and scan for any signs of us and make adjustments as needed. During an ambush we were trained to turn into the direction of fire and assault through. As soon as they started the assault, that's when we would stop shooting and get quiet. They would assault right through our line, not even aware where we were. After their assault, we would light them up from their rear. Damn fun times! I'm not sure that night vision would have even made a difference to the people we were ambushing.

This same method would dramatically reduce your heat signature too, bleeding some of it into the ground around you.  Might help against some thermal.

Ding Ding Ding we have a winner!

A short head n shoulders ghillie cloak works well here.  

And yes a thermal cloak would be a good idea as well.  

Ranger graves!  Ah yes.

PVS-14 WP monocular arrived yesterday, my 1st NV experience. I walked around outside most of the moonless, clear sky. rural dark night. Starpower, baby. Unreal. NO IR used at all.

I had no trouble at all walking around and learned a couple things quickly. In the cluttered garage, 3 steps at a time is about all I could anticipate. Outside ranged from gravel drive and heavily tree canopied dirt access road, to lumpy ground cover with some trees and thickets to avoid. The number of steps I could reliably commit to memory ranged from a few on severe natural ground to infinity on the road. That was easy to just walk.

Adjusting focus to just beyond the distance I could reliably commit to memory in one move seemed to be the key to smooth success and maximum gait. Look down and plan the next steps, look up and take em. again. Smoothly and fluidly. No problem.

Both eyes always open, but that probably goes without saying? If I started to feel a little disoriented, or tunnel visioned, I'd look up at the tree tops against the night sky and my brain melding my normal vision and the NV would cure that quick. It became almost 2nd nature by the end of the night. It's hilarious how useless the unaided eye is in most conditions.

It'll be nice when the helmet gets here and I don't have to hold that thing up to my eye. That was the long part of the night, the walking itself was fantastic. Also, I'm hoping that the fascination with the night sky fades after a bit?  Maybe I should have just lay on my back, because my neck took some abuse. What a show.

Once I get this mounted correctly, can't wait to take it on the natural trails around here. When I get comfortable with that, I've got plenty more difficult terrain around here to offer challenge.
This is SO amazing.

UberNoob question. Does the eye with NV correctly merge a red dot with the other eye in the brain for shot placement like Bindon works?  I tried with just a pistol with rather dim dots, and I got nothing at all I could call a reliable sight picture. I'm hoping an MRO is a better experience.

That melding of a red dot from your unaided eye onto the NV image seems to be very user dependent. I would strongly recommend putting the NVG over your dominant eye and aiming through the (dimmed down) red dot with that.
Enjoy!

Thanks for that! I'm hoping I'm one of the lucky ones, which would make a lot of my weapons useful. I can easily see that my normal RDS mounting wouldn't work with a Nvd. I've got a couple of those new TNVC mini IR lasers on backorder just in case.

Welcome to the wizard eyes club lol.

Your unaided eye can actually be quite useful; if you do any work in dense woodland, your unaided eye can help spot potential obstacles better than night vision sometimes (take a look further up in this thread) or if you're in an urban environment, you can read lighting conditions a lot more easily.

As for aiming, it's been touched on a few times here. General consensus is that whether Bindon works or not is very much up to individual biology and even then, only effective at close range (I believe TNVC_Sam said 25 yards before POA/POI shift).

Fancy equipment will not replace skill, experience, and treachery. Night vision enhances the skills we acquired by training hard. They will not ever replace that training.

But SFC Outlaw, I have NODs I can just throw them on and go kill bad guys, we don't need to wander around in the dark without them. Yeah, okay dipshit, go for it, you go first.

As far as local maps go, I got one from USGS and one from mytopo and I would strongly suggest mytopo. Better quality map that is water resistant, for a similar price, and the mytopo one came in about 5 days as opposed to nearly a month for the usgs one.

Truth!

One of the cases where I wish we had “like” buttons.

flashlight?

I know several guys have brought this up, but it bears repeating.  Guys these days are not brought up hunting and fishing like when I wuz a kid (and dinosaurs still roamed the earth; just thought I'
d add that in for ya).  So when we talk about nav in deep woods, with I2 or thermal even, we might need to back up and establish a base line here.  If you haven't spent a lot of time out in the woods, especially by yourself, at night, that there is a pre-requisite for operating with I2 or thermal.  These things should not be a crutch that you lean on, and fail to develop an imitate relationship with nay-ture.

Quite honestly, if you are good at night movement, and land nav, you can oftentimes move easier, more efficiently without it.  A lot depends on moon phase,  brush, enemy sit, yadi- yada, but sometimes it's damn near day light out there.  If you are comfortable with being out there, you don't even need it; your eyes work amazingly well when you learn to use them in the dark.  

It's funny, I grew up creeping around in the dark.  I lived in base housing, surrounded by chain link and barbed wire, with armed security guards at the gates.  In the summers we would roam all around, as late as our parents would allow.  If we did "sleep overs" of course we snuck out and walked around, playing hide n go seek with the roving security patrols.  I spent summers at my aunt's ranch in Oklahoma.  Hunting and fishing damn near every day.  But I get it, it's a different world today.  Nowadays you need to get some time in the woods, and get comfortable out there, before you add in land nav, and NV.