Night Vision Bonanza!!

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Night Vision Bonanza!!

Posted: 8/16/2015 2:08:15 PM EDT

Well folks I am officially out of my element here. I recently purchased a large part of a collection from the family of a surplus dealer and ended up with a boatload of night vision gear. From my limited knowledge it looks like there is a metric ton of PVS4 amplifier tubes, PVS 14 tubes, PVS7 tubes, PVS5, 7, and 14 bodies, lenses, and other parts. Vehicle mounted systems, tubes for god knows what kind of gear, ANVIS parts, and even more that I cant figure out. I figured everyone here might enjoy helping me identify and sort the majority of the parts as well as provide me the background on some of it. I will be posting pics to the thread as I dig gear out from the nooks and crannies its been calling home for the past 15 years. I hope y'all enjoy. Here is round one, let me know what you think.

**I am particularly looking for info in regards to the Agema unit. I believe it is a vehicle mountable thermal but info seems to be scarce. The large tubes as well as the monocular in pic 13 are proving tough to get info on as well.**

-CMM

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Posted: 8/16/2015 3:18:07 PM EDT

[#1]

tag

Posted: 8/16/2015 5:23:03 PM EDT

[#2]

This should be a fun/cool project. Are you going to build and fix these units, or sell them?

Posted: 8/16/2015 5:51:37 PM EDT

[#3]

Agema Thermovision 1000 info here: http://support.flir.com/DocDownload/Assets/65/English/557102$C.pdf

At least I think this is the system you might have.

Monocular in photo 13 reminds me of the old NAIT pocket scopes. Model NVPS-10

Posted: 8/16/2015 6:54:54 PM EDT

[#4]

At the moment I am leaning towards concentrating on getting a pair of PVS14s up and running with the potential for a dual setup. I just got done testing the 14 style tubes and to my surprise they all fired up. Most of them have some type of blemish / imperfection but as users they should be great. A lot of the gear is new to me so once I get a good idea on value I plan on letting some go.

Almighty, you rock. It looks like ill have some reading material for the evening. As far as the monocular goes Im pretty sure its a Litton M911. It has a bunch of lenses but I am missing the eye piece so I can't get a good focused image. The tube seems to be awesome, if removal is possible I might look into a transplant.

Posted: 8/16/2015 6:55:51 PM EDT

[#5]

Quote History

Quoted:
Agema Thermovision 1000 info here: http://support.flir.com/DocDownload/Assets/65/English/557102$C.pdf

At least I think this is the system you might have.

Monocular in photo 13 reminds me of the old NAIT pocket scopes. Model NVPS-10

View Quote

It does look just like NAIT's pocket scope. NAIT built the pocket scope in hopes to win the PVS 14 contract.

Posted: 8/16/2015 7:01:49 PM EDT

[#6]

Quote History

Quoted:
Agema Thermovision 1000 info here: http://support.flir.com/DocDownload/Assets/65/English/557102$C.pdf

At least I think this is the system you might have.

Monocular in photo 13 reminds me of the old NAIT pocket scopes. Model NVPS-10

View Quote

Interesting that the document you found even had the protocol specs, so even if the remote controller is (is it?) missing one could code uo a little program to command the camera assuming it's alive in other ways. Just need to dig up an old PC with a RS232 port.

Posted: 8/16/2015 7:11:12 PM EDT

[#7]

Lots of stuff there to keep you busy for a while. Very cool acquisition! I'd be geeking out hardcore with that stuff around.

Posted: 8/16/2015 8:16:01 PM EDT

[#8]

Some of those mx-11769's PVS-14 tubes look like they are missing pigtails. They will still fire up without the pigtail, but you'll run into some major performance issues running them like that. you can either get new pigtails and solder them on, or you can solder a resister over the contacts and remove the manual gain feature.

really cool find. i bet you could sell some of the parts off and pick up a sentinel or mod-3 and get a true dual setup going. If it all works, you have enough there to work yourself into a very nice dual tube setup loaded out with helmet, mount, and IR laser.

We can walk you through most of the process. Are there PVS-14 objective lenses in the lot? I didn't see any. Were there also MX-10130 PVS-7 tubes?

And yeah - it looks like a litton M911 with a commercial lens kit.

Posted: 8/16/2015 8:39:33 PM EDT

[#9]

Quote History

Quoted:
Some of those mx-11769's PVS-14 tubes look like they are missing pigtails. They will still fire up without the pigtail, but you'll run into some major performance issues running them like that. you can either get new pigtails and solder them on, or you can solder a resister over the contacts and remove the manual gain feature.

really cool find. i bet you could sell some of the parts off and pick up a sentinel or mod-3 and get a true dual setup going. If it all works, you have enough there to work yourself into a very nice dual tube setup loaded out with helmet, mount, and IR laser.

We can walk you through most of the process. Are there PVS-14 objective lenses in the lot? I didn't see any. Were there also MX-10130 PVS-7 tubes?

And yeah - it looks like a litton M911 with a commercial lens kit.

View Quote

What kind of issues will I be looking at with the trimmed tubes? Variable gain obviously won't be possible but will there be many other downfalls?

Posted: 8/16/2015 9:37:13 PM EDT

[#10]

SO JELLY.

I wish i could dig through all that stuff :(
I could piece together so much crap

Posted: 8/16/2015 10:12:29 PM EDT

[#11]

The silver image tubes in pic 13 are from the M60's Tank Thermal Sight. According to this thread they are supposed to be Gen 2? Link.

You also have a lot of image tubes for the VVS-2, aka Driver's night vision viewer. They are AN/PVS-4 tubes with a fiber optic bundle on the back to double the size of the image. They may be hard to use in other projects?

Does look like a good haul.

Posted: 8/17/2015 12:17:39 AM EDT

[#12]

Quote History

Quoted:

What kind of issues will I be looking at with the trimmed tubes? Variable gain obviously won't be possible but will there be many other downfalls?

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
Some of those mx-11769's PVS-14 tubes look like they are missing pigtails. They will still fire up without the pigtail, but you'll run into some major performance issues running them like that. you can either get new pigtails and solder them on, or you can solder a resister over the contacts and remove the manual gain feature.

really cool find. i bet you could sell some of the parts off and pick up a sentinel or mod-3 and get a true dual setup going. If it all works, you have enough there to work yourself into a very nice dual tube setup loaded out with helmet, mount, and IR laser.

We can walk you through most of the process. Are there PVS-14 objective lenses in the lot? I didn't see any. Were there also MX-10130 PVS-7 tubes?

And yeah - it looks like a litton M911 with a commercial lens kit.

What kind of issues will I be looking at with the trimmed tubes? Variable gain obviously won't be possible but will there be many other downfalls?

The tube wont function properly. The ones i had with snipped tails had lots of scintillation and looked like they were okay, but once you got them somewhere dark, they were so pixellated that you couldn't see anything. Once the pigtail was fixed, they worked perfectly.

Get them all fixed, so you know what you're working with.

Posted: 8/17/2015 10:26:02 AM EDT

[#13]

In that case I guess Ill be looking for a tube guru to give me a hand with some of these. I did a bit more digging last night and came away with a pair of MX10160 tubes, this dual 14 idea is gaining some traction. Here are a few more pics for the horde, enjoy.

Posted: 8/17/2015 12:31:37 PM EDT

[#14]

Ugh... why don't I ever "stumble" onto this kind of stuff?

Great score, OP!

~Augee

Posted: 8/18/2015 11:08:56 AM EDT

[#15]

Alrighty, while Im waiting on a few PVS14 parts to come in the next project is going to be this Agema. Has anyone used one o these before? It looks like an old vehicle mounted unit with a "windshield wiper" for the front lens. Any ideas as to a rough value?

Posted: 8/18/2015 1:45:30 PM EDT

[#16]

I hate you right now.

Posted: 8/18/2015 1:54:21 PM EDT

[#17]

Awesome score!

Posted: 8/18/2015 4:38:27 PM EDT

[#18]

Have you tried firering up the MX10160's yet? Didn't recognize the cage code so went digging. Varian made those and the price for the very first tubes cost the DOD something like $15,000+ a piece. OUCH!

Posted: 8/19/2015 12:08:27 PM EDT

[#19]

Yep, I was able to get them up and the images are pretty great. 15K is some crazy money, back in the day those bad boys must have made our snake eaters feel like predator at night. I managed to get a few PVS14 kits ordered so I should hopefully have these running some time next week.

On a side not the VVS-2 amp assemblies make a whole lot more sense now....

Posted: 8/20/2015 2:39:28 PM EDT

[#20]

Finally got some shots through the MX11769 tubes. It looks like some could work well for the project that I have in mind but others definitely have some city miles on them. Thanks to another member here I have a pretty good handle on their info as well. Enjoy!

- Tube 1

PVS-14 #1
1999 Omni V - Thin film - Could be autogated?
Manual Gain

-Tube 2

PVS-14 #2
1999 Omni IV - Thick Film
Manual Gain

-Tube 4

PVS-14 #4
2001 Omni V - Thin film - Could be autogated?
Manual Gain

-Tube 5

PVS-14 #5
2001 Omni V - Thin film - Could be autogated?
Manual Gain

-Tube 6

PVS-14 #6
1999 Omni V - Thin film - Could be autogated?
Manual Gain

-Tube 7

PVS-14 #7
2000 Omni V - Thin film - Could be autogated?
Manual Gain

-Tube 8

PVS-14 #8
1999 Omni V - Thin film - Could be autogated?
Manual Gain

-Tube 9

PVS-14 #9
1998 Omni V - Thick film
Manual Gain

-Tube 10

PVS-14 #10
Manual Gain

Posted: 8/20/2015 9:51:11 PM EDT

[#21]

Are the imperfections in those tubes permanent?

Posted: 8/21/2015 4:54:01 AM EDT

[#22]

For the most part, yes. The imperfections are caused by damage to the phosphor coating and is unreparable.

Posted: 8/21/2015 10:45:43 AM EDT

[#23]

What burns a perfect line in a tube like some of those? Lasers?

Posted: 8/21/2015 12:28:06 PM EDT

[#24]

Id be interested in an answer to that as well. Ive seen y fair share of damaged tubes but there has never been a great answer as to why the imperfections appear the way they do.

Posted: 8/21/2015 12:58:45 PM EDT

[#25]

Those sure look like laser burns to me.

Posted: 8/22/2015 1:50:53 AM EDT

[#26]

Quote History

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Those sure look like laser burns to me.

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That was my guess as well.

Posted: 8/22/2015 12:41:41 PM EDT

[#27]

tube 4 looks dropped.

Trust me, i know...

Posted: 8/22/2015 6:44:58 PM EDT

[#28]

Quote History

Quoted:
tube 4 looks dropped.

Trust me, i know...

View Quote

Ouch, not sure I want to know.

On a side note I think I have hit the ANVIS lens mother load (if I am correct and looking at these right). Visions of dual tubes are dancing in my head...

Posted: 8/23/2015 6:05:23 AM EDT

[#29]

Quote History

Quoted:
Those sure look like laser burns to me.

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When did LIF's come out?

Posted: 8/23/2015 7:25:25 AM EDT

[#30]

Quote History

Quoted:

Ouch, not sure I want to know.

On a side note I think I have hit the ANVIS lens mother load (if I am correct and looking at these right). Visions of dual tubes are dancing in my head...

<a href="http://s478.photobucket.com/user/bevisblack/media/ANVIS%20Lenses.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr149/bevisblack/ANVIS%20Lenses.jpg</a>

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
tube 4 looks dropped.

Trust me, i know...

Ouch, not sure I want to know.

On a side note I think I have hit the ANVIS lens mother load (if I am correct and looking at these right). Visions of dual tubes are dancing in my head...

<a href="http://s478.photobucket.com/user/bevisblack/media/ANVIS%20Lenses.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr149/bevisblack/ANVIS%20Lenses.jpg</a>

Looking forward to seeing some cheap anvis lenses on the EE for a build that I'm doing!