What can Brown do for me? Hurry.

T

task force k

Joined
Feb 10, 2007
Messages
436
Well, my birthday was last week and among the items that I received and am still waiting for are:

Mora Clipper...never wanted one until I saw all the great reviews from you knife nuts. ("knife nut" is not used pejoratively but respectfully)

Night Vision Monocular...One of the cheap ones but it'll serve its purpose whenever I decide what that purpose is.

Garmin Venture CX...I'm a map and compass guy but my M-I-L wanted to get me one of these...should prove useful, after all you can't carry a map of everywhere you might end up.

550 Cord...something like a thousand yards of the stuff...I'm going to dummy cord everything I own.

Wenger Century w/ Woodsaw...Didn't see any reviews so I guess I better post one.
 
What brand of night vision monocular are you getting? I've been thinking about buying one of the Night Owl $150`ish ones for a long time.
 
cssims,

You sure you don't want to wait until I get mine? I'll let you know if it's worth the money. I've heard the IR Illuminator on the ELF is weak but it's visible IR anyway so I'll use a non-vis source instead. It's first generation so you're going to have the whine and the distortion around the edges but who has the money for a 2plus or 3? Who has the need?
 
The night owl I've been looking at for so long is also 1st gen, but this one is so darn small and runs on 2 AAA's. Can't go wrong with it as a play toy.
 
Almost forgot...I'm waiting on a surplus German Flecktarn Goretex jacket and a Maratac Zulu Four Ring in OD to replace a broken watchband, too.

It was a good birthday...the kids got me a pie iron...thought it was kind of goofy at first, then used it to make grilled cheese...yummers.

I hate waiting for things to arrive...you should have seen me when my wife was pregnant. My daughter was a week overdue and I kept asking my wife if she had a tracking number.
 
task force k said:
I hate waiting for things to arrive...you should have seen me when my wife was pregnant. My daughter was a week overdue and I kept asking my wife if she had a tracking number.
Click to expand...

I put my wife on forced marches when she was overdue. :eek: Helped her sleep and within a day, out pops baby.
 
my wife has some rules:

I'm only allowed

One new gun a year...she never said anything about used guns, though. I have to put this rule on her, too. It's cheaper for me to slash her tires than to let her go anywhere near the gun store whenever Kimber comes out with something new.
One knife a year...some rules are meant to be broken and she usually breaks this one
One new electronic gizmo a year...get the most complicated one that I can...it takes me six months to learn it and six more months to get tired of it.
One new wristwatch a year...she says if I hadn't bought all the less expensive ones over the years, I could have saved enough to replace my stolen Rolex GMT Master by now...before you get to thinking the Rolex means that I'm made of money...it didn't cost me a dime...I swapped for it in the seventh grade.
 
I'll be looking forward to your review of the night vision. I was a anti tanker in the Marines and had some nice thermal sights to play with. I wouldn't expect the same resolution but for a bill should be a lot of fun.
Every one raves on victorinox, and I have some of them to, so it would be nice to read your review on the wenger.
 
Brown showed. Night vision arrived. GPS arrived.

The Elf-1 1st generation night vision monocular is everything you would expect from a Russian made, 1st generation device...it has a quiet, high-pitched whine. It has fish-eye distortion around the edges of the image and, yes, the IR illuminator is a visible red LED and, yes, it is weak. The unit has surprisingly good resolution...better than I expected for the price. The IR illuminator was good enough for around the house but for anything else, you might want to invest the twenty bucks in a non-vis IR flashlight. I haven't run into the typical 1st generation problem of shutdown due to flash protection and the tracer effect one often sees from bright lights was absent. As with any NV unit or optical unit in general, you've got to refocus when you change from a close to a distant object or vice-versa and at first the design seemed counterintuitive...the IR source is so close to the lens that you can block it when focusing but this thing is so small that, well, where else could the designer put it?

I've seen references to an accessory IR unit and there is an attachment point for one on the unit but I've not found a source. I've seen similar references for a 90mm lens which would definitely boost performance but have not found a source. I've not found a source for a camera adapter but there are so many out there that there almost has to be one available.

All in all, I'm pleased with the purchase. I didn't get a high-end, super-resolution, James Bond viewer but I didn't get a pair of X-Ray Specs either. For somebody who wants a Night Vision unit for casual use or to try out, it was worth the money.
 
I'm going to wait awhile to post a full review of the Garmin E-Trex Venture CX. I need a chance to get out and work with it first. My first impression is that it is a solid unit about the size of a cell phone. It picked up satellites quickly although it lost reception when I went to the basement...it picked up reception again halfway up the stairs. It tracked my location well during movement although I wasn't able to test it long...we had the mother of all thunderstorms here last night. Garmin has a reputation for being a little bit greedy when it comes to mapping software and the supplied map is quite basic. More later.
 
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