Airsoft SpecOps: Revision: Mounting Night Vision Monocular to an Airsoft Rifle

Older Revision of Mounting Night Vision Monocular to an Airsoft Rifle

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Mounting Night Vision Monocular to an Airsoft Rifle

So I had a Night Detective Quest 5 (ND-Q5) Night Vision Monocular for a while. I used it to watch nocturnal animals and shoot photographs of them. Recently, I had gotten into airsoft, so I've been experimenting with this night vision monocular. This article documents my experimentation. The photo below is the 5x night vision monocular.

Cross Reference
This article documents the usage of the Night Detective Quest 5 (ND-Q5) Night Vision Monocular on airsoft guns. It doesn't talk about the monocular itself. However, take a look at the "Night Detective Quest 5 (ND-Q5) Night Vision Monocular Review" article to learn more about the monocular.

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Using it for Observation

The first idea I had was to use the night vision monocular for observation. It is useful in the dark to identify enemies on the field. It's very useful during an indoor light-out game, or a night MilSim operation on an outdoor field.

You can already use the monocular by itself. Just pull it out of your bag, your pants pocket, or where ever you carry it. But getting it out slows you down. So the idea is to attach it to your gun. Your airsoft gun is always in your hand. Having the monocular on the airsoft gun gives you quick and easy access to survey the field in the dark.

I preferred coming up with a way to attach the monocular to the picatinny rail on the gun. But couldn't really find any parts that would help. So I settled with hockey tape (see photo below). Wrapping the hockey tape around the monocular and the M4 quad-rail supported its weight.

I was able to view the night vision scope my moving my paintball mask up to the eyepiece. The clear paintball pane provided just the right distance to get a clearview through the eye-piece. And it has just enough clearance to right, which allow me to fit my paintball facemask without the gun getting in the way. The photo below shows the monocular attached to my Shark Raptor from the top.

Cross Reference
The Shark Raptor is a custom airsoft gun I built in the "Build a Science Fiction Airsoft Gun" article.

The photo below shows the entire Shark Raptor and the monocular.

In practical use, I found the 5x magnification to be too much for an indoor CQB field. I was able to see things in the dark clearly. But the field-of-view (FOV) was too narrow for it to be much of use. It'd be more usable with less magnification or no magnification at all.

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