Night Vision scopes during daytime?

Too much light! They concentrate light and it would hurt (!) your eye if you looked through them. Put a regular scope on instead.

GeorgeK said:

If you have a night vision scope on a rifle, would you have to remove it for use during daylight? I assume they use batteries? I also assume that dropping the weapon might break the scope or at least knock it out of alignment? (Characters are modern US with access to a military armory)

Click to expand...

To answer your questions. Yes. Yes. Yes and Yes.

Hey, GeorgeK -

If it's a light-intensifier type scope (most are), you could only use it during the day with a very dark filter. Some of the older scopes had pinhole lens covers for use during daylight, but as I recall the image resolution wasn't great and the field of view was much narrower than you could get at night.

A thermal or IR sight (two different things) should work equally well day or night, but those are not common on rifles; thermal sights are large and heavy because they require cooling systems to work, and the IR devices I've seen have had a pretty short range. You could mount a thermal sight on a tripod-mounted machine gun if it's going to be in one place for a while, but I wouldn't want to hump one around with my rifle.

Thermal sights are usually hooked up to a vehicle or other power source, but some can run on batteries. The others all use batteries.

If you are in the U.S. Army and you drop your weapon, you'll need to drop with it and do push-ups. If you drop it with optics mounted, you'll want to re-zero at your next opportunity. If you drop it with a night scope on it, you might be writing Uncle Sam a fat check to buy a new night scope--it costs more than the rifle.

Dropping your weapon is not good. Don't do it.

Hope it helps.
HN

This is a good one, at least for the civilian market,

http://www.opticsplanet.net/eotech-4-5x-night-vision-weapon-sight-with-auto-brightness-m957.html

Here is a night vision scope:
http://www.visualintel.net/Army/People/Army-Sniper/7672930_6RNwo/2/495417276_kxytT

Here is an Infrared Scope:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/M1_z_celownikiem_noktowizyjnym.jpg

Here is a smaller Thermal Scope:
http://www.turkiyegazetesi.com.tr/images/news/396728_2.gif

These are just rough guidelines, the optics for each come in smaller or larger sizes but that should give you a basic idea of what you are working with. A thermal scope may be something to look into; however, they are extremely expensive and would be very hard to get a hold of for a civilian. Here is an example of a very small (comparatively) thermal scope:
http://www.imaging1.com/images/1_digital_thermal scope DHS over NY.gif