Hello from the Florida Space Coast USA

[Cannon3440]

Howdy,

Just getting back into NVD's. I'm a semi retired military flight simulation engineer with about 30 years of that in my past. In fact, the last contract was delivering 8 each F/A-18C simulators to the US Navy.

I've always loved NVD's, I got second place in my Jr High School science fair building from scratch a Gen 0 NVD using a old RCA 1632 image intensifier tube (IIT) that I built a housing out of PVC pipe, a binocular rear ocular/lens and a Pentax screw mount front plate. The unit was powered by a color TV chassis that provided ~20,000 volt plus voltage to the unit using a HV cable. That was back then.

In 1996 I purchased a NVPVS-10 NVD from NAIT. It was my first Gen III unit. Since then, the housing has fallen apart and become un-serviceable due to the material used in manufacture. So, I did some research over the last month and would up buying a high quality Carson PVS-14 housing kit from Kosher Surplus and then transferring that old tube to the new PVS-14 housing. The IIT is an older Omni I tube, but is still working perfectly. Not to mention the optics on the Carson kit are top-of-the-line and greatly improved the image quality over the original NAIT NVPVS-10 housing.

I'm here to learn all about the latest technology, auto-gated, filmless, et. all. Man have things changed over the years! So now I'm a fellow NVD addict one again. I love to research and always looking for data on anything I do. Now that I'm older and a semi retired OCD engineering SOB, I hope to be able learn and also to share my ride down the NVD obsession.

Cheers everyone.

---

[blueeyes]

Welcome to the forum sounds like you will be a valuable asset to the forum

[DaveP3@]

Welcome Cannon,

Good to see you here although as the poor relatives we don't have access to the good stuff available on your side of the pond

Regards,

Dave.

[pitchblack]

Hello and welcome,

your story from school reads kinda like "Mc Gyver" ! - fantastic! I think you are right in this forum... alotta freaks here!
Gen3 NV is a dream of many... I think most of the ppl in Europe will only have the chance to try a Gen2+ ....kinda "poor mans Gen3" !
With digital NV devices and thermals it is also a change every year... new detectors and CMOS chips allmost every day... one can not read fast enough and a new chip is out... waiting for big and little "Mc Gyvers" to experiment with... if one can afford those...