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Posted: 3/20/2024 3:08:52 PM EDT
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for $5200 at a supplier near one of my works stores I will be at next week. Not finding to much info on these here. Should I consider these? Or just get a PVS-14. I would rather buy once, cry once, but if these are not the greatest, then obviously have no problem going to the PVS-14. Here are the specs Elbit XLSH green phosphor tubes - I believe these are the lowest grade tubes Elbit makes. HALO: 0.95/0.7 FOM: 1638.4/1676.8 EBI: 2.08/1.33 Res: 64/64 SNR: 25.6/26.2  |
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They are the lowest grade (XLSH) and fairly low specs, but clean looking tubes and I love the MK2 housing. $5,200 for duels is pretty nice. Gen (3) tubes are amazing across the board in my opinion. I would pull the trigger on those over (1) 3-4k PVS14, personally. |
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Originally Posted By ThatGuy01: Why not these with a new housing? Sell the ANVIS housing and you can get a new (better) one for cheap and not have cheap Chinesium housings. https://atloppshop.com/products/gen-3-autogated-anvis-9 |
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I had the opportunity to briefly own (via a trade) and inspect a few 1431 MK2 housings. TLDR: I was not impressed. The housing material seemed to degrade when coming in contact with dielectric grease, as I swabbed out black gunk mixed with grease while cleaning a set. Or maybe there was just a ton of powderized plastic leftover from the manufacturing process. But the grease that should have been clear turned translucent black from housing material mixing with it. The plastic seemed brittle also and prone to cracking wherever there was a bolt holding something together, specifically the area where the battery housing is attached to the bridge assembly. Whoever built it could have damaged it potentially but I didn’t notice that any of the screws were over-torqued They also exhibited loss of purge when removing the battery cap, as seen here: https://youtube.com/shorts/4cc8v54uJcs?si=45aWA9jvAYlWPpDR Finally, what was most bothersome was how the power/gain switch was fitted to the bridge assembly. Basically there was a lack of internal support for the switch which led to it shifting around, and eventually having its pronged contacts pull loose from the PCB, which caused power issues. 5-7 out of 10 times, when pushing, you couldn’t turn the bino on or off. Mind you, this isn’t some super old surplus housing that had seen thousands of power cycles. It was a housing that was less than two years old and very seldom used. I do believe that they are constantly improving the housings, but what I saw was enough to completely turn me off to ever recommending them to anyone. It’s a cheap housing designed by people who really don’t understand night vision devices that well. But they stole all the ascetics and some of the functions of genuine L3 products/intelectual property. Some Chinese copies are impressive and work, while others fall painfully short. The 1431 is an example that goes into the later category in my opinion. But many vendors promoted them heavily due to the price and the profits they were able to make from selling them. I think these Argus devices did a huge disservice to the many consumers who bought them as well as to the people who invented the PVS31/A & 1531 and had their ideas stolen. The only people who benefited were the vendors who prioritized quantities of sales over providing customers with a quality product. The sad thing is that many people won’t use their equipment enough to find these issues right away, and I really cringe thinking about how many 1431 housings ended up with Filmless tubes in them and people trying to use them for anything more than hobby related tasks. I just can’t take them seriously. |
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Originally Posted By French1966: I had the opportunity to briefly own (via a trade) and inspect a few 1431 MK2 housings. TLDR: I was not impressed. The housing material seemed to degrade when coming in contact with dielectric grease, as I swabbed out black gunk mixed with grease while cleaning a set. Or maybe there was just a ton of powderized plastic leftover from the manufacturing process. But the grease that should have been clear turned translucent black from housing material mixing with it. The plastic seemed brittle also and prone to cracking wherever there was a bolt holding something together, specifically the area where the battery housing is attached to the bridge assembly. Whoever built it could have damaged it potentially but I didn’t notice that any of the screws were over-torqued They also exhibited loss of purge when removing the battery cap, as seen here: https://youtube.com/shorts/4cc8v54uJcs?si=45aWA9jvAYlWPpDR Finally, what was most bothersome was how the power/gain switch was fitted to the bridge assembly. Basically there was a lack of internal support for the switch which led to it shifting around, and eventually having its pronged contacts pull loose from the PCB, which caused power issues. 5-7 out of 10 times, when pushing, you couldn’t turn the bino on or off. Mind you, this isn’t some super old surplus housing that had seen thousands of power cycles. It was a housing that was less than two years old and very seldom used. I do believe that they are constantly improving the housings, but what I saw was enough to completely turn me off to ever recommending them to anyone. It’s a cheap housing designed by people who really don’t understand night vision devices that well. But they stole all the ascetics and some of the functions of genuine L3 products/intelectual property. Some Chinese copies are impressive and work, while others fall painfully short. The 1431 is an example that goes into the later category in my opinion. But many vendors promoted them heavily due to the price and the profits they were able to make from selling them. I think these Argus devices did a huge disservice to the many consumers who bought them as well as to the people who invented the PVS31/A & 1531 and had their ideas stolen. The only people who benefited were the vendors who prioritized quantities of sales over providing customers with a quality product. The sad thing is that many people won’t use their equipment enough to find these issues right away, and I really cringe thinking about how many 1431 housings ended up with Filmless tubes in them and people trying to use them for anything more than hobby related tasks. I just can’t take them seriously. #1 Thanks for posting this. As a vendor, I feel like we have to walk a fine line and not make too many statement regarding quality of competing products. The flip side to that is warning people about potential problems with something. These are widely pushed as being "from Canada", and we bought a dozen housings a year and a half back to test after falling for this "from Canada" thing. Receiving the equipment, the individual component boxes had this weird squiggly writing on them?? Damn, evidently "Canadian" writing looks a damn bit like those weird characters on the other side of the note inside my fortune cookie, how odd! Then we built a couple test units. Like you mentioned on the filmless, I felt like putting pearls on swine putting some M23H thin filmed 10160s in a couple of the housings. Literally said "sorry about this" to the tubes when installing them. The housings are promoted as taking 11769s also but the "conversion" looked a little wanky and as most tube manufacturers aren't too happy when you modify their tubes, I decided to try these with standard 10160 "no gain control" tubes. I didn't like the power switch set up- told the others here- if we sell these we are going to have to include a sheet on how to set this up right or we are going to get a ton of people thinking they aren't working. Customers aren't always familiar with every platform and often make assumptions and assume things aren't working when they are using them incorrectly. We noticed all the same things you noticed and the further we got into it, the more I looked at it as just a "test" situation and that we probably wouldn't sell them. The little BS screws were the final straw- extremely cheap screws. Anyone who has one of these should look at their screws and consider Loc tite. From the outside they may look fine, but they are extremely cheap screws IMO, at least the ones we were shipped were. I tested two sets a couple nights at our range. It's convenient having a private range just 5 minutes from the house  In usage they didn't impress me anymore than when being built and to be honest I remember thinking the whole bumpy ride down dirt roads to the range in my Ranger- "I hope these eff'in screws hold up!" We pulled the M23H tubes out of the two test sets and sold off all the housings and the two test housings to a small vendor up north. |
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Over 30 Years in business- Thank you for your business!
Quickest ways to contact us-
912.375.1480
[email protected]
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I went through 2 of the mk2 "Canada" housings and ended up selling the 3rd which did work, but I lost faith in the housing. 1. Power supply caused flickering, and other abnormalities. Replaced under warranty. 2. IR illuminator didn't turn on even though the red light came on. Replaced under warranty. When you are so close to a reputable housing, just save more and do that. I don't think the savings justify the risk. |
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Originally Posted By caduckgunner: Has anyone ever dealt with them? I emailed and asked if they knew what tubes were and in them and they said they had no idea. I can tell you they arent current production anvis if they are green tubes and he has no idea what contract they are. Check UNV as they also had surplus anvis rigs for a while. |
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