I want to put a NV scope on an air rifle for shooting mice & rats indoors at close range, like no more than 30 feet.   There are a few videos of people doing it in the UK, but the scopes they mention using on YT (like HIKMICRO) are not available here.    Most all the NV scopes I see do not specify a focus range.   I'm also looking for something inexpensive; I don't need high quality to shoot a mouse across the room.   I already have high quality NV & thermal scopes, but they don't focus down anywhere near that far.
Any suggestions?

Tlr vir 2 and a goggle.

You could look into the cheaper clip on devices, like the One Leaf NV100 or PARD. I can see at short distances with the NV100 mounted on 2-10x rifle scope.

A used SiOnyx would work here. Even the old cheap one is “ok” with some IR or basic ambient light.

This is probably the only time I'd recommend a Sionyx over NV. IMHO I'd strongly suggest not mounting a PVS14 to an air rifle due to the recoil impulse. Doing so would more then likely result in damage to the intensifier tube in a relatively short time.

It appears that the first suggestion is a light  and the second one is a camera.   What I want is just what this guy is doing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWbAJ2ZQOs



His scope is a HIKMICRO ALPEX A50T but apparently it's only available in UK.    It seems surely USA must have something like that.   I watched another YT video of shooting rats, but that was in UK, too.   Perhaps that's the only "hunting" they're still allowed to do.

At 10m, you want something that won't have a lot of parallax, or you will have trouble with vertical estimates. Ideally a very low scope.

I don't know what your price range is, but the HT-C8 or RX-108 is suitable for air rifles and rimfires and maybe smaller caliber centifires. It's supposed to be good to 800Gs but my estimate is it probably doesn't go much above 200Gs safely, and has a 10m parallax setting. Focus is down to about 60cm, so 10m is fine. Focus at 60cm is good enough I use it for PCB repairs. It's possible to set multiple parallax adjustments, but honestly, I'd suggest just adjusting by eye, and only selecting the range once before the night's shooting begins.

I had a look at one here: https://www.ar15.com/forums/Armory/Thermal-riflescopes-HT-C8-dropped-below-AUD-1000-Approx-USD-650-What-does-the-forum-already-know-/68-552406/

It's a thermal, but it's in the same price range of cheaper camera-based NV devices. Quality is OK, but you get what you pay for. No exceptions with this device.

But hey, at 2 feet min focus, I think you're set... I can't think of many other thermal or even camera scopes that focus in this close, and you won't have the parallax issues with modifying a dayscope that doesn't come in to 10m either.


Big mouses... Range approx 100m, so at 10m, I would expect maybe the mouse will be around 1/3 the size of the horses pictured.

I looked it up from the earlier thread.   Currently $800 for 25mm lens (min focus 0.3m), $850 for 35mm lens (OOS) (min focus 3m), $1200 for 54mm lens (min focus 1.5m), and $1600 for 75mm lens (min focus 5m).   CLAIMED minimum focus; Chinese are notorious liars on specs for most anything.   I gather it's a "buy direct from China" deal, so the purchase would likely be risky and little recourse if it turns out to suck.  You said documentation was pretty much nil with it.  A cheap thermal would be ideal, although I'm still hoping for something exactly like the UK guy in the video above.
HT-C8 Thermal Imaging rifle scope
The HT-C8 is listed on Amazon, but no longer carried.

Here's a $600 one from Amazon that sounds similar to the HT-C8, but the reviews are horrible:



I could put whatever scope I get onto either an air rifle or something like a 10/22 shooting rat shot.  I don't know how well rat shot cycles in a semi-auto; all my current rat shot use is with a revolver.

I also found these as the closest USA thing I could find that's similar to the UK guy's setup (I really liked his rifle, too):

NIGHT OWL SCOPE, claimed minimum focus 3m:



NIGHT OWL ILLUMINATOR:



The Night Owl products have 4 stars, and they are Prime, so I can just send them back if they suck.

There's also a REALLY hokey setup that might work, and not much financial risk.  The existing scope on my air rifle will focus down to less than 10 feet.

The minimum focus on the 35mm I got was 2 feet. Honestly, that's probably the most *useful* thing about it, because it means I can get good resolution down to small tracks when faultfinding old 80s electronics and it does have a very sharp focus at that range - though the focus is quite sensitive, and you do need to focus for the intended distance anywhere below 100m. The focus on this model is probably the best I've seen yet on a cheap thermal scope, and my wife said she felt it was sharper than my Dahua 640x480, which easily outperforms the HT-C8 in the field. Anyway, I got mine from Aliexpress... It was a big purchase for me, and I was worried until it arrived - They also have an option to pay after it arrives now.

The rest is OK - not even good, just functional. The biggest reason for downgrading it's shock resistance is the front lens is held on by 2 x M2 screws. Assuming they are half-decent, that translates to around 200Gs shock, which covers air rifles and rimfires. It might just handle an AR15, but not reliably IMO. It isn't going to handle a 30anything. Including blackouts.

The bad reviews are because neither person could zero it - I'm not surprised. The UI sucks... it's functional, but aside from changing color and contrast ( which it does really well ) I would leave the UI alone entirely except for zeroing in the first place, or adjusting the selected parallax before heading out. I wouldn't want to play with it in the field. But once set, well, it's not much worse than any other fixed zero riflescope and you can work out what the different reticles do it you want - eg, the round reticle is about 5" at 75 yds.

To zero, you work out what the coordinates are at the range for which you are zeroing, then you take your shots, ideally on grid paper, then this tells you where to move the zero. X and Y coordinates have different sizes just to make it more difficult and are due to the screen resolution I think.

it's 30 Hz. Biggest downside is you can't predict when it will NUC. Should be OK for mice @10yds though. It has no problem spotting canaries at that range. NUC is around every 5-10 seconds at first, but drops back to around 30 to 60 seconds in the field after it reaches equilibreum. I thought the NUC would throw me off, but I seem to adapt to it just fine, like I do with anything unexpected near the target.  

I can assist with instructions. I downloaded a good set, and what isn't stated is intuitive enough. The only thing I couldn't figure out was the enhancement modes... The chinese specs are all a bit weird and they make stuff like the zoom up - it can't go to 16x for example. I originally bought it thinking to get rid of it if it was junk, but it turns out the sharp up-close focus made it my new favourite tool. I have a Gen3 PVS-4 for my rifle, so I'll probably mount this for my air rifle... Should be good for small pests.

The poor design makes this scope a bad choice generally, but the cheap price and close focus make it good for air rifles and circuit repair, so I'm pretty happy with it. I got my money's worth - I paid around USD$600 for mine - the price has edged up slightly. The 35mm is the best value of the 4.


I don't know much about the night owl - it looks like it might be suitable for air rifles, but given the side focus, often they don't come in closer than 40 yds, but Amazon says 3m which seems reasonable.

What is NUC?

I own an Arken Zulus and a Sightmark Wraith 4K mini and both will focus on a light switch across my room that is about 10ft away, and even closer than that.   If you will be using it with an illuminator and don't care about a bunch of extra features, I have seen people selling the Wraith 4K Mini on Facebook for $300 recently.

The Zulus may have too much base magnification for you.

At the cheaper end, there's always something like this;

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005007265092155.html

It's cheap enough that if it doesn't work, you can throw it at the mice instead :)

NUC = Non-Uniformity-Correction... Sometimes colloquially called a thermal recalibration.

It's when the shutter goes over the image and you lose video for about a second while it freezes... Usually with an audible click.

Does the OP own a PVS14? If so, why not mount it behind a RD or mount it to a LPVO via a monoloc.

The recoil impulse of the air rifle is not going to harm the 14's tube.

AGM Rattler V2 19-256 Thermal is pretty slick for the price with adjustable objective to get you nice and close. $800ish at retail

Depends on the air rifle. Spring air rifles beat scopes to death.

I'm not gonna recommend it, but I'm going to acknowledge that $250 thermal on a pellet gun is demonstrated here:
UK dude with a iPhone thermal
(I've got one of these iPhone thermals, it's actually very nice, but kludgey as heck on a gun.)

Sightmark wraiths work... lots of them around. Sub$400 for digital NV.

I ended up ordering a Wraith Mini while it's still on sale
PSA Wraith Mini
$430 -  dealer price at a distributor is $650!    Most places are selling them for $700-800
I couldn't pass it up.  
Closest USA equivalent to what UK guy is using may be the Night Owl.


I was about to buy one, but then the Amazon price jumped from $295 to $341 overnight, so I lost interest.