[BenG]

Alrighty Ive got my NOD how do I mount it?

part 1 arms and weopon mounts
part 2 dovetail vs rhino
part 3 monocular vs goggle
part 4 counter weights
part 5 aiming
part 6 eye pro

part 1

There are several different arms available to hang your NV from your face and just as many to stick them behind your favorite optics. The most common mount is the USGI rhino arm from Norotos, its what I use, its cheap and gets the job done but the fine points of ajustment are for lack of a better word crude and if you happen to have a head shape that doesnt work with them it sucks to suck. Wilcox and norotos both make many excellent arms, the Norotos INVG mount is the best for monoculars and has many different low profile stow modes. Wilcox makes the LG-34 mount which is arguable the best mount of all. it has good ajustment and locks into place and has a low profile stowing position. Both the LG-34 and INVG can be had for about 600$ so they are not cheap investments. Things to look for in an arm: low profile stowing, firm ajustment, preferably with locking, and good QC that fits into your shroud perfectly. Ill be honest and say I dont know that much about weapon mounting however if I were to go that route I think aimpoint makes one that fits to the front of monoculars so you can leave your J-arm attached and quickly go from weapon to head mount.

part 2

Rhino or the horn mount is the standard and cheapest style of mount, its main drawback is its bulkyness and often poor fit, rhino style mounts like to wobble alot. Dovetail is much much lower profile, doesnt wobble as much and fits into the higher end arms like the INVG and LG-34. Im not going to cover anvis mounts as if your buying anvis you hopefully know what your getting into.

part 3

Monoculars and much more versatile then goggles and allow you to differentiate between visible and IR light. Goggles either bino or cyclopes style give more imersive experiances and esspecially with binos more depth preception and field of view. Personally, when I use a monocular and have it over my non dominant eye I feel sick, and my team mate feels sick after using his on either eye for a long period of time, however many many people do not have problems with them. Monoculars require the use of a J-arm either in horn or dove style to properly cant the monocular left or right to your eye. Goggles just have either a horn or a dovetail mounted in the center of them.

part 4

You will HATE your NV unless you have a counter weight. pouches are cheap I think i paid like 9$ for mine, and you can use pretty much anything to balance out the weight of your NOD, I use batteries or steel bars, but Ive had friends stick a can of beer in their pouch, and another team mate robbed the spare wheel lock nuts off his buddies truck for the duration of the night, even a big stick would work if your in a bind.

part 5

Aiming with gen 2 night vision requires the use of a laser, class 1 IR is the best because gen 1 cant pick up class 1 and with IR your opponents without NV wont be able to see it, further more class 1 laser are required for saftey to be used with NV as the IR beam wont trigger a blink reflex, (thundercactus is capable of modding G&P dbals to have the same output as a class 1 laser if your in a bind for one although his modded units are not accepted at all games), further more if you use anything more powerful then a class 1 laser the splash from the beam will trigger your ABC and/or auto gate depending on how close you are reducing how much you can see., which means that its in everyones best interest if you use a class 1 laser. Some high end optics have NV modes which allow you to use them to aim with your NV just like you would during the day and I reqomend these over lasers as they dont give your position away to other NV users.

part 6

Ill start this by saying your NV is NOT a substitute for proper eye pro and you MUST wear eye pro in conjunction with your NOD. As a general rule the closer you can get the NVD to your eye the better, even PVS-14s suffer when they are not super close to your eye, it is possible to use full seal glasses, paintball masks, etc but the amount of the NODs image you can make use of will suffer. Smith Optics AEGIS glasses work well with NODs, so do Oakley tombstones and M-frames