Mr. Rawles,
First let me say that I love the blog. Also, your book ("Patriots")
is my all time favorite fictional survival book. You will have to give
us an update on when the new edition with extra chapters is due out.
A little background on myself, for the past few years I have been flying
helicopters in support of a military survival school in the Northwest.
I average a handful of night flights each month and when we fly we
use current issue NVG’s.
We normally fly at 300 feet above the ground and have little to no
cultural lighting (city lights) as we
are over National Forest lands. For this reason I would consider the
amount of light we fly with to be similar to a TEOTWAWKI scenario
(no cultural lights.)
Now I would like to add some thoughts about the tritium sight
thread from Monday. The benefits associated with tritium sights
definitely outweigh any disadvantages. I consider your comments
on tritium sights to be correct for worst case. By that I mean you
would get the penlight
in the face effect (we call it "raccoon eyes") if you were operating
in an unlit building, in a cave, or possibly outside on a very overcast
and moonless night with no cultural background lights. Tritium sights
should not be overlooked when trying to decrease your tactical profile
but I personally would not excessively worry about them. Like yourself,
I would use a full flap holster and that would be the extent of my
mitigation. To give some perspective on light sources in a different
situation, I remember flying a couple weeks ago with a full moon and
having a hard time seeing an IR (infrared) strobe. And we had to request
the IR strobe after being unable to identify a group in which an individual
was swinging a chemical light stick attached to a 2 foot cord around
in a circle.
I would like to point out to your readers that wearing their
own set of NVGs would give them a much greater light profile (very
bright
raccoon eyes) than tritium sights would. NVGs are a huge force
multiplier and I don’t recommend going without them but when
they are used they should primarily be used to scan and only for a
short duration.
Two things that I would be more concerned about are fire and light
discipline. As far as fire goes, even a fire that has no visible flames
really pops out
when viewed on NVG’s. That is because the goggles sensitivity peaks near
the red/ IR spectrum of light. If you must have a fire, bury any left over
embers and move far away when you are done. Like I said, goggles really pick
up red and IR
lights. Brake lights can be seen for miles and those red filters used on flashlights
to read maps are almost just as bad. Get rid of the red filters and
carry a blue/green filter instead. The blue/ green filter allows you to maintain your
night vision while offering a slightly smaller light profile than the same
flashlight in plain white.
Regards, - The Northwest Helo Pilot
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