Thermal..... Again!

[6x47 lapua]

hi there handyman it comes complete with a flip up lense cover on

Cheers Stu

[Handyandy]

Cheers Stu, that'll save me a few quid

[Fox Hunter]

Just paid for my HD38S........... TJ's took delivery on Monday.

Looking forward to that..... soon be up and running.

Fizz

Has Santa in the red van been?

I guess he's out using it

I missed this but I hope you are right ....

[fizzbangwhallop]

Hello, hello, hello,

Apologies... been a bit busy busy..... and consequently knackered!

Well, it did arrive on Tuesday and I popped over to Royston to collect it at 7 and we did a quick comparison with it and a 14 and I also took the Photon/doubler so the guy could have a lookee through that.

First impressions......
Smaller and handier than I thought it was going to be. Sits nicely in the hand.... wrapping mine around it covers a side and front and back if that makes sense;
I like the casing...much like the Photon - tactile rubberised plastic with rubber inserts.
The buttons on top could be a touch (Geddit?) more prominent to make life easier with gloves on;
The brightness/contrast/menu/option selector wheel sits in the right place on the front... can be worked one-handed right or left;
Batteries in easily but having swapped the duracells I initially put in out tonight they're a bit difficult to extract. Nothing to get a grip on or your nails into to flick them out. A bit of care needed on inserting them the right way round, held in by either a spring or a sprung plate and these switch ends.... ie they're mixed pos/neg;
Front cap is positive and gives good protection to the lens, focus is smooth;
Start-up is around 12 seconds odd.

Accessories : Padded bag with pouch for accessories/spars etc; 4 Ansmann 2700mAh batteries and charger; spare battery holder; vid out lead; 12v car cig plug lead (doesn't recharge any internal batteries - switches that circuit off).

When I collected it there were about 40/50 fallow below the farmhouse and it picked up on those easily.....
Got home a bit late to go out and had a look around so indoors....
- it picks up the uninsulated CH pipe runs under the carpet and any power adaptor sockets;-
- pointing at the telly it picked up my face's reflected heat signature and the light bulb beside me it picked up the ceiling lights reflected off a shiny ornament...... almost as an infra red camera might. This was on the "Identify" setting.
- Handprints on a wall, my bike screen etc to varying extents.

Took it up the road to the hill last night for a quick play.... looking down on a couple of square miles of fields....and way out across the Bedfordshire plain to the north east (Next hill is siberia)
- 4 mountain bikers came past me and went off down the hill and I could see them as they passed various gaps in the hedge way out to where it takes me more than 10 minutes of walking to get there; Not bad, not bad.
- I could see 4 rabbits in the stubble to my left... more obvious when they moved or hopped around.
- Fiddling with the contrast/brightness I did pick up on what was most likely to be rabbits or even hares at the far end of the stubble... probably 450m odd (I'll take the RF binos and ping that sometime) but it struggled - the contrast was on it's darkest setting.
- As I only glanced through the instruction book..... (I'm a bloke, it can't be that hard to fathom it out!)..... getting the right number of pushes/hold/pause to get between settings functions is a bit hit and miss for me at the moment for example switching between white and black hot and between zoom(Good!)/no zoom on the one push button. (Think I need to read the book of wisdom again)

I've got the unit on auto-calibration and it's definitely weird if you're panning and it suddenly freezes to calibrate....but you can hear the shutter working. Bit like having vertigo

So, there's still a lot to learn and as others have found it'll probably end up best just left on the standard settings.

The only thing on which I'd like to hear from anyone else with one of these or one of the originals is about the display................
This gives an almost gauzy view as if you were looking though a linen type thin curtain...... difficult to describe.... almost like the image on the turin shroud.
Sticking HD38S into YT brings up various quality vids.... some are grainy, some seem to be very good, but that could be down to the quality of the recorder.
Unfortunately I don't have a DVR to plug into it although I could plug it into a screen and see what happens.

's me

Fizz

[Fox Hunter]

Nice write up Fizz, I felt like I was there with you pressing the buttons

As for recording quality I doubt its not only down to the recorder but you'll be surprised how much better it is on some nights over others.
When you speak about the screen do you mean vertical lines? I'm sure I've read of someone else saying about those but said you just get used to them. That was partly the reason I went for the guide because the screen was supposed to be higher resolution but in reality I still don't think it's good enough or at least could be better. Try a separate screen, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Be good to see some literally slapped up footage (like mine ) to compare but it sounds like its ticking all the boxes for you from day one so it's gotta be good. Keep us updated on your initial findings to see if anything changes over time. The biggest thing that's changed with me is I now WANT a thermal rifle scope because I keep spotting with the thermal but can't see it to shoot with the Nv after its amazing how clear the foxes look through the thermal yet you switch over to Nv and they are walking a gutter or something partly covered by fern or rushes and extremely difficult to initially see with the Nv..

[Rickfitz]

it makes me wont mine even more now

[Fox Hunter]

Here's something while your waiting Rick.....

I've been after a vixen which has had several lucky escapes for over a week. First I missed it with the nv add on (turns out my tika .204 is choked right up). Second time spotted it with the thermal but couldn't take a shot with the dedicated as it was too far. Tried a call but it wasn't interested and just slipped off into woodland. Third time I spotted it with the thermal so tried the add on again but it took off as soon as I switched the IR on. Fourth time lamped it but a bit far off so tried to get closer but got beaten by the mist. Night before last I went out and just lay on a vantage point with the thermal to try and establish it's exact approach route. The fecking thing walks down a road within 100yrds of me but I can't take a shot because there's a bank in the way. It then scents me and fecks off behind a load of trees .
I'd set a trail cam out all week with no joy whatsoever. The only thing to visit it was a buzzard so I wasn't going to sit at that point all night. This is one boring video so once the fox goes into the trees after the start of the vid skip to just after half way and it'll emerge the other side as even though I knew where it 'should' emerge it's just me constantly scanning the tree line in case it comes out else where.
It's another one on my infamous poor quality vids but since I knew this fox inside out I thought I'd film the hunt especially when you get the feeling of 'at last outwitted' I thought I'd share it. I don't know what youtube does to the vids but it was better on my laptop before I posted it, honest It's also jumpy on youtube, not just my filming but the fox walking, I'd turned the frames per second back to 15 because youtube 'blurred' sections of another vid at a higher FPS but this vid looked ok played straight off without YT.
If you look at the tree on it's own at the top of the pic at the start, that's where my trail cam is along with the fox. The tree is 492yrds away. This was the first night for the fox to go to the bait yet it was passing through the field every night. Notice how weary it is around the camera diving in and out of the cover. It's a totally covert jobbie but whether it was the initial trigger mechanism frightening her I don't know but it wasn't even interested in a michelin star meal. I haven't bothered getting the camera yet as there's not a lot else to see I don't think. Once she comes out of the wood and down into the clear she spends a bit of time about a gutter that's about 220yrds. I thought about the shot there but then thought about making sure I had it on camera and luckily realised it wasn't. When she eventually comes to the end she's precisely 132 metres/ 144 yrds with the tree behind being 174 yrds away. Didn't feel it was worthy of the gallery section so slapped it on here in case anyone was actually bored enough to sit through it...

http://youtu.be/yHPwG6W2auk


Here's the victory pic....

It looks like a Texas Hog

[Rickfitz]

Well done, its always nice to see what others are upto & how the equipment works, Ive got one like that that I've seen quite a few times but always got the wrong rifle in my hand, it doesn't help that a friend of mine has had a pop at it & missed, i'll get it in the end I'm sure everybody on here can tell a similar story,

hopefully only just over another week to wait now,
I think my iscope mount is coming via pony still not here
i did have a new toy arrive last week that worth every expensive penny, Bog-Pod Tri shooting sticks, excellent piece of kit

[fizzbangwhallop]

Softly softly catchee monkey.


Nice one James!


Cheers

Fizz

[Fox Hunter]

Cheers chaps

Yea, patience is a virtue. It's always nice when it pays off in the end. I'm an expert on the tricky ones













...just don't tell anyone that I'm the one who educated it in the first place