weapon attachments/ gear for night play

[T. Bologna]

thinking about getting in to some night time battles i would like to know what weapon attachments/ gear everyone runs for night time games? what are your must haves? why do you choose them? how useful do you find these items or more for show? what brands do you find to be a quality product etc.

so far I have a laser and a flash light for attachments, I wonder if they will cause more challenges for me than they are effective. example: my light being on to move and see gets me spotted and out before I spot my opponent.

thanks,

[Norseman]

Say there pilgrim! Yer just in luck! *PATING*

I got here....one of them here NEW fandangled kerosene lanterns! Beats the tarnations outta a candle that won’t stay lit!!! And it’s a lot LOT safer around the dynamite crates! Why one time I dropped mah candle right into one of them thar crates.....me and the mule almost didn’t make it out the mine before she blew sky high!! I thought I was gonna hafta kiss my a$$ goodbye! No pun intended!!! Heheheheee! (Blackjack don’t like it when I call her an a$$, so don’t tell her I said nuthin!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bj58Je ... ture=share

[Norseman]

My post above was meant as a joke....did not mean to scare you away.

I think the must have attachment for any night game is a tracer unit. And I like the old TM style that not only energize the B.B., but also gives off a muzzle flash.

And the key with weapons lights is to leave them off during the infil and Exfil of your ambush point. Or your target building. Use the light upon contact to see your targets and blind them as well. Or when breaching door. Use them with the element of surprise or at the point of contact.

Stream light makes good quality stuff and is much cheaper than sure fire.

[T. Bologna]

My post above was meant as a joke....did not mean to scare you away.

I think the must have attachment for any night game is a tracer unit. And I like the old TM style that not only energize the B.B., but also gives off a muzzle flash.

And the key with weapons lights is to leave them off during the infil and Exfil of your ambush point. Or your target building. Use the light upon contact to see your targets and blind them as well. Or when breaching door. Use them with the element of surprise or at the point of contact.

Stream light makes good quality stuff and is much cheaper than sure fire.

all good! I watched the video made me laugh, couldn't imagine playing by lantern. iv seen a few tracers out there, my knowledge on them is minimal reviews online are generally hit and miss. ill deff look into a TM style one any idea on how long something like that will last? like is there a shot count or just battery life?

as for a light do they make some that are more of a strobe status? is there limitations to brightness on the fields? i feel like the goal would be the bright flash like a camera to temporarily blind the opponent, I think my light is just a cheep Costco 200 lumen, unfortunately it does not have a pressure pad so its more of a on or off only.

[Norseman]

My TM tracer uses 4 AAA batteries. And it lasts a full night of use.

I’ve never seen a lumen limit. Never tried strobe.

I have this one.

https://www.streamlight.com/en/products ... me-spotter

Very happy with it.

[Dennis - Crossbow]

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Yep, expect nothing less from Norseman, the Cowbow Airsoft Guy!!! Operating at night can Suck and Be Fun at the same time, practice is key and always run with a Battle Buddy.

In all honestly it really depends on what type of night games you are thinking about. In all cases light discipline is Super Important. As you said, you are worried about giving away your position and the first way to do that is walking around with a weapon light or laser on. Tracers are also great, and cool at night, but they do give away your position so like a light or laser, a tracer must be used with caution.

If I had to choose:
First - get a good head light that you can wear on your head/helmet or around your neck, that also has a RED option. (I use a Petzl Tikka Plus 2)

Second - a good LED weapon light with a pressure switch, bright and with a strobe option. Use to clear dark areas and surprise / blind the enemy. Don't keep on all the time. ( I have a couple Olight M20S .. don't know if they are still available)

Third - Red laser, most fields don't allow green due to the brightness. Great for indoors /room clearing/ quick target acquisition.

Forth - Tracer, some event hosts are doing trace night games, this is actually pretty cool, as everyone is operating the same way. I don't have a opinion on a tracer.

Fifth - Make sure that laser is in a PEQ and it has a IR option to uses with your NGV, but that's for a different discussion.

I see you are in Beaverton so as we roll into summer there will be some local night games ... check out the airsoft team Phantom Fury at any event they are always happy to "Talk "Gear"

Be safe and hope to see you on the field!!!

[Steve]

+1 on both the tracer units and flashlights with tape switches. I have run the same 4 or so G&G rechargeable tracer units for the better part of a decade. HUTUs are awesome as well.

As to lights, everyone has their own opinion on what the best brightness is. For me, 65 lumens is comfortably bright enough to navigate at a run through fairly cluttered terrain. Anything over 200 lumens or so is bright enough to temporarily disorient an unsuspecting opponent in a dark environment. 800-1000 lumens is enough to disorient an unprepared opponent regardless of ambient lighting conditions, and significantly inconvenience even an opponent who is prepared. The flip side is that your light will reflect off of things and bounce back to inconvenience you.

Rhodopsin (visual purple) is the light-sensitive receptor protein that the human eye produces. It's the human biological version of a Night Observation Device, amplifying small amounts of light so you can see. It is remarkably sensitive to light, and takes about 30 minutes or so to come back fully after getting exposed to a light source. So, when you hit the button on your 1000-lumen strobing weapon light, anybody downrange is going to lose their night acclimatization. Also, everyone around you is going to lose their night acclimatization. Also, everyone within forever is going to know that there is a stupidly bright light source in the direction of all the swearing.

Common courtesy is to not silhouette friendlies with a light source. If where you are staring is 12 o'clock, and there is a friendly located anywhere between 10 and 2, don't turn your light on. It backlights them, and it's a tool move.

That being said, I really like carrying three or so spare 200-lumen LED lights. I can turn them on, point them at where I expect the bad guys are likely to show up, and then move back and left or right of the light. Best case, the bad guys find somewhere else to be because bright light is irritating and stuff. Worst case, the bad guys spend time shooting at the area around the light trying to hit whoever is holding it, and I get to shoot at them. Also, it's remarkably satisfying to watch a group of grownups execute an assault... on a flashlight sitting on a table, pointed at a window across the room.

As to the laser thing, I prefer green lasers myself. I have no idea where the total stupidity regarding green lasers as intrinsically unsafe came from. The FDA determined that 5mW is the eye-safe limit for lasers. Not red lasers, or green lasers, or blue lasers, or IR lasers. Just, lasers. Because their research suggests that 5mW is 10% of the output threshold where damage is likely to happen (50mW). That damage, by the way, is temporary loss of visual acuity just like the spots you see after looking at a camera flash. The permanent damage range is a good bit higher than that. The human eye is much more sensitive to colors in the 550nm portion of the spectrum (green-yellow) than the 650nm band (red). The number I recall being kicked around is that for the same power output, the human eye picks up a green laser about 4x as well as a red laser. So, a red laser that "appeared" as bright as a standard <5mW green laser would need to be ~20mW.

My true guess is that it comes down to cost and ignorance. Back in the day, green lasers were stupidly expensive because there was no common excitation medium that would produce a green LED. To get there, a 808nm IR laser diode would have the output dumped through a frequency-doubling filter. And as you put more effort into something, the costs go up. Since the cost difference between a legitimate green laser with a tape switch from a reputable company and the first couple years of production of the chinese knockoff houses was pretty small, the only green lasers that tended to show up on the fields were real-steel units. And if it's made by Surefire, it's gotta be dangerous, right?

The initial runs of blue lasers were the same way, both in the frequency filter requirements and the cost. Amazingly, single-stage blue laser diodes have been around since 2010 or so. They don't show up on the tactical market very often because they are just as visually muddy as red lasers. So when you do find them, they are around 3x the cost of a comparable red laser. Around the same time, single-stage green diodes hit the market. The better manufacturers (Streamlight, Surefire, Insight Technologies, etc.) have mainly switched to these. The cheap imported junk lasers still run an IR beam through a plastic filter. The single-stage diodes are still new(ish) enough and their exitation media is more expensive than the GaAlAs used in IR diodes that they are more expensive. The single-stage units are a ton more power-efficient than the frequency-doubled units (but less efficient than red laser diodes).

[Rentax]

I agree with a lot of what Steve and Crossbow pointed out.
But some of the stuff also comes down to personal preference.
For me I wouldn't use most of this stuff.
Tracer units are very cool. I like the look and the ambiance they give an event, but to be honest as cool as it is to see where your BB's are going it's much more likely that the enemy is seeing where your BB's are coming from and can very easily pinpoint your location. I know shoot and move and all that, but shooting and moving without a trail to give away any position is better still.
As far as flashlights goes, Steve brings up a lot of good points. LIGHT KILLS NIGHT VISION. The more you powerful the light the more time it's going to take for your own eyes to adjust, this means the more you use it the more you HAVE to use it. My team has heard me talk about this a lot, weapon mounted lights are only distractionary devices. They can be used to distract and blind and annoy the enemy. But they loose a majority of their utilitarian purpose. Like Steve and Crossbow said if you have a flashlight that's not weapon mounted, you can set it down to provide light somewhere you can point it at someone who needs light on their body or equipment, you can use it to look at a map, you can even use it to blind enemies as you breach a room, it's got a million purposes, and very few down sides. Where as weapons mounted light is on the mean end of a gun, you shouldn't be pointing that at anything but your target, and if your not pointing it at your target then you are silhouetting yourself.
Lasers are another story. While what Steve is saying is correct a lot of hosts still won't let players used them at night, and really if you think about it you don't NEED one at night. A laser's main function is to let you know where your ammo is going. with a real gun it can be a pretty accurate device. But with airsoft, wind factors, BB consistency, hop-up consistency, our "where our ammo is gonna hit" is a much larger range. So effectiveness of lasers in general with airsoft is in question. But past that point, a laser is only useful if you can see what it is aiming at. And in the dark you can't see what your laser is hitting without aid of another light, so in essence it's not really helping you. Then becomes if you shine it in someone's eyes it can injure them, I don't necessarily agree with this part, but it's still not pleasant to be in the dark and have a laser shined directly into your eyes, (it falls into that "Don't be a tool" rule for me) It's not helping the shooter, and it's easy for players to get a laser shined in their eyes and get upset, so it's easiest to just say, No lasers in the dark. Some hosts say no green or blue, some say none, some say who cares.
Like I said I don't see a point to them in the dark unless your using UV and NVG's.
That brings us to NVG's and like Crossbow said, that's a much bigger conversation.

[Norseman]

If your hosting a night game? If one guy is running a tracer unit? Then everyone needs to be running one. It’s simply unfair unless it’s a level playing field. I see now where Josh with Milsim West is issuing red and green tracers to opposing sides. That’s how it should be done. There is no question in real life where your position is and whose side you are on when you open up with a belt or mag staggered with tracer rounds.

There is a pro to seeing your rounds at night as well for our military. SL’s and PL’s can walk their soldiers fire onto a target by following the tracers of their own weapon. Or the SAW gunners.

[Steve]

Quick clarification: For me, the primary use of a laser is to either tell my team where something is (hey guys, let’s all shoot at the area I’m circling with my green laser!!) or In an urban environment, to make an opening less inviting for the bad guys. If there are two windows an awkward distance apart, I can run the laser into one and basically ignore it while focusing my attention and on the other window. Generally speaking, when someone encounters the business end of a laser, they assume that I’m paying attention to it. So they’ll either find another way, like showing up in the window I’m watching, or they’ll do a quick pop out and shoot. Chances are, their initial burst will suck out loud accuracy-wise. But it will let me know that I need to pay attention to the laser. Generally, it’s a communication tool not an aiming device for me.

[Rentax]

If your hosting a night game? If one guy is running a tracer unit? Then everyone needs to be running one. It’s simply unfair unless it’s a level playing field. I see now where Josh with Milsim West is issuing red and green tracers to opposing sides. That’s how it should be done. There is no question in real life where your position is and whose side you are on when you open up with a belt or mag staggered with tracer rounds.

We weren't talking about host required tracer units, we were talking about a sole person asking about weapons attachments he should consider. I agree with you that it's unfair unless everyone has one, but at MOST night games everyone does not have one.

Quick clarification: For me, the primary use of a laser is to either tell my team where something is (hey guys, let’s all shoot at the area I’m circling with my green laser!!) or In an urban environment, to make an opening less inviting for the bad guys. If there are two windows an awkward distance apart, I can run the laser into one and basically ignore it while focusing my attention and on the other window. Generally speaking, when someone encounters the business end of a laser, they assume that I’m paying attention to it. So they’ll either find another way, like showing up in the window I’m watching, or they’ll do a quick pop out and shoot. Chances are, their initial burst will suck out loud accuracy-wise. But it will let me know that I need to pay attention to the laser. Generally, it’s a communication tool not an aiming device for me.

That's a fair point Steve, lasers can be a great tool. It sounds like your's is not a weapons mounted laser, but a hand held, so you can aim IT at one place and your WEAPON at another?

[Steve]

Mine are weapon-mounted. But it is pretty fast to snap the AEG into the pocket of my shoulder to engage the target I’m looking at. Like, if the laser is pointing at a target at 2 o’clock and I’m watching a different area at 10 o’clock, it’s just a matter of pivoting the body while keeping my head focused on the target.

[T. Bologna]

Thank you for the input everyone! it sounds like it comes down to a lot of practice and strategy on how you use the attachment's. I normally use my laser for more of a pointer pen to show my team where opponents are or another way to communicate with my team.

I have been looking at some weapon mounted lights I think I would like one and be able to use if fairly well but the price on some of them is up there! are they worth the money? what are lumen preferences?

a head lamp or body lamp for the quick spot check or looking at a map, docs, etc. does not sound like too bad an idea. I normally play in the woods with a fair amount of debris on the ground. I don't think I would need anything too bright for this, but it would still light up my position in the dark, is there any colors that may help me see what I need but would not emit light as far to give away position?

I like the idea of a tracer. iv seen some videos online and it looks pretty cool when the bbs light up the sky. but it sounds like it would be more of fun item than necessary?

[T. Bologna]

Thank you for the input everyone! it sounds like it comes down to a lot of practice and strategy on how you use the attachment's. I normally use my laser for more of a pointer pen to show my team where opponents are or another way to communicate with my team.

I have been looking at some weapon mounted lights I think I would like one and be able to use if fairly well but the price on some of them is up there! are they worth the money? what are lumen preferences?

a head lamp or body lamp for the quick spot check or looking at a map, docs, etc. does not sound like too bad an idea. I normally play in the woods with a fair amount of debris on the ground. I don't think I would need anything too bright for this, but it would still light up my position in the dark, is there any colors that may help me see what I need but would not emit light as far to give away position?

I like the idea of a tracer. iv seen some videos online and it looks pretty cool when the bbs light up the sky. but it sounds like it would be more of fun item than necessary?

[Dennis - Crossbow]

Discussions are GREAT
Thanks for all the participation!