#265 Night Vision Goggles - First Hate It, Then Love It

We've had a request from one of our viewers to talk a little bit about night vision goggles. And I'm going to share my experience with those with you. And I can't help but think I look like a freaking boob. Not making fun of anybody else. I'm making fun of myself. That's just silly. So, day 265, coffee with Kenny. Thanks for coming back. And I first want to say, before I show you the video, night vision goggles are the freaking coolest. And when the Czech airman came in to train us for night vision goggles, he said, at first you're going to hate them and then you're going to love them and you're not going to want to fly without them. So this is a video I did clear back in, like, 2011, and I just want to share it with you. This is me at work putting together the night vision goggles for a shift, working nights. And I'll tack the video on at the end so you can actually hear what I'm saying in the video. I just kind of want to talk you through a little bit. The night vision goggles were so cool. And the Czech airman was completely right when he first told us, you know, we're here to train you on the night vision goggles. And of course, there is a. There's a course of training that you have to go through before you're going to go out and start actually using the night vision goggles. So they have a set amount of ground hours that you have to go through, and then you go out and you fly with a Czech airman. And there's a certain amount of training that you have to do when you first get in the aircraft before they're going to release you for the night vision goggles. And in the beginning, sure, they feel cumbersome and you get in the aircraft and you're knocking them on the side of the aircraft fuselage. And it is so fricking awkward when you first get started. But I will tell you, once you get used to it, the difference is absolutely amazing. And at the end of this video, you'll see a comparison where I just put a small camera, that little tiny one I started with all those years ago, I put it up behind the goggles so you can actually see what it looks like with goggles on. And then I pull the goggle out so you'll see firsthand where it goes from what you can see with goggles on and what you see with without the goggles. And it's truly Amazing. It just really is. So my experience with the night vision goggles was awesome. And now to this day, I really don't like flying at night without them, you know, because that was the EMS environment. They're very expensive. We were specifically trained for it. And I guess now I don't do a lot of night flying and if I do, it's just gonna be probably in the pattern doing some training for someone going for a rating. I. I rarely ever travel cross country at all anymore. And if I did and I didn't have night vision goggles, I would do it. But I would definitely want some moonlight because the biggest thing that you're going to find just like right here, you see really well, right? And you can see all kinds of stuff. I'm about to slip the camera out and then you'll see what it looks like. And that's what it is in the real world. Boom. There's. As soon as I pull that out, that's what it looks like. So it's amazing. It's absolutely freaking amazing what you can see with night vision goggles. They're absolutely wonderful, highly recommended. And I just can't help but always giggle when I see a picture and I'm making fun of myself, right? But when I see a photo somewhere with somebody with night vision goggles on in broad daylight, just always looks kind of funny to me. I don't know. So anyway, I'm going to roll the video for you at the end, let you take a look at it again. I just kind of talk through the process of putting them together and then go outside and just do a little test in the parking lot that night. Going out for my shift for the night. So I'm Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Line Ground School. This was day 265 coffee with Kenny. I normally do these home from the weekend and don't like to come into the airport on the weekends. But I'm having so much damn fun with this new studio. It's freaking amazing. I just can't help but want to come in and shoot my videos here. So I'm gonna wrap it up, I'll roll the video. If you're interested in help with learning anything for your private commercial CFI or instrument, we have full fledged online courses. Been online almost eight years. We help you with the written, the oral and the flight test. We help you with everything. We have 24 hour test flight on all our courses for the private commercial, CFI and instrument. There's monthly options for all of those and you can sign up with your credit card, but you will not be billed for 24 hours. So when people ask, well, hey, does your course have this or does your course have that? I have no problem answering questions. You can also just go ahead and sign up for that 24 hour test flight and you can see our full course firsthand. Not just a sample, you can see the whole entire course. So you can answer a lot of questions yourself. You can see how it's set up, you can see how it operates. And if you decide it's not right for you before the 24 hour trial is up, just remove your credit card from settings. You'll be billed nothing. Or if you sign up with PayPal, go into PayPal and end the subscription for you. You can email me, ask me to do it. But depending on day or night and what time it is and you're at the end of the 24 hour trial, I might not be able to get to it in time. So you can do it yourself. And it comes with 100% money back, ironclad, no hassle guarantee. And we've had that in place for the whole time we've been in business. We stand behind that 100%. So leave us a comment down below. Subscribe to the channel and when you subscribe, click that little bell and we'll see you tomorrow in day 266. Peace out. You gotta fight for your right to party.

So we have battery pack. Goggles themselves. And we got the batteries right there. And I gotta grab a clip that's in the box the camera is sitting on. So here is the mounting clip we're gonna need. And we'll grab the helmet goes back on the back side of the helmet, attaches with Velcro. The batteries go back in here like so. You notice there's an X here. We use the pack with the X to match that battery in there. That's our primary, this is the secondary. Just like that, light flashing. So then we come outside to adjust.

Them.

Or adjusted them as far as where I wanted them positioned in reference to my face with the helmet. Now we're going to adjust the focus outside at night. Ah, very cool.

So we picked something about a hundred yards away and we have adjustment on.

The front and back both. Do the front first, do the rear. This thing's pretty close already. Night vision goggles.

See if we can give you a peek through here. I don't know how well this will work. Let's give it a try.

Here's what you see with goggles. There's what you see?

Without.

With goggles. No goggles. Pretty cool, huh?