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My Army aviation SPH-4A as worn circa 1994


MattS
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Sweet! Where did you find the repop ANVIS-6s?

 

Ebay of course! They were $17.99, looks like the price went up by $2.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/TMC-Dummy-ANVIS9-Black-TMC2885-BK/132399670328?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

None of the knobs are functional and the lenses are green tinted glass, but they snapped right into place and swivel down like they are supposed to so I'm pleased with them. Shipping was only like 5 days from Hong Kong too.

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  • 1 year later...
Spathologist

No, actually what I was referring to was before the surgical tubing. :) I taught Nighthawk/NVG and Combat Skills at Rucker from 81-85 when they were trying to sort a lot of this out.

 

Nighthawk is something now largely forgotten.

 

Sorry to gravedig...but it was certainly a relief to see the Pathfinder's chemlights!

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  • 11 months later...
majormadmax

I just picked up a similar SPH-4 off eBay, and was wondering if anyone could tell me a little about the mic on it...

post-181779-0-89182900-1583683061_thumb.jpg

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Looks like a civilian high impedance mic from a David Clark headset. Def not a military mic. Earphone elements might have been changes as well to use in a civilian helicopter.

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majormadmax

Looks like a civilian high impedance mic from a David Clark headset. Def not a military mic. Earphone elements might have been changes as well to use in a civilian helicopter.

Thanks, I think you're right. We'll see once the helmet arrives!

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majormadmax

In fact, I remembered I had a David Clark headset buried somewhere in my office, so I hunted them down and they have the same mic on them!

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The Rooster

Your sp4 is awesome !!! It looks like the ones the pilots were wearing flying us around in the late 80's.

We flew at night one time. The powers that be informed us that we were the very first Illinois troops flown by pilots wearing night vision. I think itwas 89. Was a weird flight. On the way out to our LZ, the doors were open and I had a pair of night vision goggles and was checking out the woods... On the flight back....They shut the doors which was unusual. Felt just like being in a van driving down the interstate at night. I noticed the co pilot was flipping his goggles up and checking the instrument panel with a red penlight while the pilot was doing his thing. Landing was in a field that someone had put a strobe into.

Was a bit dicey landing. Takes huge guts to pilot a helicopter in my opinion. And at night its got to be a bit trickey, more than usual.

Night vision throws off depth perception. I learned to walk with them on by looking mostly down where I was stepping and looking up quickly from time to time otherwise I'd be stumbling all over the place.,

Thats a great helmet and it being your own makes it priceless !

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The Rooster

I had heard back in the day that some pilots had crashed using the night vision.

That in the begining is was difficult?

 

Both flights in and out were good but like I said the landing was a little freaky.

Is depth perception still a problem you think while wearing nvgs or has it been worked out by now through training combat and best practices etc...?

I know it was tricky back in the day 30 years ago.

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Good question, I'm sure it has improved. I know that 2 tubes is better for depth perception than a monocular, and the later ones have 4 tubes (ANVIS-10) so I guess they're even better. All my NVG flying was done in the 90s so I can't comment on current issues. I can say that sometimes it came in really handy though. One night we departed Ft. Bragg on a night flight out to the west past the DZs. Standard training flight of about 1.5 hours, nothing unusual until we were coming back in. I started to notice a distinct halo around every light source I looked at (spots, specks, static were common, but halos were not). I tipped my head back in order to look "under the goggles" and saw that we had flown into thick fog surrounding Bragg with zero visibility. Total IFR in an aircraft that was not IFR certified. I quickly went back to goggles and told the LT next to me to not look outside, which he immediately did (can't tell lieutenants anything). His response was, "Oh s&%$." Under goggles, we could see just fine and finished the flight to the ground under goggles whereas we would normally turn them off and flip them up once we got close to home as the lights of the base would overwhelm the NVGs. ATC at Simmons AAF was confused as to how an OH-58C was coming back in dense fog, but we assured them we were fine. As long as the NVG batteries didn't die...

post-32676-0-80223400-1584101870_thumb.jpg

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Spathologist

I had heard back in the day that some pilots had crashed using the night vision.

That in the begining is was difficult?

 

I knew guys who retired or resigned to avoid flying with them.

 

Now I can't fly without them.

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