Live 365. Revolution. Thank you for listening to LibertyTreeRadio.4MG.com. We all need to prepare ourselves. You might have the food, water, gold and silver but ask yourself, are you truly prepared? That's why you need to visit MaineMilitary.com. MaineMilitary.com carries everything you need. Gas masks, fire starter kits, high capacity magazines, chemical suits, military surplus items and much more. Do you own a firearm? MainMilitary.com has a large selection of pistols and rifles suited for your needs. Are your local store sold out of ammunition? Call or visit them today for prices on hard to find ammo and bulk ammo orders. You don't need to worry about having a military surplus store in your area because MainMilitary.com is the only store you'll ever need, all from the comfort of your computer. Visit them online today at MainMilitary.com. That's Main, like the state, Military.com. I had a dream the other night that, well, I didn't understand. A figure walked in through the mist with a flintlock in his hand. His clothes were torn and dirty as he stood there by my bed. He took off his three-cornered hat, and speaking low to me, he said, We've fought a revolution to secure our liberty. We wrote the Constitution as a shield from tyranny. For future generations, this legacy we gave. In this, the land of the free. and home of the brave. The freedoms we secured for you we hoped you'd always keep. The tyrants labored endlessly while your parents were asleep. Your freedom's gone, your courage lost, you're no more than a slave. In this the land of the free and home of the brave. You vie permits to travel and permits to own a gun. Permits to start a business or to build a place for one. On land that you believe you own, you pay a yearly rent. Although you have no voice in saying how the money is spent, your children must attend a school that doesn't educate, and your Christian values can't be taught according to the state. You read about the current news in a regulated press, and you pay a tax you do not owe to please the IRS. Your money is no longer made of silver nor of gold. You trade your wealth for paper so your life can be controlled. You pay for crimes that make our nation turn from God and shame. You've taken Satan's number. You've traded in your name. You've given government control to those who do you harm so they could burn down churches and seize the family farm and keep our country deep in debt. Put men of God in jail. Harash your fellow countrymen while corrupted courts prevail. Your public servants don't uphold the solemn oaths they've sworn. And your daughters visit doctors so their children will be born. Your leaders send artillery and guns to foreign shores and send your sons to slaughter fighting other people's wars. Can you regain the freedoms for which we fought and died? Or don't you have the courage or the faith to stand with pride? And are there no more values for which you'll fight to save? Or do you wish your children? to live in fear and be a slave. O sons of the Republic, arise, take a stand, defend the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the land, preserve our great Republic and each God given right, and pray to God to keep the torch of freedom burning bright. As I awoke, he'd vanished in the mist from whence he came. His words were true, we are not free, but we have ourselves to blame. For even now as tyrants trample each God given right we only watch and tremble too afraid to stand and fight If he stood by your bedside to dream while you were asleep and wondered what remains of the freedoms he fought to keep What would be your answer if he called out from the grave is this still the land of the free and home this room? You guys I'm guessing that mark will be here any moment. I just got the don you're up in my ear so with quarter-old when here and here about that guy's company leave and we also have a very great situation happening with one of our friends that uh... He is very, very ill right now. More on that in a minute. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the first hour of the afternoon. Intelligence report. I'm Mark Kornke. And I'm Don Thatcher. One day closer to victory for all of our brothers and sisters, both on and behind the lines in occupied territories west, central, south, and east. Ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to us on... Liberty Tree Radio dot 4 mg dot com, Indiana Freedom Talk Radio dot com, or name it FM Microstations, CBB stations, and Ultra Net Technologies east and west of the Mississippi along with Alaska. Homework network from the top of Maine to the bottom of Florida. From the bottom of Florida to the Gulf of Mexico. Headed Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, Big Chugga, Nebraska, Old Buncha, Wyoming to include both 3rd, 5th, Pitt, and our friends in Recall State of Colorado waiting for the left coast where we have a great state of Jefferson. We turn back to the east, sweep across the plains, leave over the burgeoning banks of the Mississippi and land in the Smokies. Well, the restaurant crew is Grandma Teams, OK Teams, and the Ma Bell Grandma Consortium bring us the Golden Spike. I'll tell you what, it has been gray for the afternoon, but not gray-rainy, but just, you know, that mid-gray guy that just wants to hang on. temperatures medium not warm not too cool but good enough to get out there and paint or get stuff done before the next weather wave the panel steps in and we get some rain here what's like in your neck of the woods and what's a date today sir well on this the seventh day of October year of our Lord 2014 it's turning out to be kind of a pretty day it'll be to artists sunset there there'll be a lot of clouds intermittent broken up and lit up and It kind of turned different colors from that setting sun there on the horizon on, again, this is the seventh day of October. It turned out to be a pretty nice day. We haven't had any frost yet. Two years in a row, it wasn't last year. The two years in a row before that, the end of the Kebam overnight, frosted a lot of people's plants and dreams. Now we've got to talk to the federal government because we're going to need a loan for next year. Good working into the fall. The other thing is, If the rain will stop for a while, the farmers can get out that corn and that other stuff without having to drive in there with, oh, the aforementioned talking about only for $19,000 this very morning. That's for the hovercraft. Not to be confused with the flying hovercraft. It's only $190,000. Ooh. Yeah, whoo, that's what I said. I was like, okay, that looks really cool. That looks really neat. Oh my god, that's expensive And it's not registered as a plane though Don it's registered as a boat so you're paying $190,000 for a well like two-person plus six hundred off buying your your own along with the government twenty feet and a half of the bill stay a little bit or about twenty over a twenty foot obstacle so what the obstacle is twenty one feet tall now you might just and it'd be breaking off some of them Kevlar skids. Yeah, not quite making them. And carbon fiber skids that it lambs on. But at least I got over the obstacle. And then I landed in the lake of fire just beyond. I made it, but the horse didn't. Yeah, why did they put that barrier there to keep you out of the lake of fire you just flew into? Oh, man. I did it now. Yeah, thank goodness the bottom of it's Kevlar. That'll mean I have more time to think about the burning, right? Anyway, it's scary. It's cool technology, really. $190,000, I guess it would have to, because it has some lift controls or whatever. Maybe that's what makes it ten times the cost of the regular hovercraft. You know what I mean? But otherwise it's neat, but it's not $190,000. It's got winglets. And the winglets, which really are like, you know... But it's not rated as a plane, so you don't have to worry about what would be all the code issues, etc., that normally would come at you. That's what makes me wonder about that $190,000 price tag, because it's not like I'm dropped by in the tail dragger. I can buy a tail dragger Piper knockoff right now for about $20,000. So, buying a hovercraft plane for $190,000 that basically looks like a hovercraft with a set of wings on it. I'm sorry, that's a two man hovercraft. hit my fly but not high enough for that high price. Anyway, it's interesting. We've had a couple other items. If the weapons sites go the way they're going, we're obviously going to be going up into another set of optics attached to that rifle site. So give everybody an update on what's going on with that before going farther, please. Well, yesterday at 6, I was talking with my people and we had 351 of the first generation gun site, 308 capable recoil. You know, it'll stand up to a good recoil. That was yesterday, roughly, you know, well, 23 hours ago, just sort of 24 and, you know, right in that timeframe there, you guys. But, uh, when we talked on a Friday a couple of weeks before and I brought this to the air, oh, we've got 200 and some of these. Monday, the 200 were gone. I was happy that one of the last orders I was able to get in and probably the last, oh, for certain, the last one of those I will deliver was able to be delivered. We were able to fill that order for the customer. Hooray. That's always a good thing. But they're gone now. We started talking about the... I was made aware of this on like a Tuesday and we were talking about it Wednesday, like the very next day, at the beginning of the year. You know, back there in May and January. Remember the middle depths of the winter. At any rate, we were told about it. At that time we were told that, oh, it's Probably gonna it's gonna be an end of the year thing They'll be gone at the end of the year, but I was curious and mentioned it after talking on in the year for a while well as I don't know if it's a numbers thing or a date thing and A few months back. Well in the middle of the summer we found out it's a numbers thing and the numbers are dwindling We had a real nice three power viewer. We had a real nice five power viewer in first generation. They're gone now the green screen They're gone. We were moving that gun sight in to power It's gone now. We have the four power left. It's again, yesterday, just slightly less than 24 hours ago, 351 of them. I'd like to say I could buy a block of that. Like I'd like to say I could buy 50. I can't do that. I just don't have that ability to grab them and get them for us. But you guys... While they're there, you should probably, if you've been looking in that direction and thinking about it for a good long time, now might be the time to put that thinking to work. I think I'm going to get one of them because we'll replace it. We'll be, here comes a highly technical term, the innards, the guts from basically DVD cameras that are able to run low light amplification. You know, a different facsimile of night vision. It's not done with a tube, it's done with different tubes. It's done converting photons to electricity and all of that. But you guys, it's done under a different species of technology. There's a phrase, probably no one's ever linked those two words together before. I'm polishing my fingernails on my chest right now. Mark, I don't think anyone's ever linked those two words together before. But you guys, That means that you'll have a white light coming out of the device instead of the green light that comes from a night vision tube. We've addressed this, that green light, that's barely detectable by a night vision device. It's almost undiscernable by first, second, or third generation night vision. when white light comes out of the device well that catches a human eye naturally but to a piece of night vision that looks like you've got you know a match held up to your face like your face is on fire any little splinters of light dashing across your face you guys if you've got a piece of green screen just you know have somebody walk out there with a flashlight cover almost all of the flashlight save for a little slot of their base of one of their fingers and have them shined it on their eyeball and you'll know That's exactly what we're talking about. Again, it's a matter of light discipline. I don't want to just run this as a scare. You have to get it now, but again, it is a different thing. You have to get it now. That's been exhibited. I didn't sell all of those. Plenty of other people are grabbing them off. The gun sights in 2 Power are gone in first generation. We're working on nibbling away at that pile of power. Then we have the 6-4 behind that. I still don't have a price on that. I've got to talk to my guy here after. You're right around 7 o'clock. If you want to talk about the dwindling pile of 1st Station gun sights there or what would replace it, again, I can get the same gun sight and the same body style and everything, but it'll have different mechanical innards. The different technology all together in terms of some of the primary components. It overlaps with the night vision technology. So again, just a heads up that this is on the horizon. The reason we want to bring this up is, guys, this is the kind of stuff that we're going to see changing. Not everybody's going to like the change. Rightly so. Just keep in mind we're trying to get you on the right boxcar before the whole train shifts out into another direction entirely. And again, it's still limited. Whatever you get, take care of it, please. This is where everything is, how do societies collapse or fall apart? They ooze to death, guys. Seriously, they don't necessarily die with a light switch like click on off. They ooze to death. That's part of what we're seeing with all these situations where, why are they doing this? Well, the industry is trying to figure out how to stay in business and still be able to stay in the market for the price because the people they were doing business with before they were buying them at slave level, not so much now. You see, the world is changing. The other part about it is the other people were willing to sell certain things for a lesser price because they were trying to change the market to get rid of their competition. Let me point out that they have. Now, whatever they offer from this point is all there is on the market. I'm not talking about the core company. I'm talking about the company that's making these things, putting all the technology together. Remember, their sources are the ones that are dictating the market. for the components. This is hard for a lot of people to think about, but if there's only one company making that widget anymore, before the company got rid of all their competition by driving the price down and biting the bullet for a period of time because they knew they could run the distance, once they've done that, then they don't have to bite the bullet no more. And because of that, it changes how it is, what the supplier does for all of these manufacturers. And we're hearing manufacturers, I've talked to guys from radioelectronics, radio communication electronics technology, and they're pissing and moaning right now for the same reason because, like I said, there's no American surplus, there's no American industry. So you don't have stuff where you could buy from another part of the industry and slide it sideways here. You have to go overseas and find what's left. And that's really, again, they're getting frustrated because, well, there's less and less of what's left because we're in the 21st century now, guys. With every passing year, there's less of what's left over. And if everybody keeps doing stupid stuff like throwing it away or scrapping it, there's even less. So the numbers change yet again and that's what's going on. So again, here's another thing Don, give an overview. I've got to step away for just a second. You sparked a couple of different thoughts. Go ahead and jump in there please. Thank you Mark. You guys, the original questions here stacked up at the beginning of the hour, what's going on, what's going away and what's going to replace it. Well, second generation in American tubes, that's almost, if someone says to you, if you call up a night vision company and and they tell you I've got second generation American or you're at a guns show and the guy now, you can't apply this to used unless the guy has all the documentation that came with the device and he has the paperwork that has the devices serial number on it and many times on a number of American manufactured night vision devices you can look down into the lens and turn it and keep turning it and looking just and you'll see the serial oh yeah that's a that's a big secret in the industry but second and third generation you'll see the serial number of the tube if you look just right in the right place and you know stand old and your other hand like an antenna not really that complicated you should be able to read the serial number of an American tube now and fourth even my second generation entry level right now you guys is a Russian tube If someone tells you that they're, oh yeah, that's second generation American, make sure that they can show you the pedigree, the paperwork with the ITT or the Raytheon. Basically, it's like this doggy was born here and this is the number in its ear. Only it's going to be in the lens. You look right through that lens, right down, and you'll see that tube number. Now, this leads over to, and this is a cautionary because we've done this before, mostly in third generation because a lot of people try to sell you third generation. Oh yeah, this is third generation. This is the top. This is the best. This is gravy stuff, man. This makes your life easy. All kinds of things. But third generation can have just the same amount of lines per millimeter as what they used to call super second or second generation plus. Second generation started came in at like 28 to 32 lines, 32 to 36 became real consistent and as they got better in that glass stretching technology and more generous in the time taken to do it, second generation started to run around 45 and 48 maybe even 52 lines per millimeter. Now that makes for a nice screen. We've discussed this before, the finer the the greater amount of information can be put into a given area. By the time they got second generation up to about 45 or 48 lines per, they scratched their head and they looked around and said, man, this is pretty neat. What else can we do? And they put some coatings on the front that protect the tube and brought more light in. And that's so much of an improvement. They called it third generation. And that's basically the chronology there. So you have third generation that might be 45 to 48, maybe 52 lines per millimeter. By the time it got to 52 for certain, that guy was calling it second generation plus or super second. Now these were American tubes. Russian second generation tubes are 45 lines per, 48 lines per. They're a fine tube. They're a fine tube to the extent that, remember I would tell you, second generation, first generation tube, but Russian built all of them. Lifetime 50s. 1500 maybe if you treat it real nice maybe 16 if you had one that was really a sweet one from the factory you might get 1700 hours out of it but count on that 15 and then we'd say well I would that because these are standards in the industry I don't just don't let me sit down and remember how long it took to write where that one out you're going to get about 2500 hours minimum out of a second generation tube but that at that time we were referring to an American tube You're going to get a minimum of 5,000 hours out of the second generation Russian tube that is my entry level second generation piece right now. A minimum of 5,000 hours, that's how much the technology has improved. If ITT or Raytheon were still building second generation tubes, they could take a little more, make ever so slight the change and match if not exceed that number that the Russian tube is going out to. My upgrade from in second generation now is a Belgian tube. It's a seven thousand hour second generation tube. That's approaching the lifetime of an American third generation tube. One manufacturer and the other Raytheon or ITT saying nine thousand, the other saying ten thousand hours minimum life expectancy of a third generation American manufactured tube. So when we look at replacements up from first generation, well, you know, we look at Even in the second generation now, which would be the logical step for, you know, I would while we talk about this in this bent or angle, the biggest step up in performance from in low light is from first to second generation. Say for the first generation, I could say the biggest step up in lifetime is from second to third. But that cap has been narrowed now by again imported devices, 5000 hours for the Russian second generation 7,000 hours for the Belgian tube. The Belgian tube is very pleasing to the eye. You can't say that they're flawless. The manufacturing process brings about flecks of dust. This is all done in clean rooms, but it can't be avoided. When you pick up a new piece or a piece of night vision and you look across the field and you see what might appear to be a pepper flake or something bigger or shaped like of all strokes, only dinky on the screen. That's a manufacturing imperfection that can't be avoided and different things are graded and graduated as far as the quality of the tube. Generation, it really doesn't matter, the Russians would sell almost every tube for a good long time. Second generation, you started to get into, because we were working with American tubes at the time, you started to get into different grades of tubes. Like a lot of people would think, oh, I've got to have a mil-spec tube. Now, there are tubes that are better than military spec, military spec in America. There are none of the flaws within 15 degrees. That's across. That's in total included. That's actually 7.5 degrees from the center. Looking right down the center of the device, there's nothing to interfere with. I wonder what that is, but I can't figure it out because there's this big blob here. Now, you could have a mil-spec tube and still have one of those big blobs in the side and then they would grade it from how big it is and how far away from the center it was. If there were a number of them, it still wouldn't make mil-grade or mil-spec. It would go into just the entry level because mil-spec was something that was more up in second and third generation. Beyond that, you could go to something that would be like system or grade tube. In this in second generation now we would call that the Belgian tube. Again, the Belgian tube is almost like looking at your television as far as the quality across the board of the screen. It's going to be a green and white television, but it's very uniform. The flecks aren't dinky and the curve of the amount of light is to be admired. It's as comparable as any second generation American, but again. at 7,000 hours of lifetime. Look to the ... We're talking again the 9 to 10,000 hours of lifetime. The generation is claiming 10,000 hours lifetime. The generation has problems unto itself. When fourth generation first came into the market, a number of people expected it to be an anomaly and then go away, but the tubes are still being manufactured and allowed to be marketed to you and me. When they first came in, they were like ... and they were really used out of by my source company and offered as fourth generation. That's what they were sold to the government as. You can still get it as because that pipeline hasn't been turned off yet. We could go on and on about this you guys. Basically, in the not too distant future, we'll be completely white light. We've talked about white light on your face before. That comes to a discipline. I started to bring this subject as white light, you guys. If you own a piece of thermal, That's white light. That's a black and white image you're looking at, kind of like a black and white television screen. So if you're not practicing light discipline when you're using the device, if you're holding the device with pans and you're holding it with your fingertips and your thumb and you have your little fingers up in the air and you're barely brushing an eyelash and everything is just perfect. It should be like take a photograph of this is how not to because you want to bring that hand back to the end. If you're using a single monocular, most of them you should be able to handle this. Although they have the hand grip, my entry level piece in a thermal device, and many first generation devices have your finger notches molded into it. It's almost like a pistol grip, but wider, fatter. So, they want to drive your hands to a particular place because at the end of that place there are control buttons. But if you use both hands initially and turn it on while it is immediately at your face and you are using the other hand to bridge across the side of your brow, not at your temple but where that skull bone quits and your thumb should cover that there and the rest of your fingers should wrap around the top of the device. while your other hand is holding and supporting it to make certain you don't drop it and trying to conceal as much light coming onto your nose. Because you know everybody's got a nose unless you know the shark bit it off or the Chinaman cut it off or you cut it off to spite your own face. But everybody's got a nose and you know some of them are bigger than others. But up at night it would look like a little billboard in the dark. Even mine or yours. That's an example and it's hard to do in an audio medium, try to describe a visual discipline. We're talking about light discipline here. The ability or the want to conceal as much of that white light that's coming out of the device as possible. I include thermal devices in this. Now some thermal devices you can touch a button and it changes color. You touch another button and it changes color. It will change from white to black and black to white, one or the other being the heat. You are at the control of your fingertip and you push the button again and it might change to like purple and yellow. I'm not certain of the color mixes but they come up good contrast. It's done because sometimes you might see thermal doesn't give you the real fine line picture. 68 lines per millimeter like the top of the line third generation will, 68 to 72 lines per millimeter. That's right in fourth generation category also. Thermal doesn't give you that fine picture, but it'll give you shapes and the different gradients to a certain extent. If it's black and white, it's going to be black and white. There'll be shades of gray in there, but you won't be able to look at someone's face and see pink and blue and yellow like you do in a lot of commercials or something like that. So you won't have that fineness of that picture. We've addressed this before. The point is when we start talking about thermal or the replacement for first generation gun sights or goggles, it's going to be white light. You need to pay attention to that light discipline. That's the point there. One of the most common things to remember here guys is simple tricks. We've talked about reading things and using a poncho. The poncho first of all is a tool. It is not just a rain device. It is used for so many military applications and survival items that it actually is a mandatory item we all carry and I have each person carry two. One is on your combat pack, typically underneath your fanny pack slash the type 56 butt pack. Whatever term you want to use for it. The other is always on the backpack, but the two ponchos are tools. Certainly it's rain gear, but it's a lot of other things. Night discipline or light discipline using something that can cape or cover a piece of equipment. If you do have something we've discussed here, If you do have the new first generation and it starts to show up and you acquire it, then you have to try to figure out ways to apply it without risking yourselves. Now just as a thought process here, let's think about something. Remember those old guys with those old plate cameras? Do you remember what they used to do when they wanted to use the viewfinder to see the target? Remember how they used to get close? They'd slide the plate in and then pull its protective cover out and then they'd get under what you might call a cape. And that cape covered both the optical device at the rear and the operator, didn't it, Dom? Oh yeah, it let no light out or in. Exactly. Think the same way, guys. Only we don't need it to leak out. They didn't want light to leak in and compromise the plate. We don't want any like to leak out to compromise and create lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is very bad. Yeah, from the fast fast way. Oh, that kind of lead poisoning. That one went over my head. I was glad. So, for everybody, copper and lead poisoning nowadays won't just be lead, copper and lead poisoning. I will point that out. But again, the critical thing here, as Dom was pointing out, to remember, there's something else that's part of this math formula. And, number one, maintaining discipline with regard to the light. But let's go back just for a second. You're paying more for a second generation piece of technology, but Don, what's the differential in terms of operational running time? In other words, if you were to look at dollar for dollar what you're actually paying for in terms of operating time. Oh, with that Belgian tube, you're at three times the life of a first generation Russian tube. But both of them are still longer than a first gen. Oh yeah. So do the math. When you take a look, yes we are saving and you're looking at that entrance piece or that basic piece, it's good for so many hours. If you look at then the life or durability of the second gen, yes you are paying more, but if you look at operating hours and again performance, you know perception, those are the two factors that are working into the operational cost. because we're always paying for, you know, with an electronic piece of equipment, we're paying for time and operation. What's its life span? You know, low end, example, it's Communications Tuesday, when you guys are talking about picking up these BOMBSHOOOOMM radios, okay? Hey, out of the box, they work, typically. Now every once in a blue moon there's one that doesn't work out of the box. Congratulations, that's why they have a return system, okay? And you have to figure this is going to happen with slave labor. Also is long term or longevity. How long will they operate at optimal performance or at least expected performance range? That varies, but it's also a known factor to the people who build them. So while we understand all of those, the idea is to get immediate gratification. In other words, I need instant communication. I need it deployed like what we did with the Bundy Ranch. We flooded the position with communications at the small unit level and got the job done. Some got to where they were supposed to, maybe others didn't. There's a question back and forth about that. Well, the bottom line is projected strength by mass. We got the job done. However, we also know that there's a limited lifespan with that technology. The more money you spend, typically, though not always guys, but typically you get a better quality product. When you step up into industrial range equipment as opposed to what we consider retail, commercial retail civilian products, there's a term here called ruggedized. And this is true with pretty much any kind of equipment you're looking at. There's two things that are reason ruggedized plays in. It's either intentional or it's, again, experience used, applied to the next generation. Well, Gen 1 to Gen 2, there are a whole bunch of things that they learned about the technology right down, so they were able to incorporate them into the systems that eventually became customer products. Oh yeah. Gen 1 and Gen 2 aren't that far apart, save for the addition of a micro channel plate, which brings about the lines per millimeter that we talk about in a completely different way, because you can talk about lines per millimeter in first generation and you're talking about the looking at the dinky little screen alone, the ocular side, that alone. You're not talking about lines per millimeter inside the night vision tube, the image intensifying device, only the end result. So again, see how this works with regard to the technology. That's part of the math formula taken, Alina. It's not just the idea I'm paying three times as much or I'm paying this amount for a Gen 2. It's the idea that what is the running time? I'm not putting down the Gen 1's at all because, to be quite honest, I have conservatively used, in fact Ed has used these extensively, but both of our Gnomes, which are Dom's, these are night vision devices, and Dom, they were some of the first you offered, weren't they? The Gnome Monoculars. Oh, a lot of those went out before Y2K. Just to give you a relative date on that. I can turn around and I've got one right here within arm's reach and it's the round gnome and that one, well both of them power up, both of them illuminate, both of them work. Illumination isn't critical, remember they run passively but they do have an illuminator, a single LED illuminator on them, IR. I don't use that if I can help it for obvious reasons. Now, example, last night was a hunter's moon. Did everybody pay attention? We mentioned this this morning. Did anybody notice with that? We had a clear sky here in Michigan. Guys, you didn't need a flashlight outside last night. Okay. Now, whether or not it was a complete 100% full, it looked to me like it might be at like say 98 or whatever. Tonight might be the full moon, but last night was close enough you wouldn't know the difference. On the other hand, it might have been the full moon and I'd have to look at the books. I'd have to see what the, again, the Farmer's Almanac, much more reliable than the meteorologist or government scientist, would tell me. But again, in this kind of light, the first gen, any place that's questionable but like shadowy, the first gen with that hunter's moon would work just fine, wouldn't it? Oh yeah, when you've got that amount of low level of light, you guys, First gen is like 150 yards with 4 power, 200 yards depending on your contrast target to background. Second generation could, depending on the quality of glass and magnification, double that for targeting ability. And go at another 100 yards if you're looking at real hard contrasts to target to background. And third generation, when you get it up to the 68 to 72 lines per millimeter you guys with four power and most of a full moon the manufacturer won't tell you this but if you're certain that those aren't friendlies there at a half a mile or 800 and some yards you know if you're certain that nobody should be there that you know we don't want to execute you know well you could still target like that oh again the second and third, even fourth generation you guys, they depend on the amount of light level is directly keyed to the amount of performance and range you're going to get out of any of the devices no matter what generation. Third generation, you guys with four power in a bus line per, you're going to be able to, as an example, let's not talk about real hard contrast, but If someone is walking across the road and you've got a full moon, that's no problem, 900 yards. You know that you won't be able to look at his face, you won't be able to confirm the form, or what type of gun. But if you know that we don't have anybody over there, well, be targetable. By the time the moon is gone, you can run that back to 400 yards looking easily targetable down the same road. Okay road with you know a little bit of trees on each side And we're not talking about something that's canopied over for the whole of that you know the other thing to think about is if you're deep into a canopy and You're looking out into a lighted area that that can seem sometimes to enhance the amount of range that the device performed for you Because we've talked many times about a piece of night vision will adjust to the lightest object in its field of view. If that lighted object or lightest object is 250 yards away and there's no moon in the sky but you're looking perhaps at the skirted areas of the derm and you move to such a place that you're not looking directly at the light, you'll be able to look at the back of that farm. You'll be able to look out into the lighted areas. Again, it comes over to using what's in front of you also. We've talked about position with wind and it's not weapons Wednesday, but it gets harder and harder to read the wind at night. Generally, you find sometimes at night the wind gets pretty calm, but sometimes there's a front moving through and it gets harder and harder to read the wind at night. I think I said that already, but you guys, instead of making out the fine little things, like I can use my 60 power scope and read the mirage, you're not going to be able to do that at night. You know, you can stick your finger up in the air. You can look for the big things like which way is that tree leaning. You know, you can feel it on your face and this and that. But the farther away you get from a shot, the less you can read the wind at night. This is also, this is a basic most people do not want to address. Straight up or straight downwind to negate to the best of your ability the windage as much as possible. And what does this go back to what we were talking about earlier? positioning. You might be stumbling through the woods and come across something and if you think about it for a while you might not want to light it up from the area that you just came across it after you study for a while. You might want to go halfway around the big old fish hook round from the other way. Just a thought. Mark, I yield to you. Very good. Again, one of the things to remember is paying attention to your environment. You literally are collecting so much data and so many different tiers. We've talked about using this with rifle marksmanship. Don't forget with regard to tracking and perception. The big thing with especially wind drift, better to have a pushing than a pulling wind in many ways. Depends on again what kind of weight bullet you're using and how you're going to be working it downrange. In many cases, especially with night vision technology, as Don pointed out, you've got to be able to perceive, first you should be able to spend some time working with the equipment. The element there, the hardest thing is, again, where you can't see, you're going to have to use your mechanical sensors for. You know, stick it up there and see what gets cool first. What side of the finger is getting cool to determine wind direction. Obviously the bearing surface is taking the hit. That's the area that's cooling. Well, that tells me to my left. I adjust accordingly. I may have to move my whole position. if I want to try and acquire the proper shot and negate the wind factor. That finger got cold really fast too. It might be kind of windy. Exactly. Again, that means that energy applied. Remember at night it's more difficult, it's going to be much more difficult, to do a follow-up shot based upon perceiving your first shot performance. So as many factors as possible need to be pulled out of the formula. and windage especially if it can be neutralized by changing your position in proportion to the object, the object target. No matter what it is, truck tank, vehicle, people, pumpkin, radio, radio antenna, light, I don't care. Whatever you're using is your center of your objective, your object target. You're going to shift accordingly to align properly. Now you have to also in the process pay attention to your environment, operational security with regard to the aggressor. Again, the environment does this put you into a protect or unprotected, secure or unsecure position. You're not going to compromise yourself completely if it looks like this is going to put you in the middle of a field, in the middle of a hostile environment to begin with. We've talked about this a million times. The last place you're going to be is in the middle of a field with thermal technology and no cover. Granted, we have mobile cover and there are things we can do, but the bottom line is we have to constantly balance this out by working the math formula to our advantage. If you can't gain 100% correction as close as possible without compromising the basics. That has to do with operational security, again, covering concealment, ensuring that you have the ability not only to engage but to evacuate unseen or again with minimal detection probable. I plan to do it this way but when I get here, I come upon the camp, I think I'm going to have to go around to the other side, that's a compromise right there. Every time you try to implement a plan, it might be a little bit of compromise. Brought about by you. Now, compromise might not be a good word. Adjustment, adapting and overcoming are two words that fit a lot better, don't they? And remember that this is an issue that compromise, this is another reason, now we get into another subject, mapping and knowing your terrain. Even though constantly this is going to change. You know, the argument is with going out in Pennsylvania with the guy is that he's working on his own stomping ground, his own area of operation. If he had had any weather, let's say that he is still there or whatever, we don't know a story that feds, I mean come on first of all, feds, they lie. State police, they lie. So who knows what the real story is or what's going on there. But if we believe their real story, forgive me, we believe the story they're generating. One of the things to take into consideration is while you may be familiar with, and that makes to a degree a certain amount of comfort, Having the ability to move into another area, having the mapping, developing the skill, but more important, by reading the map you can apply pretty much 80% of what you're doing in a familiar territory scenario. Now you don't have all the crooks, crooks, crannies, and the nuances of the terrain, but if you were properly trained, guys, and you have the mapping available, You are still three steps ahead of someone who has not surveyed the area. Flying by wire and running hell-bent for election, Pelham-El in one direction. You're going to fly into the ground someplace soon. Yeah, at some point you're going to find that the real estate leaves you and especially at night there's that sucking sound as you realize there's no ground to touch for a few moments. Is this a two-screen fall? Yeah. Or a three-screen fall. I guess they do have ledges in Tennessee. Oh, man. And they do in Pennsylvania the same way. So, again, map reading and also in advance, let's think about caching. Well, first, we're talking about this deployment. If you have to change positions, your objective as an operator, as a militiamen, as a guerrilla warfare specialist, as a paracommensional, unconventional, or conventional warrior, you need to be constantly re-familiarizing yourself with the area of operation. And it will change if you're winning, and it will change if you're neutral, and it will change if you're losing. you're going to take into consideration moving from one area to the next. So mapping, and as quickly as you can acquiring more mapping, more additional supplemental intelligence information in a number of different ways, is especially critical, but mapping can be acquired now. Everything from computer database mapping, which can be on a small laptop that, again, can be drawn on with a myriad of areas of operation. Or, conventional topographic mapping that is over the counter available but you have to purchase for your entire area. Example, it took us time. One to fifty thousand scale for Michigan is harder than hell to get every section, find every map available. They are hard. Some are unfortunately impossible without duplicating something that somebody else already has. Most people don't realize that. Other scale geological survey, geodetic survey maps are in other scales, but even there, government intentionally did not survey or resurvey certain areas and change to the newer scales. Now there's a reason for that, and we've typically found that it means there's a clandestine government site in the area that they did not modify. And it's proven to be true. It's helped us to find enemy activity or enemy areas where they are concealing something that we really don't want to be in the middle of when things go to hell in a hand cart. And the areas appear as if, Dom, they should be neutral. I mean, come on, what's out here in the middle of this area? I don't see anything here. Well, what's that antenna mast over there? What? Yeah, my favorite is there's an antenna mast out in the middle of nowhere, and it's a receiver for a microwave transmission. Well, what's in the area? Well, there's nothing in the area. That's right. There's nothing in the area above ground, is there? Keep looking. Yeah, exactly. A little hint, hint, hint. It's a send, you know, it's a receive unit. It's sending from another pod, a tower that's, well, right there across on the horizon. Why would they be sending this signal out here to the middle of this, you know, particular, you know, section if there's no building above ground? That means that there's something oh I can't well no don't look up. It's not floating in the air Okay No, no, no you had the right idea the light was coming on, but we might think underfoot Okay, so that's another reason that mapping is not necessarily updated and why you need to be thinking ahead and acquiring whatever mapping you can you may have to and This is another issue now you can do something you can do something you haven't able to do before which is rescale a map and But you're going to have to also be prepared to understand you may be going from operating from a 50 to 150,000 to one to 27,000 and back over to 150,000 and then maybe to an older 65,000 scale map. There's variations on the theme that's not accidental. Actually, what is it? I believe 65,000. Forgive me. One to 64,000 scale maps. And then there's one to seventy four thousand scale maps. Why are these weird dimensions marked? Don't ask me. I understand it has to do with quadranting and how the old mapping structure was set up. That's basically a scale that was established arbitrarily by somebody and everybody adopted it. How do you like that? So because of that, you better you need to develop your skills at map reading. All this just to get a rifle shot in? No, no. All this to get a rifle shot in and get out alive. Get away. Anybody can go in if they want. The other half is getting out. I plan on fighting a war and I'm just going to fight one battle. Remember what I said? See those guys there? You swing around the back and flank them and we'll attack them from this direction and we'll meet in the middle. Yep, okay. See how do you do that? Well, you actually have a plan Okay, and by the way, you still hack and chop your way through that's that line from Braveheart Remember at that one point where he finally does break through and he's standing and it's wait a minute It's the guy he told to go around and swing from behind with the cavalry They did it there must be not be in any of them left Yeah, there's not a whole lot of the bad guys left standing look behind him So again, that means prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance in the process. There was a plan. Remember, they also defeated the heavy cavalry there too, remember? Well, eventually they did. That was the other action. But in this case with regard to orientation, night operations especially, there are other issues with specially range finding or range estimation, not just for targeting but also for movement. Now, this is something we have at every facility, and we've been doing this for as long as I've been a soldier. Going back when I was in the military years and years ago, I got into orienteering very early on. We were actually going to start an orienteering competition group that would have been going to Europe. We never really carried it through the rest of the way, but we immersed ourselves. At that point in time, map reading was a very high priority. It was a skill that was being lost and people were being killed because of it coming out of Vietnam. It had happened. People had been in the wrong place at the right time or kind of like what you saw on that. You all relate to movies because you can relate to movies you've seen them. Remember the movie Platoon? That lieutenant decided to call in some artillery? I'm glad he did that before he was... brought about a malfunction of the aforementioned radio. Right, exactly. Of course they were pretty rugged. The only problem is you probably broke that back clamp off it. Darn Sarge, you shouldn't have done it. I can't hang it off my gear no more. Anyway, the fact of the matter is that that was a little pin-prick example of things that could go wrong, being in the wrong place at the right time because people drop things from the air or simply because somebody else might be out there hunting for people and you walk through their hunting zone. or miscommunications. Calling out a grid and someone else calls something else. Look at that, I think that's not all, no. He won't do that again. He won't do that one again. See, that's why map reading became an issue and a critical skill. Because the other part about that, everybody goes, I want to be special forces. Well, guys, cross country orienteering is part of the job. It's one of those things you immerse yourself in. Now, again, the understanding that you're going to have variations in mapping, unfortunately, a lot of the stuff is going to be crude and rude. I'm going to tell you right now, I just picked up, for instance, a box of maps. It's about the size of a couple of loaves of bread. These are everything from maps from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. I'm not throwing any of them away. You want to know why? The rolling terrain hasn't changed. The man-made features have. Now in some cases the man-made features can be alterations to terrain. But a map with the basics on it is better than no map. In other words, I don't have a clue what the hell is going on or what's over the horizon. Well, even with an older map, again, the only significant topographic features it could change are if you had an earthquake or, again, a volcano. Otherwise, basic terrain features do not change. Some man-made obstacles will, or may in fact become new obstacles if they disappear. Let me give you an example. Many of the Michigan roadmaps have taken out the land bridges, the actual bridges that were built by man years ago, that they've destroyed them intentionally to channel you like cattle. Well, many people don't pay attention to details and I've had people drive over and over again and lament to me, you know, that bridge, it was over by Battle Creek, across the river there? They've taken it completely out. I was following the map and I didn't find out until I got there. It's like, yep, I agree. We've done it ourselves. So the one thing you remember is older maps may have, again, features that are in place that no longer exist. It does not just things that are added. Well Mark, there's a whole subdivision there. Well, that kind of could be nice to know. You can pen that in, by the way. It would necessarily be perfect, but at least gives the basic information.