Binoculars

I use a pair of 20x60s that are of a good quality but only cost £45 two years ago. I bought them from either the Daily Mail or Express shopping website after seeing an ad in the paper.

Check out their shopping websites.

Good Luck

Steve

At night i either use a stand, or just lay on my back. It isn’t the brightest low-light viewer, but the magnification is enough for an occasional spectaculair view. Two passing sattelites and a number of shooting stars is good enough to mellow out

If you want to look for the International Space station I can reccommend the www.heavens-above.com website… just fill in your coordinates and click on the ISS link and get instructions and information for seeing the ISS from pretty much anywhere in the world. (includes direction to look and time to look as well as brightness of the ISS and how long it will be visible for).

Yeah, i’ll be there. And since i have to go to a party one mile away from the airfield on friday evening, i might just as well be a bit early 🙂

You gonna be at Volkel in two weeks’ time, Art?

I’ll be there, but on the Friday, as we’re doing Avord on the Saturday and Lorient – Lann Bihoue on the Sunday.

Be good to finally catch-up with you (maybe at the Scramble stall or somewhere convenient) and have a chat over some frites and a beer 😀

Cheers

Steve

The same has been puzzling me on this side of the pond Steve! You Brits all seem to use massive telescopes as your weapon of choice on trips, which i personally find incredible. Of course their magnification and light is excellent, but they are so incredibly cumbersome. On expeditionary trips we usually make sure we’ve got one telescope per car (30/120 or something like that), but the rest is all 20×60 and the likes. They are just so much handier. I would hate to try and read a landing Italian Starfighter’s Mickey Mouse-number with a scope like yours. Nor would it be something i’d happily climb up a tree with (may the Bitburg tree never be forgotten), let alone something really high and windy (like a building crane or smokestack, both pretty common near Russian airbases). Just too much of a hassle, and i personally think the extra magnification isn’t necessary all that often. I can hardly ever use my 20x60s at maximum range because of heatwaves.

I’ve had two of those odd-looking monoculairs. They are Russian-made (well, i got both as USSR-built ones) with a bayonet fitting to replace the forward lens, so you either had a 12×50 or a 20×60. Most spotters never used the 12x lense at all (except maybe as a magnifying glass), but as 20×60 mono it was great. Small, light, very easy to hold steady/jam into a stand to keep it even steadier, and a great toy to juggle with if you got bored. These monos were basically half the binos lots of Dutch spotters still have – the Tento (and equivalent) 20x60s, which i mostly use now. The old mono is in my car (to be replaced shortly), my first mono fell out of my pocket when i had rolled it in a sock to isolate it a bit 🙁 (winter-spotting, i’m sure you know).

Something that’s puzzled me for quite a while now, Art, is why the majority of (military, at least) spotters over here use ‘scopes/poles yet our Dutch colleagues favour bins or those really odd-looking monoculars that I’ve never even seen for sale here! What do you think?!

I do own a pair of bins (Pentax 8 x 40s) but, same as with Sauron, I only ever get those out to go walking and birding with. For “expeditionary spotting” (great phrase!) I use a Kowa 32×80 ‘scope. When I first started using it in early ’98 there weren’t many spotters taking optics that seriously, but now there are a whole lot of folk using Swarovski, Leica, Kowa and Opticron ‘scopes on trips. Not sure that, at £1,000 plus for the APO models, you get that much more performance from them over something 1/3rd the price though!

Cheers

Steve

At night i either use a stand, or just lay on my back. It isn’t the brightest low-light viewer, but the magnification is enough for an occasional spectaculair view. Two passing sattelites and a number of shooting stars is good enough to mellow out 🙂

Nope, those 20x60s are pretty cheap. Got my last pair for some 100 euros.

Do you have problems holding them steady at night? An exit pupil of 3mm is a little small for low light viewing.

Nope, those 20x60s are pretty cheap. Got my last pair for some 100 euros.

That 20×60, that can be used to see the jupiter moons, is it very expensive.

With astronomy a very important feature is the size of the objective lens… that is why most telescopes are described by this size alone.. ie a 3 inch telescope has an objective lens that is 3 inches across. The serious problem there is that large objective lenses are very heavy and large and to look for long periods you really need a stand of some sort. Binoculars double that weight by having two objective lenses.

As long as the exit pupil is greater than 6 you pretty much should go for the largest and most powerful you can afford. Of course quality is important too so stick to Japanese, German or Some Russian optics.

Why look at the moon with a pair of binos if your 20×60 already shows some of Jupiter’s moons…

I can see the moon without binos – do you mean bringing it a little closer?
Have a word your local camera retailer – that should give you a clue as to what you need – then search the net.
The moon? It doesn’t change much, you know…;)

Flood.™

Is there something cheap (say U.S.$ 300) that can be used to see the moon.

Actually, a good place to get Binos cheap is at auctions. There are literrally thousands of people who think bird watching might be good, or some other hobby might be fun… they buy a set of binos and then realise it wasn’t for them. The Binos then sit in a cupboard for a few years and then get sold in a car boot sale. Obviously check them before you hand out cash and test them outside at a descent range before you decide.

Ideally I would like variable power binos as I like to be able to search a large area looking for game but I also want magnification power to make sure what I am shooting at is what I want to kill. I haven’t found any that meet my needs ( probably something in the 5-16x mag range with an objective lens of about 50 to keep the weight and size down).

Just to make sure everyone understands what you asked (ie for others that don’t know what “Need to be at least 10×50.” means.) The first number is the magnification, while the second number is the size of the objective lens in mms. So a 10 x 50 has an objective lens that is 50mm and a magnification of x10. The size of the objective lens is important because the larger it is the more light it lets in and the brighter the image appears. It also makes the Binos heavier and larger however. The first number is the magnification and it does not mean that a x10 power makes things look 10 times bigger… it actually makes them look 10x closer. If you divide the objective lens size by the magnification you get the exit pupil size. That is the size of the focused image. If the exit pupil is less than about 5mm then you will have problems, especially in low light where the image looks fuzzy around the edges and shakes all over the place. This is because in low light your pupil will be a similar size or larger than the size of the focused image. If you want to use the binos in low light you should pick lower magnification binos with larger objective lenses. I personally use 7 x 50s which produces a bright clear image. At dawn or dusk I have some amber coloured filters to improve contrast for finding targets…

Regardless of the type and size at hand, looking at the night sky with a pair of binos is a relaxing and mellowing experience after a hard day of arguing war and politics. 🙂

Well, you could always try working instead…;)

Flood.™

Regardless of the type and size at hand, looking at the night sky with a pair of binos is a relaxing and mellowing experience after a hard day of arguing war and politics. 🙂

Absolutely true – nothing better than sleeping under the night’s sky on a clear summer night, and looking up through your binos!

Arthur

Not hunting but for aircraft, astronomy and occasional birding in the back yard.

Yes the 11X80’s are very nice. If I had only one choice I would pick them over the rest simply because they are good at everything I am interested in looking at. While a little heavy for some things a good tripod like a Manfotto usually solves that problem. I have never looked at the 20X60’s but I imagine they would be very good for airshows.

Regardless of the type and size at hand, looking at the night sky with a pair of binos is a relaxing and mellowing experience after a hard day of arguing war and politics. 🙂

Regards

Sauron.

Great collection you got there Sauron! You use them for hunting/birding/wildlife? With such a collection you can actually pic the scopes you need for a certain occasion, definately a good thing.

The light in those 11x80s should be absolutely fantastic, definately the sort of scope one could use for spotting US Army helos and other low-contrast ‘targets’. Same with the 25x150s, but i reckon those would be a bit too big for my purposes. I know a guy who made a shoulder-stock for a one-eyed 50×120 telescope, to at least have some control over it without using a tripod or some sort of improvised support. Unfortunately, walking with a big black tube with a shoulder stock is not really recommendable near military installations these days…

Softlad, Tento’s 20×60 are occasionally to be found on Ebay if you’re interested in one of those.

Softlad

IMHO the 10X50’s are about perfect for general use including airshows. For value it’s hard to beat the B & L Legacys as Flood has already pointed out – 5mm exit pupil, BK4 prisms, tripod socket, reasonable field of view and about 2lbs. Good for the night sky as well. 🙂 There are many other good choices of course.

I currently have 7X35’s, 7X50’s, 10X50’s, 11X80’s, 20X100’s and am looking for 25×100’s. I dream about a pair of 25X150’s.

Regards

Sauron