DNT Optics TNC225R - ThermNight scope

[LRRPF52]

For those of you who have used several different Thermals, is that switchology intuitive to you?

[Double Naught Spy]

For those of you who have used several different Thermals, is that switchology intuitive to you?

Take no offense by my response as I am not trying to be argumentative or anal about word meaning. This is a pet peeve of mine, so take my response in the informative manner which I intend. I have watched countless scope reviews and reviewers often claim that this or that scope is "intuitive" to use. NO electo-optics (digital NV or thermal) are intuitive to use. I have tried them on my parents and my children and they have no idea what they are doing. If the optics were intuitive, they would be able to work them, right? That IS what intuitive implies.

In the electro-optics realm, I have come to learn that "intuitive" means that one is already indoctrinated into the group-think of scopes common in the field. For me, a so-called "intuitive" electro-optic is one I can learn to use in about 5 minutes of pushing buttons BECAUSE I have a lot of previous experience. I have worked with several scopes for which I never had to read the manual, and several more that I only needed to figure out the zeroing process. Most of these optics are set up with very similar types of firmware and hardware controls, maybe configured a little differently, but similar overall For me, using this scope is about like going from a MacIntosh to a Unix computer system. You can learn either one, right, but the one you start with is your intuitive basis.

DNT Optics has been very innovative in how they set up their firmware and controls, similar to, but very different than many other electro-optics. So a lot of what should be "intuitive" to me doesn't work with the ThermNight, but the ThermNight works well, just differently. You aren't just going to pick up this scope, slap it on a rifle, get it zeroed and hunt without doing a lot of reading. Anybody can learn the system, but I would suggest that a bright person with no previous experience may learn to use their system quicker than a person with more experience.

The scope is more complicated than most others because it does virtually everything that digital and thermal electro-optics can do. Being able to do all that is part of what makes this scope so FREAKING COOL.

So the problem is that this is a fairly complex scope to use in the sense that it does so many things. It has 7 buttons and a zoom wheel. The zoom wheel and image switch button are the only ones that do only one thing, but even then the image switch button switches between digital or thermal images unless you are in the Picture in Picture dual mode and then it switches the PiP with the main image (which I used a lot), but as you see from Jasper's copy of the user manual page, individual buttons do a myriad of things depending on where you are in the menu or whether you have thermal or digital (day or night vision) up on the main screen. Button 6 has 13 different functions and has different functions whether you are in digital or thermal. Plus, you have to remember things like long press and short press on some of the controls, depending on where you are in the system.

Take for example, the Recoil Activated Video. On other scopes, you have RAV that you can activate and if you want to manually record, you just press the normal button for recording and you are recording manually, even if you have RAV activated. Under RAV with the ThermNight, you have Manual and Auto recording, but this manual recording is staged (10 seconds, or indefinite time). You can no longer just press a button and record for a period of time over 10 seconds. You must press and hold the record button so that you get that option, only I don't believe it tells you if you are in 10 second recording (because you didn't press long enough) or in full recording (because you did). Never mind you may be trying to do this under pressure of a hunting situation. I have no idea why somebody would want to record for 10 seconds only.

Now the beauty of RAV is being able to have the scope record for you when you forget to hit record. That is a real bonus. But then you are hindered with the same memory issue if you want to manually record and don't remember to press the button correctly or think you have, but the time dilation of a pressure situation causes you to misjudge how long you pressed.

This is an Entry Level Expert Electro-Optic. I don't know how else to say this. There is a lot to learn to master all of the nuances. You can try to learn each of the facets one by one, but nobody will. If you haven't spent time with thermal, you will have to learn all the advantage and shortcomings of using thermal (which is totally separate from the operation of the scope) and the ways in which the image can be manipulated by the scope to optimize your view. The same holds true for digital night vision where you will be using in IR illuminator and then you get to learn all about how that works and issues such as photonic barriers and why you can't see a critter on the other side of a bunch of dead tree branches (over illuminated compared to the target because of the IR illuminator) that you could see readily with thermal, for example). Plus, you get to learn how to use and read a laser rangefinder. Contrary to common belief, the distances told to you are not always what they claim. For example, you may have seen in my videos or other peoples that the LRF beam is not a pinpoint dot, but may be a half meter tall and 2 meters wide at a couple hundred yards. That may be significantly larger than the coyote you are trying to range. Are you ranging the coyote or something beyond the coyote that the LRF hits behind it. Sometimes a closer plant stalk gets hit by the beam and you get a distance well short of the target you are trying to range.

[LRRPF52]

No offense taken at all - quite the contrary, and this is the type of detailed feedback I was looking for.

I’m coming from 2 different worlds that have similar challenges:

* Aerospace MMI (Man-Machine Interface) for cockpit/pilot/control systems, weapons, and combat avionics

* Small Arms with “Own the Night” configuration electro-optical systems

The Aerospace side has far more features, sensors, weapons, countermeasures, fire control modes, and things a pilot has to learn to manage with what is called HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick).

The Electro-Optical-Equipped small arms are slowly adding more and more sensors, LRFs, ballistic computers, LAMs, TWSs, but with no real consideration for the overall system integration. Whenever I see velcro and cables, I start scratching and twitching because I know the realities of that from the grunt side. They freaking suck.

The problem is that electro-optics designers/manufacturers aren’t weapons-designers. Everybody is riding on the coattails of 1913 Rails systems attachment and calling it a day, but that isn’t cutting the mustard.

This sight has my interest peaked though.

[Double Naught Spy]

Finally finished the review. I have a couple of more hunts to process, edit, and upload to YouTube in the next few days, but this is the review...

[HighDesertDrifter]

Excellent, thank you for the review.