I’ve done some testing with some different materials. Burlap and jute. Those kinds of things. I also experiment a lot with nylons, I think a silverized nylon is what proapto is actually based on (their thermal blocking suit, not their ghillie) Here’s a link to one of my experimental videos where I test four different patterns and materials in one go. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aMl7qNRm2cmZn3k.htmlsi=56abmX0UAO_GNRXe Check out my other videos. I actually spend a lot of time testing everything from wool to jute to bubble wrap to copper mesh and on and on.

Interesting thank you!

You do realize the purpose of this channel don't you? Its not to tell people to go buy thousand dollar gear that is often law enforcement or military restricted and impossible to obtain for certain civilians. I test common everyday readily available materials for their effectiveness for the common person who is curious about how these things image on thermal. I also myth-test materials that urban legend says are effective, but maybe are not. This particular video, is a myth test. This video is looking at commonly held myths about the absolute effectiveness of space blankets against thermal in any conditions and at any range. Most people have no idea what they actually look like on thermal. I can argue with people over space blankets until I'm blue in the face, or, I can just record it and show people from a somewhat neutral perspective so they can figure it out on their own. Like I did here. You were apparently so anxious to name-drop top-shelf brand-name military grade gear to try to look smart, that you completely missed the whole point of the video. Bravo. Slow clap. lol. Next, those things you are touting above, ProApto, Saab., etc., have limited usefulness and function as well. There are many DIY signature suppression methods that are darn near as effective as those three you mentioned, or roughly equivalent in effectiveness, for a fraction of the cost, and that don't come with civilian restrictions. ProApto even came over and left comments in my channel awhile back trying to challenge me and my findings saying basically the exact same thing you did with the same look-down-their-nose connotation you did, just buy their stuff because its better. Well guess what, when I challenged them to put up or shut up, and let me do a real world side by side with their gear and some of my experimental designs, under real world conditions and without their ability to veto publishing my findings, guess who tucked tail and ran. ProApto. Suddenly they had nothing to say. Because the real answer is that all this military grade and high end stuff is on average only about 85% effective at signature suppression. Which is roughly the same numbers generated with good civilian experimentation. these manufacturers are all carefully crafted showings and restricted results showings under their specific guidelines and circumstances. But the reality is that when you hit the field and you're out in the real world, things are different. Have you actually looked at Saab's design, their material? From inches away? I have. I know what it looks like and how much signature suppression is gained from it. At distance, under thermal, in the real world, there is a difference between civilian and professional signature suppression modalities, yes, but its nowhere near the difference you apparently think it is if its being designed by someone who actually looked at and studied this stuff. And the difference in price, hundreds to thousands of dollars, for a couple percentage points of difference, that really means little to no difference in the real world, makes no sense to the common person, who, lets face it, is the person watching my videos. Hello common person. The perfect comparison is night vision. I own gen 3, autogated, OMNI VIII, L3, unfilmed, white phosphor, aviation grade, 2500+ FOM night vision. Essentially the top shelf. I own own lower end, gen 1 and gen 2 night vision. I used middle grade Gen 3 night vision as a cop. I've used other peoples middle grade gen 3 night vision. I know, firsthand, experience, moving through darkness, multiple terrains, operating weaponry, etc., how these differences perform. And I can honestly say, buying a good average gen 3 night vision at roughly $3 grand, you will be able to do pretty much everything you can do if you bought the $5 grand tube. Only you'll have an extra two grand. Thermal signature suppression is just like night vision. There is a curve whereby spending more money will get you better results, but that curve flattens after a point, and you can continue to throw huge amounts of money at it, and the returns become more and more diminishing after a point. That's just reality. You don't actually gain that much more buying the best of the best. A Daniel Defense rifle will still fail sometimes. A Trijicon optic can break. A Steiner IR laser can get fuzzy. And its still possible I see your signature at 100 yards whether you are in off the shelf DIY signature suppression gear or name brand Saab thermal suppression gear. Its just reality. Thanks for stopping by.

And if you really veg it up with 550 like you were going on a true stock does that make a difference because I hear the insurgents and Iraq used wall blankets to be our flir

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it get down into the 20's in Flagstaff, and 30's to 40's in Phoenix? I would say you would be just fine in this. This was probably filmed in approximately those temps. If it was summer here during filming, I wouldn't be wearing this much blocking. You don't need this much blocking when its warm. You need it when its cold. Body heat shows up much easier when your background and ambient temperatures are freezing. You have a temperature differential of almost a hundred degrees on an imager that is sensitive to differences of less than one degree, and there is going to be nothing in the environment around you even somewhat close to your temp to help obscure your signature. Of course you need more blocking materials. However, when its baking hot outside, like 100-105 in the shade, you don't need the massive blocking materials because your body temp of 98.6 is already basically ambient temp. There's only a couple degrees of difference, and those couple degrees of difference will be shared by numerous objects in the environment around you absorbing, radiating and reflecting temperatures in the same range as your body heat, from rocks and concrete to car body metal and fence posts. It takes much less effort to mask your signature in such a thermally cluttered environment. Thermal signature evasion is never a one size fits all approach. You have to do something appropriate to the environment you are in. Its just like camouflage. There is no one size fits all approach. You don't wear dark green and black woodland pattern and stand in a sea of uniformly light brown dry grasses and expect to be hidden. Likewise, you don't wear snow print camo while in the jungle. Your comparison is pretty much exactly this. I showed an example of snow pattern and you said it wouldn't work in the jungle. Well, yeah. And? lol. That shouldn't be surprising to anyone. lol. :) I guess the root of the problem is there is a fundamental misunderstanding of thermal evasion concepts and the thermal technology generally in the mind of the public. But that's okay. No one starts off knowing everything. That's why people come to channels like this. So they can learn. :) Have a great day, thanks for watching, and thanks for creating an interesting opportunity for discussion and for learning to take place.

Shouldn't heat up

Thanks! Life interfered. How rude of it! Lol. Still have plans to begin Making more vids. Just time gets in the way. I’ll probably try to force something out, just to get things rolling again. It’s easier if I’m already regularly making vids. Its a psychological hump to get over when it’s been awhile. Ah well. I’m here, and it’s good to see you too!

okay, im curious... what did you see? You can't drop something like that and walk away! :D As to your question, no. The aurora did not image at all. I brought the thermal and night vision out ebcause I wanted to get footage of the aurora on both. Only, once I used them both, i realized the aurora didn't image at all. I actually wound up useing the thermal to differentiate clouds from aurora because the clouds imaged brilliantly, and the aurora was simply not there on thermal, it was just clear sky. So I was able to determine what was could and what was aurora, even when the aurora was only white and had no color, and was diffuse and hazy and not moving much and just kinda looked like clouds. Before it kicked into high gear and turned colors and started beboppin' at higher speed.

PS, for the record, I've seen some stuff I can't explain on thermal and night vision too. So no worries about judgment here.

@ThatThermalGuy yeah I was just glassing across my pasture one night, I'm sure you're familiar with what that looks like, set on white hot, cool evening, grass showing up black, tree trunks/limbs all white. I'm scanning back and forth, and slowly, what looks like a beam of light starts showing up in the thermal shining from east to west across the pasture, and it was fairly focused. It lasted several minutes and then it just slowly faded out. It was wild. Like a focused beam of heat.

my thermal didnt pick up anything unusual in the sky, just clouds, i was more so using it to keep an eye out for freaking coyotes that kept coming around to check me out

@@ThatThermalGuy also for the record, while watching a commercial jet fly over head through thermal i saw one object seemingly fly from the left of the plane to just below it and then off to the right straight and fast and made no sound. at first i thought i was being distracted by a bird, but a split second later i was like wtf was that? i checked pubic info radar sites about air traific over head and the "ufo" was not listed. i know its sometimes hard to judge depth and therefore speed of an object but this thing was silent, fast and flew perfectly straight until it was too small to see and this was at 1am. i looked up what sort of birds fly at night and landed on nothing. i want to see what a small dji drone looks like through thermal, but man it felt like it was too fast for that, and was evenly lit up, not at the four corners like id think a drone would be. also, i see a lot of air craft and satellites with IR that are not listed anywhere that can find. im guessing us military on the air craft, and chinese or russian satellites on the other stuff

I also saw it in WA on may 10-11. Today I finally found what it was 🎉

Oh man!! I’m so sorry! It wasn’t a constant thing, like, the first two hours I was out there I honestly had trouble being able to tell what was clouds and what was Aurora. Both white. Both hazy, both moving slowly. Both in the sky. I actually went back inside and grabbed a thermal camera. Because Aurora are charged particles, while clouds are moisture. The clouds imaged in thermal camera. The Aurora did not. For two hours of sitting out there, that’s how I could tell which was which they looked so similar. I finally gave up and went back inside, only to have a friend text me and tell me to go back outside. When I did, I looked up and it was purple and green. And that lasted for like, 10 minutes. Lol. So they are very finicky picky things and are very much dependent on being in the right place at the right time. I’m sorry it was a low pan out for you. Next time maybe. I know I’ve been waiting since last October/November. My neighbor got a purple and green picture right over my house and I missed the whole thing. I was very upset and I’ve been waiting half a year for this one, and almost missed it too. :)

Thanks for watchin'!

I've seen something questionable that was higher than typical airliner altitude during the daytime.

Yeah, I've seen that stuff too. More often than I expected. There are satellite tracking maps that HAM radio guys use, free use, on the internet, so you can map everything in the sky above you at a certain time. There are also air traffic control map you can access for free to show flight paths over your place at a certain time. Whats really interesting, is when you capture odd things on scope, and then go and cross check those maps, and there was nothing officially there!!

@@ThatThermalGuy yep, and here in Alaska the flight paths are few and fairly static so it's easy to tell something is out of the flight path. The sweeping turns and right angle turns at that speed make me think. Drone? Black project craft? Or actual UFO?

Thanks! Its fun seeing the world through a new perspective. :D

Love finding neat things. :)

Exceptionally strong/hot lasers would likely show rapidly in thermal, but they would definitely show on night vision as well. Very strong lasers are bright enough to damage night vision, and there are actually filters designed to screw into the housing to prevent damage to night vision by accidental exposure to bright green lasers (strong targeting lasers, like, for marking targets like tanks). As for IR aiming lasers, they are routinely used in conjunction with, and are designed for use with, night vision. So yes, they will be very detectable with night vision. Night vision and thermal both operate within what is considered the IR spectrum. IR is a relatively large band, and the two devices may operate with IR, but they produce very different results as they are on opposing ends of the IR spectrum which visualize differently from each other. 😁

Thermal vision is a specific subsection of the IR band. Depending on where you are at in the IR band, what and how you see is drastically different.

I have not. Since I had no indication of a laser showing on thermal in any capacity (red, green, or IR), I stopped trying with them. I can see if anyone I know has a blue laser to try with, but I don’t think the difference in light wavelength will matter much. But it is an interesting question.

I just use a tripod and a regular green laser and hold my thumb against the spot for a few second then go back to the scope and adjust it. The official army doctrine for zeroing a TWS is to just boresight and have a buddy hold two fingers on either side of the boresight spot and then dial the sight in. The army uses TWS on machine guns that have tracers, so they aren't concerned with super high accuracy in zero like we are.

@@DaveSmith-cp5kj I like that. Good simple method!

It has been a couple years since I looked into this, so I am not positive, and I’m certainly not providing legal advice. Lol. But from what I remember, you are correct. Gen 3 is banned from exportation. But Gen 2 is not. And you can get a very good Gen 2 that will darn near rival most Gen 3 tubes in the UK (I know because several in my audience were in the UK and sought my advice prior to purchasing). The higher end Photonis Gen 2 tubes thst cost as much as Gen 3, have similar performance to Gen 3. The biggest difference between Gen 2 and Gen 3 is their light concentrating capability (gain). Some of the high end Gen 2 tubes darn near match or exceed the low end Gen 3 tubes in gain. And they are available overseas and in use by UK police forces and the like to my understanding. My video here was a comparison of a budget NVG ($1500 today) and a top shelf NVG ($5000 today). A top shelf Gen 2 will give you really good performance. It’s just not a budget device. So don’t let this video dissuade you from buying Gen 2.

Ha! Breathable? Not much. Its a lot harder to beat thermal in cold weather. the smallest amount of heat leaking through gives you away, so I have to layer up like that when its below freezing. You stay warm. But yes, prolonged activity, especially vigorous activity, can get uncomfortable. Its like wearing a sweater when its 80 out. Its bearable, you can do it and be okay. You'll sweat faster with less activity, and you'll be uncomfortable. But its not bad. its just like that. The other side is you don't have to seal it up until you believe there is active threat / tracking. meaning, more airflow, and more comfort, until you actually need to seal it up. The other positive, is you can lay directly in the snow for extended periods of time without any discomfort at all. It blocks the cold. Which is great for recon / sniper / hide observations where you need to stay low and motionless for long periods of time. So ups and downs. In the summer you need less layering / blocking as the sun heats up the environment around you. A normal ghillie suit without any additional layering can be enough depending on surroundings. The background clutter can be so intense in some locations that if you can just block about 60% of your signature (normal ghillie) you'll disappear. :)

Absolutely. Looking top down can be easier to mask. Smaller target cross section. You need to ensure the tops of legs (front thigh) and bottoms (rear from knee to heel) have some kind of protection as well, those areas would flash out from under the protective cover while moving. Otherwise, a good thermally lined hooded cape or poncho could do the trick nicely. Especially if wearing a backpack and a helmet. The helmet would keep heat from head from direct contact with poncho/hood, and backpack would keep poncho/cape from direct contact with body as well. You could roll up a sweater and wrap it around the backpack straps over the shoulders to create an additional stand off to keep the cape/poncho from contact with the body. The name of the game is air gap. The more distance you keep between your hot body and whatever you put over the top of you, and the thicker the material you use, the slower the migration of heat up through the poncho/cape, and the smaller your signature remains. Personally, I like umbrellas for thermal screening from above. Umbrellas block rain from above just as well as thermal signature observation. Like I said, you’ll want to be careful with movements to ensure legs stay concealed or employ additional protection. See my umbrella vid here: m.kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g62PjZl1tLu9mKc.html

Thanks for the feedback! I'm always happy when someone finds my stuff useful. :)

I wish I had something for you, but that budget is a killer when it comes to thermal. But regardless, I'm not sure of any timelapse thermals that are under $10k. I'm sorry. You can always just run a thermal camera for a long period of time, and then condense the video in post using video editing software. Thats the best Ive got for ya.

Thank you very much for the information.

I pretty much agree with you across the board. I’ve used lower end Gen 3 and yeah, you still need IR illuminator in exceptionally dark instances. It’s not a common occasion where the benefit of a high end Gen 3 really shines through. Gen 2+ would suffice for most people, like you said, and serve well for the majority of situations people would use it in.

It’s all about difficulty of conditions. My Gen 2 does a great job 70% of the time, a acceptable job another 10% of the time, but the last 20% is where the Gen 3 really shines and the Gen 2 falters. It’s under exceptional conditions / difficult conditions that the difference really shows up in a glaring way. And this difference can be mitigated with IR illuminators under most conditions, or by staying closer to the city or staying out in open spaces where the ambient light helps. But if you really have to be out in nasty weather in exceedingly remote locations, or under dense tree cover, yeah, Gen 3 definitely has the edge.

Thats some serious praise! much appreciated! I will admit, I was surprised at the results too. I didn't have high hopes for such a commonly available, cheap and abundant material. I was pleasantly surprised when I watched the footage... :)

A company called Fibrotex created a special suit called nightwalker. Could you do a review?

No no no. No one’s an idiot. If this video made you think about or question something you believed, that’s a good thing. Learning something new, that you never had the ability to know before, does not ever make someone an idiot. And in fact, the willingness to see another possibility and be open to alternatives shows you absolutely are not an idiot. It’s good. We’re good. No worries.

I just pinned a previous comment and reply under that video that addressed this very thing. I’ll copy and paste portions of my reply here, as it’s a lot to type, and nothing has changed. -- Three heavy criticisms of their footage. 1) Distance. 2) Focus. 3) Obscurants. 1) They did not replicate the predator movie camera distances, or they would have had results just like mine. They filmed from dozens to hundreds of feet away (depending on which part of their video you watch). See their video timestamp at 7:18. They are completely across the pond and probably about 80 feet or so away likely further. Even the vehicle, a full size 4 door pick up truck, is small and takes up only a quarter of the viewfinder screen. They are at a minimum 60 feet away (if magnification is 1x, which most thermals are higher than), and they are probably closer to 80 to 100 feet away. So an entire persons signature is tiny on that thermal screen and already blunted by distance and volume of thermal clutter (background) in the viewfinder with them. The volume of thermal clutter in the viewfinder has A LOT to do with how strongly a thermal resolves a signature. The further back you film, the more junk is in the viewfinder, the more thermal variation the unit has to assign colors to and it blunts resolving a signature. Filming from 5 feet away (like the movie, like my video, like the Iran myth) to filming from 80 feet away (like corridor crew) is a HUGE difference. A typical leather jacket would probably blunt your signature the same amount as the mud at that distance. Maybe better. In the back half of the video, they are hundreds of feet away walking through woods. In the predator movie, the alien (the thermal imager) was right on top of Arnold, at roughly 5 to 10 feet away tops. These guys did not run their tests at the distances shown in the movie (the distances I filmed). At their timestamp 7:41 to 7:45, for that brief moment, you can see what filming at a reasonable distance (roughly 20 feet) looks like. The individual is absolutely COVERED in mud, and yet, you can see them in perfect detail, the folds of their clothing, their arms, legs, head, skin, the areas of mud that have heated up, etc. The person is undeniably obvious. These four seconds out of their entire 15 minute long video are also the only in-focus video we get to see. I don't know why they cut this clip short and instead went on to present largely blurry, out of focus, and distant shots to justify a claim that mud defeats thermal. But regardless, it takes us to criticism number 2. 2), Their footage was extremely blurry in most of the shots. Let their video play from the timestamp indicated above and stop it at 7:19. I know those are additional vehicles in the viewfinder, but they look like someone smeared vasoline over the lens while pointing it at a couple burn barrels knocked over on their sides. Or like my kids fingerpainting when he was 3. That is ridiculous focus and should not be put out to the public as if that is representative of common thermal imagers or to use that footage as justification to claim mud defeats a thermal. For an example of how clear a thermal imager can be at extreme distances and under extreme circumstances, go look at my forest fire thermal video. ( kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d9uJqLCqmKfOlKM.html ) at timestamp 0:27 in my video. There is a pick up truck and a person standing next to it, filmed at roughly around 200 yards away, probably 7 times the distance these guys are filming, AND I have multiple gigantic blazing fires surrounding them in the viewfinder between me and the truck. A forest surface fire burns at 1,472 F to 2,192 F. So this is easily 1000 degrees of temperature disparity in my viewfinder, and yet my thermal can still produce a sharp edged image of a pick up truck clearer than their footage seven times closer and with no thermal interference. The level of blurry in their video is inexcusable and NOT representative of a thermal cameras ability to resolve an image. 3) Obscurants. They put a person behind a dense network of branches and obscurants. Literally placing large amounts of mass between the thermal camera and the target. This is no different than putting bricks in between the camera and the target. Or a wall. The more stuff you put in the way to block a target from being seen, the less you see it. This ain't rocket science. By the same token, this also is NOT using mud to defeat a thermal imager. Its using a third party mass to obscure the visibility of the target from the camera. No different than walking behind a wall. The mud has minimal to no impact when you literally block the target from view by sticking a bunch of junk in the middle. Then they claimed the mud defeated the imager. No. You threw a bunch of mass in between the imager and the target. That defeated the imager. It wouldn't make any difference if the target was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, or naked and covered in mud, if you throw a bunch of mass in the way, you can't see them. The mass obscures the signature. In their testing by the pond, they put the dude in a dense bunch of branches with huge sections of literal log (Its a downed tree!!) between the target and the camera, and then they walked around to the left to get as much of the wood mass, log/branches/twigs as possible in the viewfinder between the target and the camera. Then they presented this like it was mud masking him. No. It was wood mass masking him. At 8:34 they even say the quiet part out loud "however, a couple more branches and hes gone" they didn't say another handful of mud and he's gone. They said branches. Wood mass. Its the obscurants doing the work. Not the mud. And they even said it. And then they also state the other part I already called out above at 8:51, saying "at a long enough distance it might work". So... To summarize. They said literally to put a bunch of mass between the thermal and the target, and view it from far away, and it might work. Yeah, that means its not the mud working. Because that is NOT what the film portrays, and thusly what urban legend says. The film portrays a thermal imager being defeated from five feet away with a clear unobstructed view of the entire upper body simply by an extremely skimpy layer of mud. THIS is the fiction that is passed around as urban myth/legend. And its wrong. I'm disappointed with them, but not angry. Dont read the all caps as yelling, its emphasizing a point. I am actually subscribed to one of them, and I like their content usually. I'm just disappointed. In the end, they're popular, with millions of viewers, so their video will now get passed around like gospel by people who trust them, and it will go on to reinforce the incorrect myth. In fact, I've already found an article written in the last three days citing their video as undeniable proof that firmly finally puts the controversy to bed, that Arnold would have been safe from the predator (and all the naysayers were wrong), and therefore, a skimpy layer of mud will hide you from a thermal imager 5 feet away from you. Sigh

Exept all your points is bs They were close and obscurans were in movie