OK, the thermal demo night went well, here's my report
Thermal demo night at Schivas Estate, Aberdeenshire, 5 August 2021
We had nine people come along to the thermal demo evening, and all appeared to enjoy it.
The following thermals were set up side by side so that it was easy to make direct comparisons between them
T Ceptor Pro 55-3 thermal riflescope
I Ray Rico RL42 thermal riflescope
Pulsar Hellion 2 XP50 Pro thermal spotter
Pulsar Krypton FXG thermal front add-on fitted to an Athlon Midas HMR2.5-15x50 riflescope
We also had a Pulsar Thermion XQ50 mounted on a rifle with the rifle sitting in a hog saddle on Rekon tripod
There was also a HIK Micro lynx Pro 19 being handed around for people to have a look through (but not included in the scoring)
The weather was dry, overcast but no mist or fog, humidity about 90% and temperature about 13 deg C
All the thermals were set up at base magnification, white hot and with brightness and contrast around the middle of their settings range.
I know that there are almost certainly better settings than these for all the thermal scopes, and also that most people play round with the settings to find what is, for them, the “sweet spot”
Unfortunately there was not the time available to go through all the settings on each thermal with everyone who was there. Also, trying to remember the menu and command structure for five different thermals ain’t easy for an old fart like me!
We got lucky and had a fox appear in a freshly cut field below the place where we were viewing from and it’s range varied from about 150 -200 yards
At 200 yards, all four thermal scopes gave an image that was more than good enough to give a safe shot and, with the proper rifle and a reasonable shooter , a clean kill.
Even the HIK19mm gave an image of the fox at 150 yards which was good enough (given how it moved) to be confident that it was a fox and not a badger
Based purely on the image that each thermal produced (no prices involved) I asked each person to give a score out of ten for each of the 5 thermals;
Here are the results
| Thermal | Total score | Minimum given | Maximum given | Average |
| T Ceptor Pro 55-3 | 58 | 4 | 9 | 6.44 |
| I Ray Rico RL42 | 65 | 6 | 10 | 7.22 |
| Pulsar Helion 2 XP50 Pro | 80 | 8 | 9 | 8.88 |
| Pulsar Krypton FXG50 | 57 | 4 | 9 | 6.33 |
| Pulsar Thermion XQ50 | 66 | 5 | 9 | 7.33 |
Remember that there are lies, damned lies and statistics, so be very careful about reading too much into the results.
My main takeaways are:
- There’s nowt as strange as folk!!!!
- The Pulsar hellion 2 XP50 pro was the clear winner – one person gave it 8, all the others gave it 9,
- It rather blows a hole in the “17 micron is old hat, 12 micron is where it’s at” hype – and I’ll admit I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to going along with the hype.
- It looks like a 17 micron 25mK core with good software can do a better job than some 12 micron 40-50mK cores with different software
- There’s not a huge difference in the scores between the other four thermals and I was surprised the older Thermion XQ50 did so well compared to newer, more expensive thermals
- In the T Ceptor Pro 55-3 V RL42 battle, the RL42 came out on top with 5 people giving it a higher score and the only one giving the T Ceptor a higher score
These demo nights don’t happen without a lot of people helping out so I’d like to thank the following:
Clive Ward from the Night Vision Store for the use of the T Ceptor Pro 55-3
Ian Blackwood from Blackwood Outdoors for the use of the Rico RL42 and the superb Pulsar Helion 2 XP50 Pro (they could make the name a bit shorter tho!!)
Mike Mclellan from Ythan Field Sport Supply for providing the excellent location for the evening (and organising the timely appearance of a fox!)
Cheers
Bruce
)
or catch one I shall be in the Churchyard resting.
