I’m pretty new to the night vision game, but I’m ironically not a noob to night vision mounts. I’ve used more rhino arms than I can count, a Norotos TATM, a Wilcox L3 G11, two Wilcox L4 G24s, ANVIS mounts and now this Norotos INVG.
I wholeheartedly believe that the Wilcox L4 G24 is a gold standard in night vision dovetail mounts, but I do believe it’s an imperfect system. For monoculars and more rigid systems such as the RNVG, you’re putting out about 5 inches of night vision device in front of your head, but that’s the price to pay for having 2” jut out from your helmet with an additional 2-3” from the nods. I use a PVS-14 unit with a Norotos Dual Dovetail Adapter, so in total, I have about 3” of nods sticking out of an L4 G24 for the aforementioned 5” stowed night vision unicorn fiasco. My other option is to run a Wilcox dovetail J-Arm, which does slightly reduce the profile of the PVS-14 unit while maintaining a dovetail shoe interface, however, that J-arm system is imperfect and comes with its own set of issues to my knowledge.
Initially, I believed I had a weight issue with my helmet; with everything on it, my helmet was close to 6 pounds. I realized I was actually losing the center of gravity with the PVS-14 DDA and L4 G24 combination even with a Team Wendy Cam-Fit and counterweight on my Airframe helmet. The best option on the market for monocular night vision mount was the Norotos INVG. The Norotos INVG’s selling point is its ability to swivel to the left and right in the stowed and forward position which provided the benefit of being able to swivel the nods out of the way during use and in stationary phase.
After a few weeks of searching gear pages and messaging my gear buddies, I was able to get a hold of a guy selling his mount. Price I won’t discuss.
So here are my few impressions and observations with the INVG:
1) A force-to-overcome mode of flipping the mount down
2) A force-to-overcome mode of swiveling the mount side-by-side
3) The rigid Norotos quality (albeit with some arm play)
Upon mounting up my PVS-14s onto the INVG and trying the INVG on the swiveled and stowed position, I immediately noticed that the center of gravity immediately returned to the center of the helmet unlike what I experienced with the L4 G24. Granted, the Airframe ATX with all of gear I have on it alongside the nods and mount still weighs almost 6 pounds, but the distribution of the weight was significantly better than when I had the L4 G24 with PVS-14s.
The operation of the INVG is smooth and easy, albeit, the L4 G24 did spoil me a little bit… I’m so used to pressing a button down in order to smoothly flip my nods down, so the force-to-overcome was a little bit of a learning curve. At times I would be looking for a button on the INVG that didn’t exist only to remember it was force-to-overcome. But that’s more of an issue of my ignorance/being accustomed to the mount. Overall, I have little complaint here about its operation, it’s intuitively a Norotos design.
The negatives fall moreso under pet peeves/issues inherent in any night vision mount. The minimal amount of play in the arm comes from usage as well as minute tolerances, however this mount isn’t going to break on you during usage. Mount play is an inevitability, especially during extended usage. Additionally, I use a Wilcox L4 shroud, so the little tolerance difference between the Norotos mount and the Wilcox shroud does result in some play, but nothing a little electrical tape can’t fix.
Overall: A solid mount that offers the features I require for stowing up a monocular night vision device. The L4 G24 is significantly better for dual tube night visions that can articulate, but the INVG is excellent for monoculars.
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