I've been playing around with these recently and they've turned out to work pretty well if you want to shoot steel at night and don't want to use a propane torch.
I spent a couple years struggling with shooting steel at night with various LWIR thermal scopes and clip-ons. The main issue that the spot where I often shoot longer range is out in the high desert with lots of rocks and sage brush, and unheated IPSC steel just tends to blend into the background or totally get lost unless I'm right up on it.
For a while I was using propane torches to heat up the steel so they would be easier to pick up with thermal, but it was a bit time consuming, I went through a lot of propane, and it often resulted in uneven temperatures across the target and wouldn't last very long on cold nights. Then I randomly stumbled on these electric heaters that you install onto the steel from IR Tools. It's not something you just put on/take off - you've got to install it with a thermal paste, so the heating element is permanently on there with a wired connection to the power source. They've got a few 12v/24v options to power them, including BA5590 bricks though I think that's too expensive and overkill unless you need them going for a very long time. Instead I got the cable with alligator clips and velcro'd some fairly inexpensive 12v 10Ah lithium batteries to the rear of the plates.
I did some initial testing in the garage and used a Skeet IRL to see how the plate heat up over time.
After just a few minutes the center of the front face of the target was glowing
Unheated steel to the left for comparison. By 10 minutes the entire heated plate was a uniform white.
Last night I did some tests with a Voodoo-S and detection was very easy, even out to 800 yards. For shits and giggles I did a comparison through MWIR so you can see unheated vs heated...
Unheated IPSC
After 20 minutes of heating
The heating is very minimal - they aren't even warm to the touch, but it's plenty for LWIR to get a solid color that stands out from the background. Those 12v batteries kept the targets heated for at least 3 hours in 50F weather.
I spent a couple years struggling with shooting steel at night with various LWIR thermal scopes and clip-ons. The main issue that the spot where I often shoot longer range is out in the high desert with lots of rocks and sage brush, and unheated IPSC steel just tends to blend into the background or totally get lost unless I'm right up on it.
For a while I was using propane torches to heat up the steel so they would be easier to pick up with thermal, but it was a bit time consuming, I went through a lot of propane, and it often resulted in uneven temperatures across the target and wouldn't last very long on cold nights. Then I randomly stumbled on these electric heaters that you install onto the steel from IR Tools. It's not something you just put on/take off - you've got to install it with a thermal paste, so the heating element is permanently on there with a wired connection to the power source. They've got a few 12v/24v options to power them, including BA5590 bricks though I think that's too expensive and overkill unless you need them going for a very long time. Instead I got the cable with alligator clips and velcro'd some fairly inexpensive 12v 10Ah lithium batteries to the rear of the plates.
I did some initial testing in the garage and used a Skeet IRL to see how the plate heat up over time.
After just a few minutes the center of the front face of the target was glowing
Unheated steel to the left for comparison. By 10 minutes the entire heated plate was a uniform white.
Last night I did some tests with a Voodoo-S and detection was very easy, even out to 800 yards. For shits and giggles I did a comparison through MWIR so you can see unheated vs heated...
Unheated IPSC
After 20 minutes of heating
The heating is very minimal - they aren't even warm to the touch, but it's plenty for LWIR to get a solid color that stands out from the background. Those 12v batteries kept the targets heated for at least 3 hours in 50F weather.
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