DIY thermal scope escape and evasion 

I recently acquired some of the thermal cloak material the US and Canadian military use. I am working on a video comparing these homespun alternatives I’m making to professional military grade right now. Looks promising.

Maybe hard nylon mesh will make it rigid enough to stay off the skin for most of the body and rest on the shoulders

​@@svrondo247the jute should disperse the heat in such a way it never shows up.

Oh now that’s a cool thought. :) that wasn’t even in my radar before

Who ever has a suit like that should send it in ao he can test it with his thermal

@@dandetande288 definitely would like to test that! In the meantime, I bought almost $100 bucks in fabrics today, different types and thicknesses of mesh, including “3D air space mesh”. I’m going to try to replicate this, a piece of thick 3D mesh sandwiched on both sides by heavy standard mesh. Should be breathable, but effective. Would love to get the new keeper suit described. Ready to go commercially available options are fantastic for the general public. :)

@@ThatThermalGuy how can i get ahold of you?

I’ve done many videos showing how quickly heat seeps through if it’s going to seep through, including time lapse videos which show that, on average, it takes less than two minutes for heat seep to normalize and then it reaches equilibrium with internal heat versus heat dissipation and no matter how long you wear it past that it doesn’t heat up any further. A simple and easy to follow and understand example is this: when you put on a jacket, does the outer surface of the jacket just continuously heat up until it reaches 98.6 F? The obvious answer is no. We don’t walk around with every article of clothing we don being essentially 100 degrees to touch. So there has to be a point at which the material stops heating and the loss of heat to the environment exceeds additional heat stacked on from the body. The point of that equilibrium occurs actually very rapidly. When you first put on a jacket, the material is cold. How long does it take to be comfortable? A minute or two? There’s that two minute number approximation again. Less than two minutes on average seems to be how long it takes to heat up. That’s it. That’s all. There’s a marginal time lag on transfer of heat through to outer shell, then the outer surface also quickly achieves equilibrium. I’ve done tests, checking attire on thermal prior to wearing it, donning attire and checking thermal signature immediately. Watching for a couple minutes until it achieves equilibrium, then I go out for a walk or hike, and spend half an hour to several hours out and about doing everything from sitting in a heated car to going on cross country hikes. Then when I come back, I compare my heat signature to the previous recordings. In most cases the difference hours later, including heated environments or freezing environments, sedentary or vigorous activity, are all rough approximations to what was achieved literally within the first two minutes of it being first put on. Watch some of my other videos. Don’t take my word for it. See it for yourself. I have lots of materials testing and time lapse videos showing what worked, and what failed, and in some cases, what failed spectacularly. If I’m showing something and saying it seems to be working, it’s because it did a decent job under multiple testing situations. I’m not selling anything, and I have a limited bias in findings here (I won’t say no bias, because everyone has some bias of some kind), but I try to present just factual material and actual recordings so people can judge results for themselves regardless of my opinion of the results. I think I have around 90 videos uploaded right now. At one point I had over 150. All doing just this. Testing materials and myths. Go watch my other vids. Most are downright boring and hard to watch because I’m literally just sitting there typing on a computer or watching a movie specifically to allow a material to heat up over time and then showing those super boring drool-fest videos of time lapses of me just sitting there doing nothing in high speed. I have plenty of videos if you want to see time lapse proof, or you want to see the effects I’m referring to for yourself. But one thing remains true through pretty much all of them. I’d say probably 90% of all the heating that’s going to happen, happens within the first minute, whether it’s a wool blanket, bubble wrap, burlap, aluminized tarp, ghillie suit, winter coat, etc. and by the end of the second minute, wherever you’re at, is pretty much where you’re going to be an hour later. The difference from minute 2 or 3 to minute 10 of 15 is pretty small, if you could even tell which was which in a side by side still-frame comparison without being told which was which. Go watch and see. Don’t take my word for it. :)

Here’s an example of a time lapse video I shot which very clearly shows the speed at which fabric heats up and then achieves equilibrium. This is around 40 minutes of actual time under materials (including added on layers) compressed into ten minutes with some sections sped up to show as much as fifteen minutes compressed into ten seconds of video. Again, almost all heating is finished within the first minute of the addition of any material, and cooling is achieved within one minute of the removal of a layer. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-U2l3XUSM9iE.html

I primarily do testing of normal over the counter commonly available materials for people looking to make their own thermal equipment on a reasonable budget of about a hundred bucks or less. $429 is not budget. Lol. It looks like it is probably effective though. It is based on similar design concepts to what I’ve seen elsewhere and some of the DIY stuff i have done. I have not tested it though. But layered mesh, like they have done, is a proven and effective strategy. I am skeptical though. I don’t see videos testing it except for short periods of time, and in those, I’m starting to see thermal bleed through right as they are terminating the video. Im not convinced on the overall end effectiveness. Ive seen SO MANY deceptive marketing videos for thermal gear. Im very skeptical until i can test it or i see a truly neutral third party test it. But i certainly think it probably does an excellent job compared to many systems from what I’ve seen so far. Thanks for bringing it up.

As with most things, it only takes a few minutes to heat up and stabilize. Think about it like this. It’s cold outside. So you put on a coat. How long does it take for that coat to get warm inside? 30 seconds? One minute? When does it stop increasing in temperature as you sit there? For most people, the answer is mere minutes. Maybe less. Same thing here. If i directly grab the material or if it’s in direct contact with my skin, it’s heated up in seconds. If I don’t and it has indirect contact, it takes a minute to heat up. But at that point, it stabilizes. A coat doesn’t get hotter the longer you wear it. It gets to a point, quite rapidly, of temperature it will keep and hold, and then it stabilizes. The materials I test are no different. You see the heat patterns within seconds to a minute. It may have a couple minute delay to push through a temperature change across an insulative barrier. But after that, what you see is what you get. I’ve tested this to make sure I’m not crazy. I’ve looked at the heat signature of myself and my son wearing different types of garments with different insulation properties, then walked around for an hour or two in the forest and come back and rechecked our thermal signatures. With very little exception the signatures are identical between the 5 minutes mark and the hour and a half mark. And that exception is mostly due to sweat if wearing only a t shirt in hotter weather. I have also walked around town, and in stores, shooting thermal imaging footage. The things people wearing have a specific point they heat up to and then stabilize. And that’s it. That’s all you get. For instance, in the video posted here, I was wearing that t shirt, blue jeans and boots for 5 hours before filming. But they weren’t glowing like the sun. And in the outdoor footage in this video you can see that my street clothes were actually generating a smaller heat signature than the ground and even the trees in some places. Despite wearing clothing with minimal insulation for five hours, dirt and bark was brighter than I was. Lol.

@@ThatThermalGuy that makes sense man thanks for the info. I would have assumed that the layers around you would eventually heat up and change too. Idk what's more tricky thermal or night vision, if you had infrared capability it would be cool to see if your camo will hide you from both

@@michaelsorenson3887 I actually have top tier night vision too. Autogated Gen 3 white phosphor L3 unfilmed aviation grade NVG. And I also have mid tier, Gen 2 gear as well. I don’t have as much time to get the night vision work done during summer because where I’m at it doesnt get dark until almost 1030 to 11 at night. In winter though, it starts getting dark at 430. So as winter comes I’ll have more NVG videos coming out since I’ll have more time to do them during waking hours (I have to get up at 5am for work so I can’t stay up very late).

@@ThatThermalGuy understandable, appreciate the content. I'll tune in and hope to see it one day if you ever have the spare time ✌️

Order different color jute strands and make your own.

Shouldn't heat up

I’m going to repost a reply I made elsewhere which mostly addresses this. :) As with most things, it only takes a few minutes to heat up and stabilize. Think about it like this. It’s cold outside. So you put on a coat. How long does it take for that coat to get warm inside? 30 seconds? One minute? When does it stop increasing in temperature as you sit there? For most people, the answer is mere minutes. Maybe less. Same thing here. If i directly grab the material or if it’s in direct contact with my skin, it’s heated up in seconds. If I don’t and it has indirect contact, it takes a minute to heat up. But at that point, it stabilizes. A coat doesn’t get hotter the longer you wear it. Otherwise they would be unbearable within minutes. Likewise, we couldn’t wear pants, or shirts, because if they kept getting hotter as the hours passed, we would all die if heat stroke from our clothing. But that doesn’t happen. It gets to a point, quite rapidly, of temperature the garments will keep and hold, and then it stabilizes. That’s it. The materials I test are no different. You see the heat patterns within seconds to a minute. It may have a couple minute delay to push through a temperature change across an insulative barrier. But after that, what you see is what you get. I’ve tested this to make sure I’m not crazy. I’ve looked at the heat signature of myself and my son wearing different types of garments with different insulation properties, then walked around for an hour or two in the forest and come back and rechecked our thermal signatures. With very little exception the signatures are identical between the 5 minutes mark and the hour and a half mark. And that exception is mostly due to sweat if wearing only a t shirt which gets soaked in hotter weather, the area that gets damp from sweat changes it’s signature slightly, and in general, it’s to the betterment of helping mask your signature. Remember, the purpose of sweat is to cause evaporative cooling. I have also walked around town, and in stores, shooting thermal imaging footage. The things people wearing have a specific point they heat up to and then stabilize. And that’s it. That’s all you get. For instance, in the video posted here, I was wearing that t shirt, blue jeans and boots for 5 hours before filming. But they weren’t glowing like the sun, right? They didn’t just keep getting hotter and hotter even though I was wearing them for five hours. And in the outdoor footage in this video you can see that my street clothes were actually generating a smaller heat signature than the ground and even sone of the trees in some places. Despite wearing clothing with minimal insulation for five hours, dirt and bark was brighter than I was. Lol. That’s why I’ve done the testing videos I have, with either some time lapse over the course of a minute or two, or sone activity for a minute or two, because that’s really all you need to showcase the properties of a material over time. All that said, returning to current, exposure to the elements rd changes a signature depending on whether you are in direct sun or shade. Your signature will change, as different materials heat and cool, absorb and radiate, and reflect, at different speeds. That’s part of why I’m an advocate of mixed materials in a ghillie whether you need them or not. If you use 100% polyester, then your entire suit heats, reflects, emits, etc at the same pace, and moving between sun and shade, you have a largely uniform response. Mixing in different materials breaks that up. Exampke, if nylon releases stores temp faster than polyester, and you have the two materials interwoven next to each other in ghillie strips, you get a blended jumbled affect, as opposed to a uniform blob effect. Lastly to the point you raised, you are running in a ghillie, while it does still blunt your signature, the act of running completely negates the purpose of the ghillie. You can be seen. So running is lnt really the way you test a Ghillie suit. When judging how well a ghillie works, are you doing that by looking at a model who is laying down is a matched environment as it’s intended purpose? Or are you doing it by watching someone wearing a ghillie go jogging down the street? No. You judge a ghillie by it’s a unity yo mask a person from detection when utilized as intended, in a matched environment, using proper stalking concepts. And just like you don’t go literally running up on a target in a ghillie as a sniper, you don’t go running up on a thermal imager as a hider. If you have to run, you run while you need to, and get to a place where you can effectively hide again, and then you hide again. And as you hide, you cool down again, just like wearing blue jeans in my video here, it returns back to normal temperature rapidly. :)

Love it. I wanted to try something similar as well. I saw British SAS use a rolled/folded mesh to create loops. I like your idea about using accordion stand offs on body contact points like shoulders where we traditionally have problems because of the contact heat up.

​@@ThatThermalGuy these loops you mention? Can you show something similar and their affect against thermal?

Hey there. I did one experiment on film with a loop mock up (and a few other tests). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2cKuq5tc5oE.htmlsi=28EgtbCYjWqF2hzA The looping was effective enough it warranted more testing. I have since re-run the test with more overlap between the loops so at any given point there is always at least two layers of loop fabric, and it improved performance over shown in this video (which was already good).

I replied. It had my email. I deleted it because I don’t want my email just floating out here. But RU-vid should have sent you an email of my post with the email in it.

Wait till November and say that

I think you are missing the point. Criminals HAVE thermal and night vision technology. Gangs, cartels, etc. So do average Joes, hunters, private investigators, etc. there are plenty of lawful reasons to want to know how this technology works and how to reduce its effectiveness beyond military/paramilitary training simulation events (paintball/airsoft/training) which you derogatorily refer to as “LARPing”.

What "threat of thermal detection"?!