T&T: Adequate binoculars

[Rich Gano]

I just disembarked a billion dollar guided missile destroyer last night.  I
was interested to note that all the binoculars worn by the officers and
enlisted men were the familiar blue 7X50 West Marine versions with compass.
This is probably a single ship preference, and the CO probably just felt
like spending the money for them - I'll be doing this work again next month
and will have a chance to check.

Being the owner of a couple of pair of 7X50 WM binocs (bought with all sorts
of coupons and special sale discounts at about half price), plus some 10X
stabilized Canons, I think the WM are superior to the junk I have seen on
other Navy vessels over the past few years.  Nowadays, my Canons are next to
me in daylight, and the WMs are handy when it's lumpy or dark.  My attitude
is that the way we boat, the binos will get mistreated by somebody (not me
or the admiral) and I am not going to spend big bucks on something that to
my eyes probably won't make any difference anyway and will get dinged up.  I
can replace a lot of half-priced WMs for the cost of some admittedly very
nice higher end optics.  I DO keep the stabilized binos strictly to myself
and protected.

During my active Navy service in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, we
used 7X50 Buasch and Lomb binoculars with date stamps of 1942 to 1944.
Because the Navy had a buzillion spare parts for them, they were in service
forever and were quite "adequate."  We'd turn over 10-15 pair for rehab
every time we went alongside a destroyer tender.  They may have had coatings
on the lenses, but I couldn't tell by looking at them like I can on modern
lenses.

At one time, I had a pair of personal 7-15X zoom binocs that served me well
for a deployment during daylight hours.  They were probably crappy binocs
from the collimation, lens coating, and sealing point of view.  I think they
eventually got dropped or something.  I was always told good pair of binocs
is a pair that has adjustments to the prisms for the purpose of
collimation - but don't try this at home.

For looking across the bayou from my family room at what is going on in the
on-going quarrel between our local population of derelict shrimp boat owners
and the county and nearby landowners, I have a couple of pairs of cheap,
unsealed "Ruby-coated" junk 7X50 binos.  I finally took them off the boat
when they started to get fuggy inside.  I recently spent several hours on
both pair disassembling them and thoroughly cleaning both sides of every
lens and prism in the full knowledge that the next stop could well be the
trash can.  The prisms were glued in with what looked like globs of
Marinetex epoxy.  I broke them free and replaced them after cleaning with
the jagged edges of the globs aligned such that no crack was visible to the
naked eye.  After a couple of tries, they are back in service and quite
clear and well enough collimated.

BTW, if you want to do a quick and dirty check of your collimation just put
the binocs up to your eyes while looking at an object.  Without changing
your focus or moving your head, quickly lower your binocs.  If the object
does not appear to swim about as your eyes uncross from poorly collimated
binos, you're good to go. Otherwise the eye strain will be a killer over
time.  This test, as well as looking backwards through the glasses to check
for prism cracks or smudging, was performed by us Naval officers every time
we came on watch.  I can remember at times rejecting several sets before I
was happy.  It was a good practice to check your lookouts' binocs too.

And remember what Admiral Gorschkov, the head of the Soviet Navy for almost
the whole Cold War said, "'Better' is the enemy of 'Good Enough.'"

Rich Gano
CALYPSO (GB42CL #295)
Panama City, FL