Trench Periscopes: Supplemental

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so today we're going to be taking a look at some of the more technical aspects uh the adapters and settings and other things you might need if you want to turn an old school uh soviet trench periscope like this one into a more modern tool that you can use in today's world so let's get right to it we recently put out a video on the trench periscope it's history and some of the uses for it in warfare and things like that particularly in urbanized warfare and this is well this is a unique tool that we here haven't really seen a whole lot of uh content on like not a lot of people are talking about these and even though these are a very very useful tool even in the modern world especially in the modern world with with today's modern optics and things like that so uh if you want you can check out the video we already did on the history of this and uh some of the things to consider when trying to find one for yourself uh because these are getting kind of hard to find these days but uh in that video we had a few specific setups uh that we use to use these kinds of periscopes in a modern world for things like observation setting up ur in that video we had a few specific setups uh that we use to use these kinds of periscopes in a modern world for things like observation setting up urbanized observation posts things like that all right so before we get into talking about the actual periscope itself and some of the things that we can put on this device we're going to talk about how to carry it first so obviously this is just a essentially just a piece of steel pipe right with some mirrors and prisms in it and it comes normally if you were to buy these online they normally come in the classic old school soviet style case which is very distinctive now what i do with mine and some of the other staff here as well uh you can get creative and make your own case so that's exactly what i did i made uh several of these cases this is an earlier prototype that i made out of a camouflage material but if you're going to be doing this and using this in kind of an urban environment this piece of steel pipe is is not it's not it's just a little bit too long to fit in its normal standard assault pack or some kind of day pack if that's what you're going for so it's not going to fit inside so you're going to have to carry it usually ard assault pack or some kind of day pack if that's what you're going for so it's not going to fit inside so you're going to have to carry it usually strapped to the outside or something like that and this looks kind of suspicious when it's just the you know the bare tube here strapped to the outside of a pack it's kind of distinctive if nothing else it's a visual marker so what uh what tends to work out pretty well is making your own case this one if you'll notice is a lot different than the standard soviet style ones the periscope goes in here and here is an additional pocket that i sewed on this one just to kind of see if it would work again i would advise not making this out of a camouflage material i just did this because i had some extra materials as you can see all the buckles are different colors all the threads a different color so you know reduce reuse cycle right try to try to make use of all the other materials that we might not be using and in this case this is what this case is made out of now before we move on to the periscope let's talk about what's in the case so in this little zippered box here we have some of our adapters which we'll get out and we'll talk about riscope let's talk about what's in the case so in this little zippered box here we have some of our adapters which we'll get out and we'll talk about here in a second let's see here adapters and extensions and things like that i got a little multi-tool down in there just because you never really know but also i've got some of these these little tube camouflage devices so you can make these out of any kind of fabric i was just kind of goofing around and made one of these and thought hey this actually works out quite well so i've got these different camouflage tubes that can just slip right over the edge right over the end of the periscope itself as you can see here it's still kind of jagged with a little bit of mesh there and it kind of just disguises that main color so if you're trying to fit into a more specific area or something like that where this this tube shape might stand out this is something that works out very very well and you can kind of use some mesh here at the tip to disguise the uh the reflect the reflectivity of the periscope lens there if you're so inclined that tends to work out pretty well most of the time when you get these periscopes they're going to come in s eriscope lens there if you're so inclined that tends to work out pretty well most of the time when you get these periscopes they're going to come in so many different colors it's ridiculous because these were repainted and reused post-war most of them were made post-war and they've been painted about a million times so this one every single periscope that we have here is a different color like there's no standardization when it comes to this kind of stuff they're all a sort of olive green um or even like an old school khaki od green sometimes so depending on which color ones you've got in your environment you might find it to be a little easy to use some scrap fabric again taking advantage of of any materials you might have to make some of these uh slip covers for your periscope so i thought that was kind of an interesting thing that not very many people seem to be doing and i thought that was kind of handy uh for certain environments particularly ones where uh the tube color might not match your environment so all right so moving the case out of the way here for a second uh we can talk about some of the other stuff we've got here uh now on the actual periscope itself you might not case out of the way here for a second uh we can talk about some of the other stuff we've got here uh now on the actual periscope itself you might notice uh an adapter right here or it's at least it's functioning as an adapter we'll get to that in just a second first i wanted to talk about the custom adapter that i had to make uh to make this work so this this little adapter here allows the periscope to function with if i can find it here it is a tripod now this is very handy so having a small generic tripod i'm not even really sure who this company is but uh having a very small generic tripod is very helpful for um well really any surveillance in general if you're using some kind of optic but particularly the periscope this thing is pretty heavy uh it's it's several pounds and uh standing like this for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours a day gets a little bit fatiguing so if you can use a tripod to help you hold it or if you're trying to use optics with this you're going to need a tripod hands down this is a great way to do it so let me show you how that works because it's it it kind of took us a while to figure this out and one of our other staff members here kind of do it so let me show you how that works because it's it it kind of took us a while to figure this out and one of our other staff members here kind of figured out this configuration and i did my best to poorly recreate it on mine so this is the adapter that we can use now this is kind of a custom adapter this is really just a a uh a bicycle gopro mount uh that use is used for uh mounting a gopro to a bicycle handlebars now on mine uh the actual gopro part here broke off so this is a repair so i'm not really sure where you can get this anymore but i can tell you that this part right here these little ears here these are a custom part that can go on the uh gopro hero 8 i think this is the eight right yeah so you can actually replace the uh little ears here on the bottom of the eight and i think probably the 9 and 10 or whatever number gopro is on now you can replace this part you can maybe you can see it or not you can unscrew this take these little ears off and you can replace it with this now this allows you to screw the gopro into a tripod like a normal standard tripod uh like like this tripod head here this normal quarter inch screw i think this is what it is so using that replace ripod like a normal standard tripod uh like like this tripod head here this normal quarter inch screw i think this is what it is so using that replacement part for the gopro 8 which you can do is is quite uh quite interesting you can disassemble this mount fully here take the screw out better show take this rubber piece off on the inside as you can see there you can screw right through to the other side there into the back side of this little dog-eared mount now what this will do will allow you to now use this periscope with any gopro mount you might have and if you use gopros you know that the mounts for gopros are basically a an infinite money pit meaning that you can buy literally dozens of these things to mount your gopro in different spots and they're all kind of expensive so being able to reuse them and take advantage of existing hardware it lightens your load it reduces your cost and it's a pretty smart thing to do at least in my opinion so this device right here can help us attach the periscope to a tripod so let's go ahead and walk through that right now and now you have these little ears which can fold out and can interface with the tripod so what you need to do is you ca d walk through that right now and now you have these little ears which can fold out and can interface with the tripod so what you need to do is you can get yourself one of these standard gopro tripod mounts this is just a metal one and we can start attaching this to the tripod i know this already gets a little crazy with the adapters but once you've kind of dialed in your system and you've got all these little bits and bobs of hardware uh most of the most of this stuff i just had lying around um really the effort comes in with research and development and trying to figure out what works uh which hopefully we can help with by showing you at least what we're doing so we've got that in there on your tripod now you can take the ears of this little thing here and interfaces right in there we could take our pin sometimes it's a little challenging to get the uh screw here done but once we can get it in there i can get a screw shut um i prefer the metal options for a lot of this gopro stuff because even though it's a little bit the top tolerances are a little bit tighter it is a little bit easier uh in the long run so there we go now we've got the periscope all attached to the tripod and t nces are a little bit tighter it is a little bit easier uh in the long run so there we go now we've got the periscope all attached to the tripod and the cool part about it is you can you can do all kinds of stuff like you can if you've got a little ball joint you can change the angle at which this is at so now you're looking sideways out a window you might have to do a little bit of tightening and things like that on some of these parts but hey this works out quite well and it's a good little good little base to have everything situated on so now you've got a periscope oriented vertically you can do it either way you want i've had great success with actually reversing this and having the periscope go down through like sub flooring or something like that into a room below and that works out quite well uh also so there we go on the actual tripod let's move into some of the adapters themselves all right so getting into the actual periscope itself uh this device here on the bottom is a 1.5 inch scope ring with a picatinny mount here on the bottom now 1.5 inch scope rings are kind of non-standard so you'll find that they tend to be kind of expensive but the good part about this particul e bottom now 1.5 inch scope rings are kind of non-standard so you'll find that they tend to be kind of expensive but the good part about this particular setup here is that we're not exactly going for precision marksmanship or anything like that so you can actually use airsoft equipment and i'm pretty sure this is just like a normal scope ring for like an airsoft gun or a bb gun or something like that so that works out quite well because they're a little bit more common for whatever reason these little no-name branded chinese-made pieces of aluminum here that just kind of screw in and function like that now what we can do with this is kind of interesting so let's go ahead and talk about the adapter itself so this is a homemade adapter it might look a little janky but it's really it's really quite simple all it is is a 5 inch piece of angle steel here really just meant for shelving board and things like that uh which i've got some pic pick rail here on the top and on the side now what this allows you to do is attach this right here usually i use the the second uh second notch and as you can see there hopefully that kind of illustrates the concept here now you've got a base to mount o lly i use the the second uh second notch and as you can see there hopefully that kind of illustrates the concept here now you've got a base to mount optics behind the optic now obviously this is not perfect obviously it would be preferred to have some kind of non-air-gapped way of looking through this optic using another optic but it does work quite well we do this kind of thing all the time sort of in theory at least with things like flip up magnifiers which work quite well with this as well so this is a four times uh magnifier normally and if we can throw on another magnifier boom now we've got some flip up capability to to greatly increase our magnification now sometimes i've noticed that obviously you're going to get a little bit of wobble but i myself have found that this works out quite well you're able to focus by having that small air gap right there you're able to focus uh the periscope to get it just right and you're also able to adjust the diopter here to to get your focus right just so that it it's as clear as you could possibly make it so that's pretty cool a very interesting use if you have one of these flip up magnifiers or if that's something you use you can take ta ssibly make it so that's pretty cool a very interesting use if you have one of these flip up magnifiers or if that's something you use you can take take one off of a primary weapon or something like that and then there you go you've now greatly increased your magnification again once you start doing things like stacking glass in front of glass you're going to deal with a couple of different things like first of all you're going to deal with wobble and shake so that's why you have a good decent tripod to mount all of this on so that you're not wobbling all over the place right and then also the biggest the biggest factor is light transmission once you start stacking more and more glass that light has to go through this light to get to to your eyeball has already got to go through what like three feet of glass so adding in even more glass on top of that is not exactly good for low light conditions so you might find that that the using a flip up optic in low light conditions does not work very well one of the most useful and one of my personal favorite ways to use a periscope in a modern world with modern tech is to use a pvs-14 in conjunction with these periscopes so uh you can there rsonal favorite ways to use a periscope in a modern world with modern tech is to use a pvs-14 in conjunction with these periscopes so uh you can there's a lot of different ways to skin a cat with this and you can use a lot of different kinds of night vision devices my favorite is the old school pbs14 you can get parts like this you can get parts kits and just build these yourself they're not that hard to do or you can buy them from a retailer whatever you want to do is up to you we have a lot of other videos talking about night vision and things like that but uh really i just like the standard old-school pbs14 um with of course a very very high spec tube in there so you can use any kind of tube you want i've even used a periscope with with very poor well poor comparatively like gen 2 style tubes and it works quite well i will say that if you're trying to use this periscope at night this is mandatory like you have to have this because think about it you've got almost two feet of glass there that this uh this periscope that light has to come through so it's you really do need this because you cannot use these at night not even a little bit unless you're looking at a very bright light come through so it's you really do need this because you cannot use these at night not even a little bit unless you're looking at a very bright light source but even then good luck finding it with your four times magnification so let me show you how i normally set up this pbs14 to work with this so using our handy dandy l bracket here that's very stable what we can do is use one of these adapters now this is a pvs14 picatinny rail adapter the us government made a lot of these for the gulf war and most of them are on ebay so you can get these for pretty cheap and all they do is uh since these are kind of out of vogue in the tactical community you can find they're really easy to find still you just screw this into the bottom here and now your pbs14 can fit on a pick rail and it's just at the right height if i can unscrew this a little bit to get this bad boy to align with the focus ring and there we go so now we can have a pbs14 attached to our periscope all right so obviously this is a little bit cluttered we've tried experimenting with waze uh one of our other riders here is actually experimenting on a way to make this look a little bit less cluttered and be have a little bit more th waze uh one of our other riders here is actually experimenting on a way to make this look a little bit less cluttered and be have a little bit more functionality here but for me this works out really well um all the parts fit together they work it just it just works right so we've got enough adjustment there's adjusters everywhere for this so you can get that perfect image uh through the tube and get the right focus level even in the worst most less than ideal situations because really if we're using a periscope in the first place we're using it because of a few reasons one because we don't want to get shot but in a modern civilian world that might not be so much of a concern for observation needs right so if we're trying to observe something chances are if we're using a periscope to observe something then that means that it you're going to be in a less than ideal position you're not going to have that perfect view right you're not going to have that perfect angle with which to see your target right so having this kind of uh flexibility and adjustability even though it looks cluttered and doesn't really make for a super great you know instagram selfie right this works out quite ility and adjustability even though it looks cluttered and doesn't really make for a super great you know instagram selfie right this works out quite well and one of the ways that you can expand this is what some some of the more astute observers might have noticed is this device here on the end of the pbs14 so normally when you get your pbs14 it's going to come without this adapter right so this is an adapter that will allow you to screw into the the rear eye really it's for filters uh filters holder thing there and this will allow you to mount a gopro or really any camera so what i have here is just a standard gopro hero8 let's see if i can get this off without breaking it so standard gopro here and the this particular generation of gopros uh it has these aftermarket um snap-on lens filters right to basically allow the gopro to use normal standard filters and this works out quite well because what i have here is i have two stacked for one i don't know if you can see this or not my focus is not great on this particular camera but i have two uh filters that are screwed onto this both of them are 52 millimeter because that's what this little gopro attachment is so i have 52 millimet ave two uh filters that are screwed onto this both of them are 52 millimeter because that's what this little gopro attachment is so i have 52 millimeter circular polarizing lens now this particular circular polarizing lens is kind of a generic knockoff because i'm not using it for polarizing i'm using it because it's circular i haven't found a good way to find a good 52 millimeter clear circular lens that will allow me to uh put an adapter on this because uh back when the us made a bunch of these adapters during the cold war uh or or actually i think technically the gulf wars when we made most of these this particular adapter is a pvs-14 to 46 millimeter adapter most filters on cameras are going to be 52 millimeters so that requires an adapter this is a 52 millimeter to 46 millimeter uh adapter and that allow and using the circular polarizer if this isn't complex enough i can then grab that and screw it in without moving the camera that's very important because you never really want to be in a position where you are kind of stuck and your camera can't move right so this is a great way to have a gopro available and be able to capture what you're seeing through this and also since go your camera can't move right so this is a great way to have a gopro available and be able to capture what you're seeing through this and also since gopros have wi-fi capability guess what now you have a wireless 4k night vision periscope setup and again very specific use you might not be able to use this for everything you're obviously not going to be able to to use this for some things and i don't and i highly doubt that everybody's going to rush out and go start carrying around periscopes every day so this is for specific roles and for specific uses but let's just say that you didn't want to use your night vision device in conjunction with your periscope but you still want to use your periscope at night right because if you're going to buy an a now expensive soviet periscope and you're not going to be able to use it at night that seems kind of like a waste right so that's why you know having a night vision device to use this 24 7 is very handy but not everybody out there can afford to buy night vision just for a periscope right a lot of times people only get the one or they get two of these and run a dual tube setup but really uh if you can't afford to use one of these or like ri t of times people only get the one or they get two of these and run a dual tube setup but really uh if you can't afford to use one of these or like right now uh we're having a lot of issues in the we're seeing a lot of issues in the night vision world when it comes to tube availability so right now there's a lot of crazy stuff going on and you might find that right now is not a good time to try to find a good gen 3 image tube really only you're going to get is the is the seconds from the government contracts the ones that weren't good enough for the government they're passing off to the civilian market that's really all you can find right now so again if you're having a hard time finding a pbs 14 or a good image intensifier tube for for a significant investment like a pbs14 what you could do is something a little bit cheaper um so you could use a psionics aurora action camera these have a lot of a lot of praise and a lot of stigma with them in the tactical world as many of you probably noticed if you have done any research at all on the psyonix aurora cameras there's a lot of stuff about them a lot of pros a lot of cons i can tell you right now that we're working on some some proje he psyonix aurora cameras there's a lot of stuff about them a lot of pros a lot of cons i can tell you right now that we're working on some some projects with this and which is why it's in its non-standard configuration so sorry to tease everybody about something that we haven't actually released yet uh but soon soon but anyway the sonics aurora you can buy a picatinny rail adapter for it and it can just boom sit right there on the periscope and it works extremely well in this particular very specific role obviously trench periscopes like this one are not for everyone or for every situation it's a tool and it has its use for certain things and not for others so if you have a need for this if you have a need for observing things uh in a non-permissive non-standard environment then this could be a great tool for you especially for things like static observation posts which are something that we do a lot these are very useful for that kind of thing and it's really disappointing that the modern versions of this tool are just not up to par they just don't make them like they used to and these really are the best that you can buy and it's unfortunate that uh we have to literally go back they just don't make them like they used to and these really are the best that you can buy and it's unfortunate that uh we have to literally go back to the soviet union uh to to find one of these we have to go back to the earliest days of the cold war immediately post world war ii to find a tool that is useful in the modern era but that's just the way it is so hopefully one day a company out there will take this idea and copy it because uh that would just be great to have a modern version um that's that's made almost exactly the same way as this one just with modern tools modern optics modern glass and things like that because if this thing breaks which it's not likely to like this is a seriously durable piece of equipment but if it does break i have to repair it myself like we have to repair these things in-house here and uh we're just gonna have to figure it out right so um they don't make parts for these anymore obviously and uh it's kind of unfortunate that uh in the sort of tactical world i hesitate to call it that but in the in the tactical world we have to rely on a piece of hardware that stopped being manufactured what 60 years ago 50 years ago um so it's unfortunate but y the tactical world we have to rely on a piece of hardware that stopped being manufactured what 60 years ago 50 years ago um so it's unfortunate but you can clearly see these being used around the world even to this day um by very interesting people yeah i know it's kind of an obscure piece of gear to uh to talk about so much and it's kind of weird to dedicate so much time to it but i think these are interesting and not only is it something that's interesting we've gotten a lot of use out of these so hopefully we'll be able to talk a lot more about that usage coming up pretty soon and some of the ways that you can actually implement this not just the adapters and things but the the the other kinds of ways you can uh use this tool for your observation needs so thank you again everyone for your support and thanks for sticking around on this one and we will definitely see you next time and as always fight in the shade