VSS-3a

[patracy]

So @wgtactical gave me a little project. A VSS-3A spotlight setup. Or at least the spotlight of it and new amphenol connectors to make a cable for it. After a lot of digging, I found a person who happened to have a number of the correct control boxes for the VSS-3A. Side note, there are two units, a VSS-3 and a VSS-3A. The two are similar in output and input requirements, but different completely on the control side of things. (DO NOT USE A VSS-3 controller on a "A" spotlight or vice-versa, DAMAGE WILL OCCUR!) Anyhow this was a fun little project. I believe it will end up being installed on the Ferret and the custom turret I'm building. (Ooops I let that cat out of the bag) I've duplicated a weapon pintle to be used in a vehicle weapon mount. I've also added a 24v linear actuator to handle tilt up and down. Pan will be with the turret rotation. I used some high carbon tool steel for the pintle, I hardened it and quenched it afterwards. The cable I made up with some 14awg wire I had laying around along with some welding cable for the main power leads. I sheathed it in some webbed sheathing as well for a proper look. I believe there's two conductors in the umbilical between the controller and the light that are unused. I plan on using these to feed power to the linear actuator and adding a toggle to control the light tilt from the control panel. This has been a fun little project. I'll have to bring it down to Gerald and play on the back 40 at night. The only annoying part of this has been with the light focal and mode motors. Both of them had seized up. I had to disassemble most of the light to pull them out and clean them up and get them moving again.

This sucker is BRIGHT. It's rated at 150 million candlepower. The TM stresses caution about personal being at risk by looking in the beam within 200 meters. I completely believe it now. I can say that my eyes ached after only about 15 minutes of playing with it and not looking at it directly. (Yeah @steelsoldiers I know I shoulda been wearing some kind of glasses) I did get a little froggy and flipped it to IR and turned my head away and stuck my hand into the path. My hand got toasty fast. The last pic is of the fire tower at the shop. It's about 100ft up in the air and covered in rust. It's a good 20 yards away from where I had it setup. Notice how white the observation house looks!

Gerald is gonna cut some silhouettes to go over it. Like the bat signal and a few other ideas we have....

BTW, if you have a VSS-3A spotlight but no controller, hit me up. I have a few spare control units and can help you out with building the cable.

 

[patracy]

Forgot to post the video