Hi all, this will be my ecto goggle build thread. A little history; I originally purchased a set of matty goggles and was soo sorely disappointed. IMO they do not stack up to the amazing trap and PKE meter, those items blew me away when I unboxed them, but the goggles to me seem way small, cheap and toy like.
In an effort to make them look better before last Halloween I did a rush job on spray painting them but knew they just didn’t seem right. I have a set of functional PVS-5s, that I think play the part real well but they are way too heavy to wear to a convention or event. So I set out to find a non-functional pair and gut them to make them lighter. I think using as many real parts make the prop seem more convincing. Here is my progress so far:
Picture of all 3 for comparison:
Unscrewing the oculars:
The oculars removed (already a ton lighter):
Removing objectives:
Now for the fun part, knocking out the intensifiers with a heavy hammer:
Now to see what I can lighten in the objectives, there were soo many parts to take out:
Now that they are nice and light…I want to work on lighting them up to add some coolness factor. This is me shining a flashlight through one of the lenses. What do you think? I am thinking of adding some LEDs and using the original battery compartment if possible.
I know it was a little painful to basically destroy perfectly good pvs-5 lenses. I do want to eventually go for more movie accurate lenses and recently saw a post that both original sources were identified. Tomorrow should be arriving some green photographic gel plastic that I am going to put in the lenses to give them a green glow. Going to take a trip to the ole radio shack and see what LEDs are available. I hope to post an update on progress by the end of the weekend.
I finally got some time to do more work on my ecto goggles. I found some cheap rayovac led 2 AA batter flashlights that had a reflector size that would fit the tubes. Also this would let me use the real battery tube and switch.
I figured out which pins were hot when you turned on the switch which I though would be pretty cool to use the actual switch. If it would not have worked I would have replaced the real switch with a rheostat.
Next was to install the light assemblies. The green filter plastic was photography lighting gel film.
Then I added some padding to the tubes for comfort and to keep from getting poked if I wear them other then on my forehead. You can actually still see around the frame if you wear them as if you were really using them.
I also added a retro looking led bulb lens on the bottom with a 7 color multi flash bulb from radio shack for a little flare…lol.
Added some of the metallic stickers, turned it on and it is has a really cool green glow.
Thanks I appreciate that. After using this at quite a few conventions I can say they are comfortable and play the part more authentically IMO thank the Matty version. I am going to work on making them more movie accurate this year. However, I feel that variations are okay and each team member might have slightly different gear which would have been used. If you have any questions let me know.
