I recently purchased a pulsar Helion Xq 30f monocular. Some nights, I can see the feeder behind my house(200 yards) plain as day. Can make out the legs, winch etc. can see trees and brush,fence posts, wire on fence. Very exciting. Most nights,however, I can hardly see at all. Can’t even see my fence around my yard(50 yards). Can’t even locate feeder. Trees 50 yards away invisible. I understand that weather conditions make some difference, but are they that drastically? Maybe I’m doing something wrong. But I’m at the point, it’s not even worth getting it out of the case. It’s a crapshoot if I will be able to see anything at all. Any help appreciated

Weather can make huge differences - especially humidity.

I've been out a few times in the last couple of weeks and thermal looked great 1 out of 4 times.

Pulsar's have a very nice image and good user controls for contrast and brightness, most times the settings are inverted for black hot and white hot so you'll have to tinker with it in various weather situations to see what settings yield the best image quality.

Even the expensive units look less than stellar in some weather situations...

Weather makes a big difference. Play with brightness and contrast settings. The more humid the more contrast you'll need. Also try different pallets. I find black hot looks better when it's humid.

X2

YEP!

I have the quantum lite 23, PP and Myron are right on the money. During high humidity it will go all grey until I adj the contrast

How are you doing your NUC'ing?

People commonly overlook the other aerosols that play a big part in thermal image degradation. Humidity can be a big factor, but on some humid days, it is much less of a factor and other times much more of a factor. This is because of the presence of dust, pollen, mold, etc. being carried in the air.

Thanks for input fellas. Will try out your suggestions tonight

I was out a few days ago in central Texas, and just after sundown looking down a lane which is lined with trees I thought my thermal sight had conked out. Everything was just a grey blur. Finally I looked upward toward the sky, and I could see tree limbs clearly defined. It was pretty humid and still warm, and that was apparently the issue. Later, as things cooled a little and the relative humidity dropped the view through my weapon sight returned to normal. I was a bit surprised at how much the humidity affected it.

That is what I call a 'gray out' and is a thermal crossover - basically everything in your FOV is just about the same temperature. It happened when everything is heated or cooled to the same temperature, most commonly happening when there isn't direct sunshine (cloudy days), particularly if the humidity is high and dew is settled, if it has been misting or raining where everything has had the temperature homogenized by the moisture. Anything not producing its own heat will gray out in these conditions. You can have gray out and still have a very clear image of the animals, only without the context of the background terrain such as ground and vegetation.

Everything DNS said. I've seen this many times.