Beginners' Guide: Eye Protection
Welcome to the latest video in the Patrol Base Airsoft Beginners' Guide collection, this time featuring Patrol Base Stu who is here to talk to us about a subject which will affect every single Airsoft player: Eye Protection. Whether you're a first time player, or someone who plays every weekend, you all have one thing in common, you all wear eye protection to protect your squish soft eyes from being popped when shot with a BB (Thankfully, we've never witnessed this!).
In this video we'll discuss the different types of eye protection, as well as the advantages and disadvantages. If you prefer to watch the video you can check it below, or keep on reading for more in-depth discussion.
Mesh Eye Protection
We've got a couple of choices of mesh out protection here, usually either goggles or glasses style, or more rarely a full face mask with a full mesh front. Normally it's made out of sheet stamped steel, and has foam around the back to create a nice positive seal when it's on your face.
The pros of this is the heat can escape very very easily thanks to the little holes, preventing any form of fog up, so you're not going to start losing vision or finding it difficult to see enemy targets at range. The holes are not big enough for a BB to pass through, but are just large enough to allow you to see through with as little sight reduction as possible.
Things to watch out for with mesh is that small bits of debris, dust, dirt, and anything like that if you're crawling around can make their way through and then you'll have maybe have to leave game clean them up and get back in. Another minor negative for mesh is that because they don't allow as much light in they slightly impair your vision. If you're going into somewhere that's quite dark a building CQB or if it's coming into the evening in winter time you will lose some of your natural vision with the sort of blurry effect that it gives you slightly.
Polycarbonate Lenses
The next thing we're going to talk about is Polycarbonate Glasses, usually the classic form of eye protection when it comes to Airsoft. There's an absolutely massive scale when it comes to polycarbonate there's a wide range of tints, shapes and sizes available, allowing you to pick the perfect lens for the situation.
A good example of this is tinted glasses, an example being the Bollé™ smoked glasses. They're slightly tinted so you also have polarized eye protection, and these are basically sunglasses that are ballistically protected. They're always labeled with polarized and these are for when you're playing in summer on very bright days.
There's also yellow frames, these high light targets at distance and increase the light coming through the glasses, makes it very easy to see targets at range.
Another bonus for these is like with the Sawflys that you can see here: on the inside they have an insert so that you can get prescription glasses fitted inside them, meaning you can do away with expensive contact lenses whilst playing.
The main benefit for the polycarbonate lensed glasses and goggles is that almost all of these have an actual industry standard ballistic rating so when these are hit by bb's you know there are a hundred percent safe.
When it comes to the pros and cons with polycarbonate, the pros are you get very very good field of view there's very little degradation towards your vision especially at range, going inside and outside of buildings you're gonna be very very good. When it comes to the downsides sometimes people get fogging up issues: sweat on the glasses and it becomes very difficult to see.
There's many many ways to stop this we have our ex fog system that's in stock now it blows air around the top of the glasses and if constant flow of air of the glasses prevents them from fogging up. A second way of stopping it is Bollé produce anti fog wipes, sprays, everything like that.
It Produces a little film over the back of the glasses again preventing fogging up. The final way to do it the Dye mask over here, and the Dye mask lens that's yellow they have what's called a thermal layer there's two sheets of plastic and a pair gap between again this creates a nice little thermal layer for them prevents the steam and the condensation building on the inside of the glasses.
The biggest negative that some people have with polycarbonate ones like this is they are quite difficult to find the right set for your face we always recommend coming in store try on as many pairs as you can and just make sure you get the one that fits your face properly you don't want to find any gaps under your eyes here around the back here and seeing them sit off your face slightly.
One final note some sites may not allow a mesh or must provide full face protection check with your local site or wherever you're going to go play airsoft and make sure you abide by their rules before you turn up so you not dissapointed on the day.
Thanks for watching and look forward to the next new player introduction video.