woooops ....................

If you have to make your own IR source, I claim that is worthless.
[BTW, I have a glass IR filter from a tank headlight, so I do have my
own high power IR source. ]

In any event, the gen 2 NV can see a soldering iron, which has to be
at least a few microns, so the 1.35um would not be a problem. However,
I don't know how much it gets scattered, so I don't know if a beam
could be seen.

That ebay vendor seems a bit confused. NV is light amplification. Now
granted, it does react to IR, but that is not the main function. Real
IR views use different technology.

well guy ........  IR is a giant subject  and it would probably help
you to understand  the subject a little bit better.  

go to  this page and read up on it some ........
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_infrared

then put your soldering iron down and  " never " use it for a NV test
again because it tells you nothing  and evidently  misleads you a LOT.

think about the basically 3 different  " things " ( for lack of a
better way to say it )  at play here.   one being night vision devices
, two being far IR viewers / thermal  ( these are the hand held scopes
that fire departments use to see through smoke looking for fire, these
are the new type of military night vision devices commonly
used on tanks previously because they were so large < but now 
made smaller to be hand carried by the troops >  , and these have NO
relationship to gen1 thru gen3 NV scopes ... and THIS is what you'd
look at  your soldering iron with ) , and the third category
are the tactical targeting and aiming lasers which have  " absolutely
" no relationship of the two previously mentioned classes of equipment
and " cannot " be seen by either. 


the 1960's era scope tube that I recommend  (  the home made scope
uses this type of tube ) is not  really a device in any of the above 3
categories of devices ( generally speaking ) because those devices are
specific to narrow  freq bands ( or single lines of mono light )  and
this scope tube is ultra wideband relatively speaking and can see
302mn 
up to 1450 mn ( and slightly above   or below if you want to  think of
wavelength )  and is " THE ONLY POSSIBLE " way to see military
aircraft targeting and aiming lasers accessible to civilians that we
available and used to make equipment can afford to own.


if you want to see the aircraft lasers , put away  your gen 2  NV
scope ( turn off your soldering iron and forget about " looking " at
it  with your  NV device )  and build the scope as I mentioned it. 
buy yourself a used russian NV scope off ebay  ( $25 - $45
used )  and use the parts and the tube I mentioned ( throw away the
russian gen 1 tube you bought ) and you will suddenly be able to see
the aircraft lasers. 


also ...............
the jeep lens filter cuts off right at the top end of visible light
and allows  the rest through.  the resulting light works " so so "
with gen 1 nv devices , but  looks like one of those arc lamp
search lights you see at an auto dealers opening when viewed
through  a  tube like I mentioned in my first post. this because those
were designed (  as far back as the korean war ) specially to work
with that type of tube. they are a matched pair and it shows. 

they " completely " blow away a gen 3 nv device in performance but are
not practical anymore  for the military because they give away the
location of the person using them. 


it's really not useful , at this point to worry about how these
different devices work until you understand that IR is a complicated
and widely divergent subject . it's WAY more complicated than the
visible light that humans see.     

I've used NV at the border. This is a shot of the cammo dudes
http://www.lazygranch.com/images/fg/camoave.jpg
It was generated by frame grabbing a output of NV using a CCD camera,
then averaging the sampled images.

that's how YOU saw the scene.   if you used the homemade scope 
and jeep light illuminator , it would have looked light broad daylight
( a brightly lit  search light scene  anyway , invisible to humans )  
and you could have seen right into the truck and their faces.

of course they would have seen your jeep illuminator light and known
right where you were . it doesn't matter  because they knew right
where you were anyway , because ' to them " you looked like
the picture of the two girls ( on the  Wilkipedia page ) because this
is the type of equipment they use nowadays. even the CCD security
cameras use this same type of technology nowadays. they   quit
using  ( for the most part )  inferior  gen3 NV several years.  



you can  frequently find a  used  thermal imaging ccd camera on ebay
( the post old gen 3 stuff  )  for between $750 and $1500 form time
to time.  things that you completely miss in a gen 2 NV are VERY
easily found with this type of device. the difference is shocking.