Tactical Arts and Crafts: Glow in the Dark Dope Card

I am going to try to start a new series about some of the tips and tricks I’ve picked up. Some might call it “fieldcraft” but since I am not a super secret squirrel who operates in operations, I am not nearly cool enough to call it that.

The first few I’m going to do are going to involve a laminator. I specifically bought one to use on some of the things I’ll be talking about. They’re not expensive, but you could probably just use packing tape for most of these things instead of a full-on laminator so just keep that in mind. The reason for lamination is so that you can use map markers and have a reusable but also semi-permanent writing surface.

First up is going to be the Glow in the Dark Dope (or DOPE) card.

DOPE stands for Data On Previous Engagements. The term actually goes back to when the only way you could really figure out what your bullet drop was at specific distances was to go out and shoot those distances and write down the data. You’d record distance, wind, temperature, elevation, and other environmental variables so that later, you’d use that data from your previous engagement to get a really good idea of what your bullet was going to do.

Nowadays we have doppler radar derived drag curves and ballistic computers that are so inexpensive and precise that you don’t need to spend the time and money collecting your own dope, you just punch in some numbers and the ballistic solver tells you what your drop is.

Which is great and all, but a lot of shooters (myself included) like the simplicity of a card with numbers written down. I mean I love my Kestrel but it’s way faster to look at a dope card than it is to scroll through targets or adjust your range.

So here is what I did (it’s super simple):
I took some card stock and covered it with 2″ glow in the dark tape. An index card would also have worked but I have a ton of card stock left over from a prior project.
Then I cut that down so that it would fit in that in the Rite in the Rain notebook cover that I’ve been using as a wallet for the last 2 years. I had a very wet shooting class in October of 2019 and shortly after that I started buying Rite in the Rain notebooks like Hunter Biden buys crack pipes.
Then I laminated it, obviously.
So now what I can do is I can use my Kestrel to get my dope for the ranges I’m going to be engaging and write it down on my little dope card.
Because the map markers take either an alcohol pen or an alcohol swap to erase, I don’t have to worry about rubbing off the data accidentally.
Then I can “charge” the glow in the dark tape by either just leaving it out all day or shining a light on it before I really need it.

This is what the card looks like after holding it up to a light bulb for about 20 seconds:

It’s advertised as working for 6 hours but I haven’t actually tested that. I does last a while, though.

There are tons of other glow in the dark paper products out there, too, so I may experiment with some other things in the future.