backup cockpit lighting

What do you use for extra and backup lighting in the cockpit for IFR
flights at night? Some airplanes have pretty decent lighting built in.
Others can have decent cockpit lighting and poor panel lighting.
Others have shadows in poor locations, or areas of the panel/cockpit
you'd really like to have illuminated, but aren't.

Myself, I keep a LED flashlight around my neck, and other flashlights
nearby and handy. I keep on trying other items and discarding them.
Perhaps .. I've just never found the right item.

Things I've been thinking about ...
A yoke/yoke-board mounted light, such as a flex-lite or some LED
bar might work well for lighting the panel either in normal flight
or when the lights go out. Some velcro on adhesive strips, stick it
to the cockpit ceiling, and put something like a pelican VersaBrite
II up there to provide some area illumination.

Some better lighting for a yoke/knee board would be nice, maybe a flexlite,
or same flood light on velcro mentioned earlier. Of course, some
sort of backlit timer/counter/stopwatch would really be great, but I
haven't found a good one in many years of looking.

That's some of the considerations I have, was wondering what other people
use.

Thanks
Bolo -- Josef T. Burger
--
| Josef Burger U of WI-Madison Computer Sciences | "No matter where you go,
| "Bolo" uwvax!bolo | There you are"
| http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~bolo/ | -- Buckaroo Banzai

(Josef Burger) wrote in
:

What do you use for extra and backup lighting in the cockpit for IFR
flights at night? Some airplanes have pretty decent lighting built
in. Others can have decent cockpit lighting and poor panel lighting.
Others have shadows in poor locations, or areas of the panel/cockpit
you'd really like to have illuminated, but aren't.

I have a home-made lip light on my mike, with a green LED and an
additional slide switch I added after I had to file 3 IFR flights while
enroute, trying to keep the light on with my lip while talking to FSS. I
also have an LED headlight from Wally World that came with a red LED,
which I replaced with a green one. Red is a poor choice for night
lights, and I stopped using them long ago. Green is far superior. The
headlight also has 2 white LEDs, and I use it for preflights, starting,
etc. The green LED that I installed is really too bright, and I seldom
use it. The lip light works very well, though, just enough light to see
what I'm doing without blinding my FO.

--
Regards,

Stan

"Stan Gosnell" wrote in message
...

I have a home-made lip light on my mike, with a green LED and an
additional slide switch I added after I had to file 3 IFR flights while
enroute, trying to keep the light on with my lip while talking to FSS. I
also have an LED headlight from Wally World that came with a red LED,
which I replaced with a green one. Red is a poor choice for night
lights, and I stopped using them long ago. Green is far superior. The
headlight also has 2 white LEDs, and I use it for preflights, starting,
etc. The green LED that I installed is really too bright, and I seldom
use it. The lip light works very well, though, just enough light to see
what I'm doing without blinding my FO.

--
Regards,

Stan

Stan,

Just curious..

What do you find superior about green instead of red light?

TIA,

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ

Let's read AIM 8-1-6.

Bob Gardner

"Jay Beckman" wrote in message
news:CKRxd.11974$ry.7550@fed1read01...
"Stan Gosnell" wrote in message
...

I have a home-made lip light on my mike, with a green LED and an
additional slide switch I added after I had to file 3 IFR flights while
enroute, trying to keep the light on with my lip while talking to FSS. I
also have an LED headlight from Wally World that came with a red LED,
which I replaced with a green one. Red is a poor choice for night
lights, and I stopped using them long ago. Green is far superior. The
headlight also has 2 white LEDs, and I use it for preflights, starting,
etc. The green LED that I installed is really too bright, and I seldom
use it. The lip light works very well, though, just enough light to see
what I'm doing without blinding my FO.

--
Regards,

Stan

Stan,

Just curious..

What do you find superior about green instead of red light?

TIA,

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ

"Bob Gardner" wrote in message
...
Let's read AIM 8-1-6.

Bob Gardner

"Jay Beckman" wrote in message
news:CKRxd.11974$ry.7550@fed1read01...

Stan,

Just curious..

What do you find superior about green instead of red light?

TIA,

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ




Bob,

I know colored light will distort how well you can read a chart at night.

I was just asking what's better about green instead of red?

Jay B

This is an IFR newsgroup, and I assume that everyone is using
black-and-white charts. The usual argument against red light is that it
washes out detail on sectionals. The AIM does not give a glowing endorsement
of red lighting and emphasizes the need for white light. Green is a nice
alternative. I never used red light in all my years of flying IFR, but that
is just a personal peccadillo. I found that turning white cockpit and
instrument lighting down to an irreducible minimum worked well for me. I
also used diffused white light to illuminate approach plates.

I note that the chemical light sticks designed for emergency use glow green,
but that might just be a question of available chemicals. Googling "night
vision _ green" gets a lot of hits that refer to night vision goggles. I
hope and pray that none of our newsgroupie friends are using NVGs. That
appears to have driven the military to go to green instead of red.

Bob

"Jay Beckman" wrote in message
news:SY%xd.12213$ry.10070@fed1read01...
"Bob Gardner" wrote in message
...
Let's read AIM 8-1-6.

Bob Gardner

"Jay Beckman" wrote in message
news:CKRxd.11974$ry.7550@fed1read01...

Stan,

Just curious..

What do you find superior about green instead of red light?

TIA,

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ




Bob,

I know colored light will distort how well you can read a chart at night.

I was just asking what's better about green instead of red?

Jay B

"Jay Beckman" wrote in
news:CKRxd.11974$ry.7550@fed1read01:

What do you find superior about green instead of red light?

Using red light means LCD displays don't show up well. IFR
charts, which are blue, don't show up very well. Sometimes I
need to see a VFR chart for something, and all the magenta
washes out completely.

The human eye is much more sensitive tou green light than red
light. That's one reason all night vision devices use green.
The military uses green for all night cockpit lights. I notice
that it takes much less light to be able to see almost anything
using green light. Red is just traditional, from the time when
little actual research had been done, and the availability of
light with narrow wavelengths was unknown. Red was easy to do,
and had some small effect in reducing the loss of night vision.
Now it's possible to buy LEDs with a very narrow band of
wavelengths, and they don't affect your vision in other
wavelengths. White, OTOH, is a broadband mix of wavelengths
and will affect your night vision across the spectrum.

I need to preserve my night vision to some extent, because I'm
not always landing to a brightly lit runway. I land to
helipads that have lights, but may not be very well lit, and I
need to be able to find platforms in the middle of the ocean.
If you're flying airplanes between IFR runways, then white
light probably won't hurt much. I prefer narrow-band sources,
and red is the least effective of all the colors.

--
Regards,

Stan

"Stan Gosnell" wrote in message
...
"Jay Beckman" wrote in
news:CKRxd.11974$ry.7550@fed1read01:

What do you find superior about green instead of red light?

Using red light means LCD displays don't show up well. IFR
charts, which are blue, don't show up very well. Sometimes I
need to see a VFR chart for something, and all the magenta
washes out completely.

The human eye is much more sensitive tou green light than red
light. That's one reason all night vision devices use green.
The military uses green for all night cockpit lights. I notice
that it takes much less light to be able to see almost anything
using green light. Red is just traditional, from the time when
little actual research had been done, and the availability of
light with narrow wavelengths was unknown. Red was easy to do,
and had some small effect in reducing the loss of night vision.
Now it's possible to buy LEDs with a very narrow band of
wavelengths, and they don't affect your vision in other
wavelengths. White, OTOH, is a broadband mix of wavelengths
and will affect your night vision across the spectrum.

I need to preserve my night vision to some extent, because I'm
not always landing to a brightly lit runway. I land to
helipads that have lights, but may not be very well lit, and I
need to be able to find platforms in the middle of the ocean.
If you're flying airplanes between IFR runways, then white
light probably won't hurt much. I prefer narrow-band sources,
and red is the least effective of all the colors.

--
Regards,

Stan

Stan,

Thanks very much. Interesting stuff about helo flying.

Jay B

"Stan Gosnell" wrote in message
...
"Jay Beckman" wrote in
news:CKRxd.11974$ry.7550@fed1read01:

What do you find superior about green instead of red light?


some stuff snipped

The human eye is much more sensitive tou green light than red
light.

I need to preserve my night vision to some extent, because I'm
not always landing to a brightly lit runway.

I prefer narrow-band sources,
and red is the least effective of all the colors.


There are two issues here, and Stan (the other Stan) has touched on both.
One is simply vision within the cockpit, and for this, any color of light
will do, except that the color should not compromise readability of
instruments and charts. Red is not the best choice for this. The other
issue is vision outside the cockpit, which is still very important for IFR
flight, as Stan pointed out. Light color and intensity should be chosen to
allow good in-cockpit visibility without compromising outside visibility.

The physiological basis for night vision (dark-adapted, or scotopic vision)
is primarily the characteristics of the retinal photoreceptors called rods.
These are indeed more sensitive to shorter wavelengths, and, at low
illumination levels, less light intensity should be required if a green
light is used. But true dark adaption is based on the presence of a
light-sensitive pigment in the rods called rhodopsin. This pigment is
naturally synthesized in the rods but is destroyed by light. Dark adaption
is the process of allowing the concentration of rhodopsin to increase by not
allowing its destruction by light. It takes 45 minutes or so for it to
reach maximum levels, but can be destroyed by a few seconds of exposure to
higher light levels. Red light does not have the destructive power on
rhodopsin that shorter wavelengths have, and that is why red light has long
been favored when maximum preservation of night vision is required. Blue
and green will have a stronger destructive effect.

The cones also become somewhat dark-adapted using other pigments, and they
respond much more quickly, like 5-7 minutes.

However, a balance must be struck. I think that most of our aviation vision
occurs in the so-called mesopic region, in which both rods and cones
contribute significantly. Dim white light or light of other colors will
allow good readability of instruments and charts while allowing reasonable
dark adaptation. The main thing is to avoid bright light.

My own experience is that red works well for me except on sectionals. Some
of the red lamps I use are a little brighter than I would like but I don't
find that they mess up my adaption even when falling directly on my face
briefly. White light does mess me up unless it is very dim. I haven't used
other colors. I keep a little white Photon microlight handy for looking at
sectionals when needed, but it does mess up my vision because it is so
bright.

One good reference is "Night Vision In Military Aviation", by the USAF
School of Aerospace Medicine:

http://www.brooks.af.mil/web/af/cour...tures/UNV7.doc


Stan

I keep a little white Photon microlight handy for looking at
sectionals when needed, but it does mess up my vision because it is so
bright.

The Photon III has low/medium/high settings as well as some useless flash modes.
The mode is kind of a pain to change, but once set it stays on that mode. Try
one of these set at medium or low intensity. Also, with the "covert" snout your
eyes are shielded from directly viewing any of the emitted light.