Instrument Panel Color

The glare from a white panel will make it much harder to see outside the aircraft, but nobody looks outside these days, eh Dan? I am obviously against reducing the ability to see outside the cockpit. A clean canopy is also an important thing, and often overlooked in the preflight. He could repaint it, after seeing how bad it is, but he won't get around to it for some time, and while he is flying around with all that glare, he will be less able to see his fellow pilots around him. A white panel is a very bad idea. Grey, dark blue, or some other darkish color is fine, but not white.

Boggs

I must be missing something here since I'm never annoyed by glare from
my white shirt (another contributor mentioned only wearing dark
clothes). I wonder if all the objections are based upon observation or
simply conjecture. Have you actually seen "the glare from a white
panel"? The sky blue panel in my ASW-19b was never a problem.

On 11/24/2015 10:27 AM, Waveguru wrote:
The glare from a white panel will make it much harder to see outside the aircraft, but nobody looks outside these days, eh Dan? I am obviously against reducing the ability to see outside the cockpit. A clean canopy is also an important thing, and often overlooked in the preflight. He could repaint it, after seeing how bad it is, but he won't get around to it for some time, and while he is flying around with all that glare, he will be less able to see his fellow pilots around him. A white panel is a very bad idea. Grey, dark blue, or some other darkish color is fine, but not white.

Boggs

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Dan, 5J

I find that if I wear a light shirt I cannot easily read the screen of my glide computer because it is mostly washed out by the glare off my shirt. This is worst when I have the glide computer on my kneeboard (in club aircraft) where its face is more often perpendicular to the sun, but is also a problem n my glider, where I have a permanent mount in a position that isn't directly in the sun often. (I've never had success with temporary suction cup mounts).

The problem isn't really so much that the sun is directly on the instrument, it is that the sun is directly on the shirt! This gives a massive reflection on the computer, on the instrument panel, and on the canopy, all of which I find distracting.

When I wear a dark shirt all of these issues are greatly reduced.

Van