Last words

Do you have data concerning what color is
more visible than black on a UK rainy day?
If so, source(s) would be appreciated.

On the ground, it is the 'safety orange' that the old Yellow Cab
Company cabs
used to be painted. The Cab Co. researched it, and then did some
experimenting
before deploying it fleet-wide. That paint scheme (safety orange,
with the
black front and rear quarter panels) cut their rate of being
involved in
traffic accidents by more than 20%.


Sure it's not the disgusting color that kept people well away, who in
their right mind wants saftey orange scrape marks down the side of
their cars.:-)
--
---
Cheers,
Jonathan Lowe.
/
don't bother me with insignificiant nonsence such as spelling,
I don't care if it spelt properly
/
Sometimes I fly and sometimes I just dream about it.
:-)



Aloft, the issue is *much* more complicated.

"Visibility" is a function of:
a) contrast to the background against which it is observed,
b) sensitivity of the human eyeball.
c) the -information- needed _from_ detecting the object.
i.e., things are different if you just need to detect "it's
there",
vs. determining 'aspect', and speed.


For "just" spotting an object, a 'checkerboard' of highly
contrasting colors,
with each square having a size _just_ bigger than the angular
acuity of
the human eye at the maximum range that one can determine 'shape',
is
most effective. One reason that the military used that scheme on
a lot of
early trainer aircraft. And why stationary objects like
water-towers (near
a flight path) and radio towers are often _still_ painted in that
kind of
scheme today.


At 'long distance', against a 'lit' sky, it pretty much "doesn't
matter" what
color the thing is, it will appear "dark" -- whether it's painted
black
or bright white.

Color comes into play _only_ when the object is *close* enough for
the
reflection off the object to approximately match the intensity of
the
'background'. At that point, the higher the _contrast_ with the
background,
the better. Orange is good -- unless the background happens to be
an
orange sunset -- or against some fall tree colors. Shades of blue
is generally
a _bad_ choice, for obvious reasons. Gray/grey is definitely
un-good, if
overcast skies are considered. Greens -- not good against
trees/crops, etc.
Red/maroon/purple -- can have problems against a sunset. White?
forget
about being seen against snow. and some clouds. Yellow? hard to
distinguish
against 'bright' backgrounds. In short, you can't win. wry
grin

The "best" solution is to use *multiple* colors.



If I was designing a 'maximum visibility' paint scheme,
*without*consideration*
of esthetic appeal, assuming that the plane spent most of it's time
in
'conventional' attitude, and was _slow_enough_ for color to be
meaningful
(e.g., no point in worrying about visibility for something with the
flight
characteristics of the SR-71 grin) I'd do something like:

Underside of: wing, horiz. stab and elevators:
Black, with outer 40% being safety orange
Upper side of: wing, horiz stab and elevators:
White, with at least two wide, _diagonal_, stripes of safety orange
Vert. stab and rudder:
safety orange
Fuselage:
'Firewall forward' in safety orange
Behind that, black/white checkerboard, with edges of the 'squares'
down the middle of each side of the craft, and midline down the
top and bottom of the fuselage.

Might even consider doing 'reflective glitter' -- like the use for
road signs
in the white squares on the fuselage, and the orange striping on
the upper
side of the flight surfaces.

For 'esthetic' appeal, I might add relatively -thin- outlines of
chess pieces
in the fuselage squares. Visible at relatively close range, on the
ground,
but not enough to break up the 'solid' color block when viewed from
a non-
trivial distance.

Again, though, this paint scheme *isn't* intended to 'look good',
just be
*VISIBLE*.