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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 |
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#3
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"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 |
#4
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"Josef Burger" wrote in message .. . What do you use for extra and backup lighting in the cockpit for IFR flights at night? Besides the little Photon Microlight hanging around my neck, and the small two-AA red-lensed flashlight clipped to my shirt, and a few more lights of various types in trays under both front seats and in my flight bag, I mainly use a red LED headlamp. It always points where I am looking, whether it be my kneeboard, the instrument panel in front of me, or the radio stack. I have tried several: an Eveready, an Energizer, both $13-16 at Target or WalMart, and a Photon Fusion ($$). The Photon has adjustable brightness, but also a bunch of unneeded flashing modes. The two lower-cost units are almost too bright, but work well and have the advantage of simplicity. When introducing students to night flight, I tell them to not buy any kind of light, other than maybe a good D-cell or "lantern battery" light for preflight, until after our first flight. On that flight, I let them try various kinds of flashlights, then let them try a headlamp, so that they can choose what suits them based on having tried some things. Invariably they decide on the headlamp. Stan |
#5
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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 |
#6
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I don't fly much IFR at night, actually none within the last year. I would fly some if I had good VFR under me, just for the practice. But...when I did fly IFR at night, I had a flashlight that I put a red cover over (autoparts store tape for repairing broken tailights) and taped it to the overhead bar. That way if I lost electrical, I could reach up there and turn it on. This along with a couple of other flashlights. A sudden electrical failure at night would be very difficult to manage, no autopilot, no lights and no radios, ALL happening at once. One reason why I was never very enthusiastic about night IFR. Most electrical failures give warning signs before going full fatal, so you have that working in your favor. But it would be very spooky to be in the clouds at night with no electric, very spooky. |
#7
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This is something I've spent some time on, as my 57 year old eyes need lots of
help at night. The best "conventional" solution I have found is to velcro a red Photon III Covert microlight to each side of my headset. Set to medium brightness and aimed to get a sort of horizontal ellipse pattern, you do not even need instrument lighting. The light goes where you're looking and it is there before you turn on ship's power and after you turn it off. Dual redundant, almost zero weight, and the batteries seem to last forever. This solves your yoke light, kneeboard light, panel light, and area light problems all in one whack. Note 1: The "covert" part of the light is a little snout that shields the LED so the light only goes forwards. Without the snout, there are distracting reflections from the side window. Note 2: The Velcro mounting is not super stable. 3M Dual Lock is much better if you can find it. mcmaster.com carries it, as do others. The lights do tend to get knocked off when the headset is in its bag. Photon sells a little leash, about 3" long, that can be used to clip each light to the headset frame. Then the little things can't wander too far. One other thing learned: You want the light to be as high as possible, ideally above your eyes. Otherwise, when you are writing on your clipboard, the shadow of your hand will cover the where you are writing. That is the reason I don't think the cute little mic boom lights are too great. I am now using one of the Clarity Aloft headsets (which, BTW is spectacular in all aspects) so I have made a sort of wire loop gadget that is effectively a pair of red LED headlights that are more or less in the same position as the Photon lights were on my standard headlights. An elastic band headlight would probably work as well, as long as the brightness was adjustable. On 12/20/04 11:59 PM, Josef Burger wrote the following: 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 |
#8
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"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 |
#9
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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 |
#10
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Electroluminescent strip, 3"x24".
Pick your color... blue,green, yellow, red, orange. Operates off a 9v battery for several hours. $50. http://beingseentechnologies.goemerchant2.com Go to: "9 Even Wider..." on the left side. |
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