I have no idea how to go about this and therefore seek advice from people who have dealt with aviation authorities such as ICAO, FAA, CASA (UK, AUS), etc.
The problem as I see it...
The white light of a white/red PAPI system is too close to the colour yellow/orange and this results in inadequate contrast with the red lights.
You know what I mean! If you are on the correct descent path with the PAPI indicating two reds and two whites, and then start descending below the correct path, the transition from two reds to three reds is very gradual and nebulous. It certainly does not attract your immediate attention!
Even if you are on the correct descent path with solid red and "white" light indications I often find due to particulate air polution such as smoke, smog, or dust, the white light isn't really white, but rather an orange hue.
I believe the problem lies in the fact that the PAPI specifications standards of ICAO, FAA, etc. allow the manufacturers to use halogen bulbs for the white lights. The problem with these lights is that they are not hot enough.
White light emitted by light bulbs can be defined in terms of temperature. The hotter the temperature the whiter the light (because as the temperature increases it includes more of the green, blue, and violet light spectrum (higher frequencies).
Apparently Halogen light is at 3200K whereas sunlight is 5250K.
(Kelvin (K) is a scale used to measures absolute temperature).
These days we can do much better than Halogen light bulbs and that is to use Xenon light bulbs.
Xenon light bulbs emit light at a much higher temperature (around 5000K) and therefore are much further away from the red/orange light and closer to pure white.
We've all seen Xenon headlights on cars. They look positively blue in comparison to the normal halogen headlights.
Another example of the hotter blue light is the (ironically) "cool white" compact fluorescent light bulbs as compared to the "warm white" variety. If you look at the box you will see that the "warm white" bulbs are described as emitting 3000K white light and the "cool white" bulbs are described as emitting 5000K white light.
Here is a web site that describes the contrast between Halogen and Xenon well.
Advantages of Xenon headlights
The blue Xenon light (by comparison to the halogen light) presents a much starker contrast to the red filtered lights used in the PAPI system. It would make the PAPI system a much more effective tool against the risk of inadvertently flying too low and short of the runway especially during visual/circling approaches.
So my question is, how do I go about putting this argument to the various authorities to the view of initiating the required changes?
Can someone describe the processes involved and how to get them started?
And yes I'm serious!!
