I noticed some discussion about use of white light. In our trial we used both the standard swivelling landing light and the SX16 Nightsun unfortunately we could not trial an IR filtered light.
We found that the nightsun was OK but somewhat too bright (except on a dark night in which case worked well). All in all the swivelling landing light worked very well all the way to the ground. The only time the landing light was a problem was approaching the hover with reflection back into the cockpit causing the goggles to dim down unacceptably but this was corrected by lifting the landing light up towards but not into the blades. The nightsun was too bright near the ground in all ambient conditions. Indeed the standard landing lights worked very well with the goggles.
We used both ANVIS 6 omnibus II and ANVIS 9 Omnibus IV tubes and without a doubt I can say that the 9's worked exceptionally well with white light with less dimming then the 6's. Also when the US restriction is lifted the gated pinnacle goggles will make bright white light use a non event.
Our conclusion from the trial is that all front seat crew must be on goggles all the way to the ground. We strongly oppose any de-goggling on final approach with transition to white light only (as I believe some operators do)....personaly I don't know how they do it as we found it very uncomfortable and disconcerting to do so. We will only goggle and de-goggle whilst over a cultural lighting area or at safe altitude.
For covert police ops an IR searchlight with position and anti-col lights off is essential but all other ops the use of white light landing lights (that can be swivelled) works very well.
We have formulated SOP's for weather, illumination, pilot requirements, crewing, inadvertent IMC, etc. If interested I'm happy to share these with those interested
Regulatory bodies such as CASA here are not placing NVGs on a high priority and as such will wallow and bubble along for years to come. It is up to the emergency service operators and the HAA to actively lobby CASA to lift NVGs to a higher priority so that CASA standards section can be made to work on this project for benefit of us all.
CASA seems happy to issue concessions to the regulations for us to fly below LSALT with a big torch strapped to the side....but are you the pilots at the coal face happy with that? I'm not! CASA rhetoric is that they support the concept of NVGs but they seem misguided in the level of importance they place on having good SA when working under their concessions. Goggles will give us the SA we need when working at night below LSALT and CASA needs to get that message.