Night Lights OFF?
I do not know whether Pumas still have them but in the 70s Pumas had blue night formation lights mounted on top of the sponsons and doghouse.
One night we tried night formation with just NV goggles and formation lights. You could hold position quite easily. The fomation lights gave you a good reference coupled with the shape of the aircraft and as you were looking down the jet exhaust the power turbine lit up like a beacon. Unfortuately the rest of the crew were having kittens.............
One night we tried night formation with just NV goggles and formation lights. You could hold position quite easily. The fomation lights gave you a good reference coupled with the shape of the aircraft and as you were looking down the jet exhaust the power turbine lit up like a beacon. Unfortuately the rest of the crew were having kittens.............
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: england
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if a police aircraft were to be "bending" rules by operating without lights at night, then we should be happy that there is a justifiable reason for it.
Sometimes it helps to be able to sneak up on people..!
Obviously i'm not condoning any breaking of caa regs.. all im saying is, lets not draw any extra attention to it IF it does happen.. and be happy that it will be done as safely as possible.
If it does happen that is.. which i doubt..
Sometimes it helps to be able to sneak up on people..!
Obviously i'm not condoning any breaking of caa regs.. all im saying is, lets not draw any extra attention to it IF it does happen.. and be happy that it will be done as safely as possible.
If it does happen that is.. which i doubt..
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: uk
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Well last night a 23:30 hours, I saw one of the Met police's EC145s hovering pretty high (though not quite in the cloud) without a single light on, not even anti collision, the heli was simply a black blob in the cloud and I had trouble keeping track of it but for the distinctive noise. It eventually moved of to the north (towards Isle of Dogs)
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Isle of Wight
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Crab,
Whilst on NVGs, I have had to switch off the Sea King Nav lights on many occasions when flying around the dark and scary Scottish mountains, trying to slide up a mountain in low viz or when encountering an unexpected snowstorm.
You should try it
Whilst on NVGs, I have had to switch off the Sea King Nav lights on many occasions when flying around the dark and scary Scottish mountains, trying to slide up a mountain in low viz or when encountering an unexpected snowstorm.
You should try it
Britinusa - that's not quite the same as conducting a search over water though!
I too have switched off nav lights to remove the disc obscuration caused by the port nav light when turning left in the mountains but not because the lights interfere with the NVG.
I too have switched off nav lights to remove the disc obscuration caused by the port nav light when turning left in the mountains but not because the lights interfere with the NVG.
