From: Jim Hocut Subject: COZY: Safety - Aircraft Visibility Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 10:43:21 -0400 I don't know how much press it's received outside of our local area, but there was a midair collision between a 172 and Citation yesterday just north of Atlanta. All 5 occupants of the aircraft were killed, and luckily nobody on the ground was hurt. There was just recently an article in Flight Training about collision avoidance, and I always preach to students to keep their eyeballs outside the plane 80 to 90 % of the time. The Citation was supposedly on an IFR flight plan, so one might surmise that it's pilot had a false sense of security because he was in contact with controllers. But basically I think the bottom line is they didn't see each other until it was too late to do anything about it. Anyway, I've had in the back of my head (the closet that's filled with cobwebs) that I need to start thinking of ways to make my plane as visible as possible during the day. Now may be a good time to begin an exchange of ideas along these lines. One idea (which I admit hasn't been thoroughly thought through yet) would be to have driving lights pointing fore, aft, right, and left, and build a circuit that pulses one at a time (so that I'm only paying the equivalent penalty to my electrical budget of one light). I've already got landing lights in the nose, so if I decide this idea is workable that leaves installation details for three more. Any thoughts and ideas? Jim Hocut jhocut@mindspring.com Date: Sun, 05 Apr 1998 09:40:24 -0500 From: David Domeier Subject: Re: COZY: Safety - Aircraft Visibility Jim, re "I've already got landing lights in the nose, so if I decide this idea is workable that leaves installation details for three more." I agree. I in my business, flying commercially, being IFR is no panacea. For example, flying into LA on a VFR day is always an exercise of controlling stress because so many general aviation aircraft routinely fly through the approach route from the east at altitudes up to 12000 feet. I've had to take serious avoidance action to miss a Cherokee on more than one occasion and I don't think the guy ever saw us and he wasn't visible until very close in. Lights on sure would have helped. I always turn on all landing lights below 10,000 feet and/or 250 knots. I down loaded Velocity's catalog. They have a landing light kit for $50 that we Cozy guys might want to check out. It looks like they could be mounted externally anywhere althought I have not seen the units. Has anyone seen the Velocity landing light and what do you think? How is your nose light installed? Did you make or find a lense that matches the contour or are letting the bulb be exposed to the elements? dd Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 11:35:15 -0400 From: siegler@clark.net (Stuart Siegler) Subject: Re: COZY: Safety - Aircraft Visibility Jim, >One idea (which I admit hasn't been thoroughly thought through yet) >would be to have driving lights pointing fore, aft, right, and left, >and build a circuit that pulses one at a time (so that I'm only paying >the equivalent penalty to my electrical budget of one light). I've >already got landing lights in the nose, so if I decide this idea is >workable that leaves installation details for three more. > I think this would confuse a fellow pilot (at night) -- "He's coming at me! No, He's turning (and quickly I might add)!..." Also, it would increase the number of UFO sightings. ;-) Stuart -- Stuart Siegler siegler@clark.net ssiegler@newvax.enet.dec.com http://www.clark.net/siegler/ ... and we're gonna keep on having meetings 'till we find out why nothing's getting done here. From: Jim Hocut Subject: RE: COZY: Safety - Aircraft Visibility Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 16:46:17 -0400 David Domeier wrote: How is your nose light installed? Did you make or find a lense that matches the contour or are letting the bulb be exposed to the elements? Check out Marc's photo on his web page of the nose construction, if you're able. I pretty much copied what Marc had, with a few variations. There was some discussion here a while back about how to mold the lens. Stuart Siegler wrote: I think this would confuse a fellow pilot (at night) -- "He's coming at me! No, He's turning (and quickly I might add)!..." Also, it would increase the number of UFO sightings. ;-) And Peter A. Coffie wrote: why not convert some old minature "disposable camera" flashes to fit in the plane and then just run a shielded power source to them and let them randomly flash.... I wasn't really thinking about this for night flying. I think a good strobe installed in the proper location is plenty good for night flying. I don't believe, however (just an untested opinion at this time though) that strobes are very visible during the day. Maybe NASA has some research on making aircraft more visible. I'll look and see if I can find anything that looks interesting. Jim Hocut jhocut@mindspring.com From: cdenk@ix.netcom.com Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 16:35:27 -0500 (CDT) Subject: RE: COZY: Safety - Aircraft Visibility I have had very favorable comments on my noselights with the pulselight. They seem to be more visible day or night in particular head on than the whelan strobes. The other night I was turning base to final, and we live 6 miles from the airport, my wife asked when I go home if that was me. I have them on night and day. Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 22:52:04 -0500 Subject: COZY: Safety - Aircraft Visibility From: resiebert@juno.com (Reid E. Siebert) One of the best safety devices in your airplane is the transponder set to mode C (altitude encoding). I fly on corporate Gulfstream jets that are equipped with TCAS systems, similar to what is installed in airliners. Any airplane with its transponder & encoder turned "on" appears on the cockpit TCAS screen as a dot with a numeric readout showing vertical separation (in feet) between the aircraft it represents, and us. The dot is also placed on the screen to show horizontal separation (in miles). If an aircraft approaches within 2.5 miles of our aircraft, and within 1000 ft vertically, the TCAS computer issues a visual and aural warning to the crew. If the separation continues to close, the computer will issue a command, to the captain, to make an evasive maneuver in the direction that it decides is best to avoid a collision. This evasive maneuver command is also sent to the radar controller. Neither the captain, nor the controller can counter-mand the commanded maneuver. All the controller can do is WATCH what happens, and HOPE for the best. The aircraft I fly on are based in Chicago. Most IFR approaches into that area have us descend down to 10,000 ft while we are still 50 miles from the airport (and flying at 320 kts.). The area south of Chicago has a heavy amount of flight training, and G.A. traffic. Descending through this area is where we encounter almost all of the TCAS alerts, and many times each year we have to do evasive TCAS commanded maneuvers to avoid collisions with VFR traffic that have no idea of what just ALMOST happened to them. What saves their happy "axes" are the transponders & altitude encoders installed in their planes. If you don't have an encoder hooked to your transponder, GET ONE !!! If you can't afford one, please try to stay about 100 miles away from major hub airspace. If you have an encoder, please resist the temptation to turn it off when you are doing "maneuvers " that you don't want any radar controller to see. If you don't see us, we will still see you. Reid Siebert P.S.: Most Cessna Citations DO NOT have TCAS installed on them....$$$$$. _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 09:33:58 +0200 From: Chris van Hoof Subject: Re: COZY: Safety - Aircraft Visibility > > Any thoughts and ideas? > > Jim Hocut > jhocut@mindspring.com on being visible: there was an article in the October 1997 Kitplanes magazine (p59), on how to build an Anti-Collision Flasher. There are corrections to the diagram and part numbers. the author,Mike Palmer, email address is at the end of the article. hope this adds some value to the discussion. chris still in chapter 09...work, work, work.....