Re: Su-27SK(Upgraded), Su-27KUB & new Flanker book

And tires your eyes more because the sky around you is light blue..

Speaking of Sukhoi; I understand that Indonesia has cut an order for a batch of Flankers. Considering that New Zealand has virtually dis-armed and I heard Australia is looking at a round of "defense rationalizations" what effect will this have down in the Southern Hemisphere?

Bill Shuey

Oh come on. You've got to do better than that. Do they not plan to fly their planes at night? Most modern combat missions are flown in pitch black nowadays anyway. Lightly-painted cockpit panels will reflect far more ambient cockpit light than flat-black or grey ones, potentially diminishing a pilot's night vision.

And even during the day, how much can it possibly tire your eyes to look at a grey panel? I fly a Cessna for hours on end, and it has a dark grey panel, and dosen't hurt my eyes in the least (I know it's not a fighter jet, but still, eyes are eyes). I would have to believe that if there was any real truth to the fact that there is any real benefit nowadays towards having shiny powder-blue cockpit panels, western fighters would do the same.

If memory is correct their doctors have determined that it is the best color for pilots and they eyes.

The US Navy did similiar studies on the effects of color and crew operations.

MikeT

Snipped.................

Bill,

The Ka-50 is fitted with a Zvezda K-37 lightweight rocket ejection system that extracts the seat and pilot after first shedding the co-axial (not tandem) rotors.

AFAIK, the two-seat Ka-52 and Ka-50-2 have the same system.

There is a photo of the K-37 seat down the bottom of the Ka-50 pages at :-

Ken Duffey

Back when I was doing a bit of night-vision oriented work we got comments about printing things on pink (salmon) colored paper - comment was that that was most readable.