You will also find a very small hole on the left wall of the cockpit...This was to poke the end of the Goggles vent tube out of...The tube just stuck out into the airflow and sucked a flow through the goggles to stop them steaming up. The goggles had a very dark blue glass and what you saw through them was rather claustrophobic and frightening. With all the amber screens in place and your vented goggles on, ALL you could see was the white needles and division marks on the dials of the instruments...You could put the IR lighting on to make these glow more brightly. That was ALL you could see...Everything else was a black as Newgate's Knocker :roll:
You have to experience this and fly the aircraft using it in various patterns to realise how horrible an experience that was...No sweat for the instructor of course...He had no goggles and could see the world through the Amber Screens.
Sounds more like training to fly the aircraft under the influence of hallucinagenics (sp?) Still its quite a neat way of achieving "nighttime", if a little unpleasant for the student. Do any other single engined trainers have similar arrangements?
Yes I think so Toby, but not that I ever flew...I went onto the Harvard from the Prentice...I seem to recollect seeing a Baliol with two stage amber, but I may be wrong about that