Shooting an instrument approach with a headlamp.

Bicycleflyer

Enlightened
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Mar 21, 2008
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470
Location
Cincinnati, OH, USA
Hi all,

I think you may find this interesting. I got to use a headlamp while flying this past weekend.

I am Capt on a SD360 cargo plane and on Saturday morning I lost all the panel lights on my side, except for the Artificial Horizon and HSI. I went to adjust the brightness of my panel lights via a rheostat and then "Pop" most all my instruments and all the engine instruments went out. I lost lighting to my Airspeed indicator, Altimeter, VSI, RMI, and all instrumentation for both engines. Yes, they share the same rheostat for brightness.

First, I want to emphasize that at no time was my crew or aircraft in danger. The weather was low (600 ft and 10 mi Vis) but not so low that our arrival was in jeopardy. My co-pilots lights were working just fine, I could have just turned over the flight to him. In addition the grimes light could be aimed at my instruments. While dim, there would have been sufficient light to fly. I did consider both options and I discussed them with my Copilot. I explained to him that I have been curious if I could fly with my headlamp and I would like to try. We both decided it was safe and he would be backing me up with his instruments.

I carry three lights when I fly. A MD2 as my primary flashlight. I use a nightcore "Tube" on my ID lanyard. Then finally I have a Streamlight "bandit" that I use for filling out paperwork on the ground when we don't have power, which is most of the time. The star here is the Bandit. I had to remove my headset to put it on, but it did work just fine with my headset as one, did not interfere with the other. The bandit is a floody light and I did not have to be looking directly at anything to illuminate it. Which made scanning easy as I did not have to move my head. The low setting was more than adequate to fly with. The only problem I experienced was the glare off the inside of my glasses. While annoying, it presented no real problem. The approach was a GPS with LPV. The winds were from our right and gusting. To make this test worthwhile, I decided to not use the Flight Director. Because of the winds it was a rough ride, but I kept it on profile and successfully landed. My fear of the headlamp glare reflecting off the windscreen did not materialize.

So after almost 30 years of flying. I finally had an occasion to use a flashlight, or in this case, a headlamp to fly an airplane.
 

iamlucky13

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 11, 2016
Messages
1,139
Interesting report. Thanks for sharing, and glad everything went well and was carefully controlled.

This seems like a case where a good low mode is essential. If you have to spot any runway lights or other references, even if there is not windscreen glare, I think you would not want the instrument panel to be lit up too bright to make it hard to focus outside the plane.

As commercial aircraft get continually refined, they're all trending to the same basic features. I enjoy seeing distinctly different aircraft like the Short 360, and Short Brothers has several significantly more exotic designs in their history.
 

aginthelaw

Flashlight Enthusiast
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Jan 28, 2007
Messages
2,655
Location
NJ, USA
Shouldn't this be posted under "what did you use your flashlight for today"?

Was it a fuse that knocked out your instrument lights?
 

Bicycleflyer

Enlightened
Joined
Mar 21, 2008
Messages
470
Location
Cincinnati, OH, USA
Shouldn't this be posted under "what did you use your flashlight for today"?

Was it a fuse that knocked out your instrument lights?

No,

When a circuit breaker pops it makes a distinctive sound that I readily recognize. But I did locate the CB and it was not popped. Since this happened at exactly the moment I rotated the rheostat, I think it fried.
 

nimdabew

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Nov 24, 2008
Messages
336
I keep my ZL H32FW around my neck all the time (even daylight) when I am flying. I fly a PC-12NG and even though it is all glass, there are still things that I want to look at that are not illuminated like the CB panels and crap I am writing down on paper. I also use a tripple led in a jaxman host as my primary flashlight.

I probably go overboard with how many lights I carry, but I keep about 5 within arms reach of my when I am flying around.
 
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