MSP Hint of the Month for July 2011

LIGHTS. This month I thought that "we" would talk a little about aircraft (A/C) lights. If you have a look inside the cockpit of almost any of our aircraft, you will find a bank of switches a lot like that shown below in our much beloved SPA Beech 1900D:





I have opened a window at the top showing the six light switches in which we are interested: Landing, Taxi, Navigation (NAV), Beacon (BCN), Strobe (STB) and Logo. The Landing and Taxi lights are pretty obvious, right? You turn on the Taxi lights to see to taxi the A/C in the dark and you turn on the Landing lights to land in the dark. That's right, except that we use the Landing lights to takeoff too and we use both the Taxi and Landing lights during the daylight, as well as at night. The others are less obvious. the NAV lights are the red light on the left wingtip, the green light on the right wingtip and the white light up on the tail. They tell everyone that the A/C has power on, whether that is ground power, comes from the APU, or is derived from the engines. So, you should turn on the NAV lights as soon as you enter the cockpit and power up. The BCN is a pair of rotating lights, one on the top of the A/C and the other on the bottom (belly). They tell the ground crew and other A/C that the engines are running or that they are about to be started.. So, stand clear. The STB lights are bright strobe lights on the wing tips and/or tail that announce that the A/C is on an active runway or in actual flight. The Logo lights are used to help illuminate the A/C in the dark and/or in IMC (Instrument Meterological Conditions - i.e., IFR).

So, you can see that you shouldn't just enter the cockpit and hit the "L" key to turn on all the lights. Instead you should sequence the operation of the lights according to the current phase of the flight.

• NAV: Turn on upon entering the cockpit and powering up and off on power-down.
• BCN: Turn on just before starting engines and off after turning the engines off.
• STB: Turn on just before entering the active runway ("the active") and off upon leaving the active
• TAXI: Turn on as soon as you are off the gate and off upon reaching 18000'. Turn back on below 18000' and off upon arriving at the gate.
• LAND: Turn on before entering the active and off upon reaching 18000'. Turn on descending thru 18000' and off upon leaving the active.

Mike Daugherty
SPA 48
MSP Hub Manager















<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: Westcoast, Jul 03, 2011 - 09:34 PM</em><!-- end editby -->