Red vs. Green in the Cockpit

[SoCal 182 Driver]

Friends -

I'm not trying to reignite the age-old "red vs. green lighting in the cockpit debate," but which color to you prefer for instrument lighting, and why?

Thanks!

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Fun topic as I studied rod photoreceptors in my graduate work.

Rods are much less sensitive to red light, so they are not bleached so badly by a red light. Since the rods are the receptors which are primarily responsible for vision on low light conditions, this allows them to still see non red lights outside better.

Here is a page with an overview on this - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

So what do you recommend, Peter?

I recommend and use red light.

But if you think about it, what matters is how much rod vision you have left after exposure to whatever light you are using. The photosensitivity curves of the different normal human photoreceptors are well known. So there is an equivalent amount of green or blue or white (which is a mixture) light which will yield the same amount of bleaching of the rods as a red light. It will be dimmer of course.