Night flying question

[xJAEx]

If one wanted to avoid glowire, would the following work?

night blades painted white
white canopy
white tail blades
white paddles
Then the idea would be to paint all of these items with glow in the dark paint.

Assuming this would work and be visible enough, the only drawback would be not having different colors like with glowire to differentiate between the various sections of the heli.



Has anyone tried this or have an opinion about why this would or would not work?

If it would work I guess you could also paint the boom white then coat it with the glow in the dark paint and get that to be visible as well.

[MICHAEL]

it might work but why not just get some glow wire as it is very cheap....

[xJAEx]

Not a $$$ issue, just an idea that popped in my head...

[MICHAEL]

Try it........

[Anubis328]

What would be cool is if one of the LEDs in the blades were Blacklights. Then your glow in the dark paint would explode!

I don't know if it's even possible to make an led sized blacklight, but we'll need to get someone on it.

[flyinfool]

I don't remember where I saw it but there was someone that painted a clear canopy using Fluorescent paint and then had several UV LED's inside to light it up.
It really looked like it would be visible.

Yes there are UV LED's, the first white LED's were UV LED's with white phosphorus material in the lens. They may not be pure UV because there is some visible light there that looks dark blue but they do light up the fluorescent paint.

I don't think that the Glow in the dark paint is bright enough to be easily seen at a distance, especially on the blades. But then there may be better paints out now that are brighter.

[Finless]

I can tell you that unless your flying in a well lite parking lot, the painting stuff white etc wont work! Trust me I learned that the hard way..... IF it is drak that means there is no light to really reflect of white or any color for that matter.

HOWEVER...... I did night fly once wearing night vision goggles... Worked OK but you dont want to get too far away from yourself as for some reason depth perception was wierd with those. Kinda like looking through a tunnel at the heli.

Bob

[xJAEx]

As flyin fool points out, the question is whether or not the glow in the dark paint is visible enough to be seen clearly. I don't have any extra canopies but i'll try and paint "something" with the glow in the dark paint to see if its worth using. The little can is $6 at home depot so no big loss if it doesn't work.

I didn't initially specify why the need for white items, but the reason is that the can of paint at the store indicated it only works when you paint a white surface. Therefore using it on an alu or CF boom would be ineffective (unless you paint them white I guess). The paint is supposed to "charge" when in the light and then glows in darkness (like the stars you put in kids rooms that light up). This being the case, it would seem that the darker the flying location the better you "should" be able to see the heli.

I'll report back when I try the paint out...