Page 9 - May 25

He Said
In the Army we had ramp police.
This title was ascribed to that
small band of nit-noid pilots in the
unit who would look for anything and
everything for which to complain.
Miss the yellow line with the nose
tire while parking? The ramp police
would let you know. Don’t have the
blades at a perfect 45-degree position
after shutdown? The ramp police
would talk about you at the next pilot briefing. Taxi in
with the lights in the wrong configuration? Heaven help
you … you’d hear about that for the next month.
Every unit has ramp police, and general aviation has
its own version of the ramp police. I taxied into a ramp
at a regional airport recently in a Piper M600 with LED
lights, and one of the crusty old Cessna Citation pilots
asked why I taxied in with my landing light on. Yup, you
guessed it: He was one of the ramp police.
What is their favorite sin of no consequence to point
out? Mishandling aircraft external lighting.
There was (is) a set of unwritten rules that mandated
the use of external lighting. A fair summation of these
rules is:
= The anti-collision light is to be turned on before
starting the engine(s) to visually announce to
people on the ground that the airplane is about to
be started.
= Position lights are to be used only during
nighttime operations.
= Landing and taxi lights are runway items that are
turned on when taking the runway and turned off
when the wheels come up; turned on again when
the landing gear is lowered and off again when
leaving the runway.
= Strobe lights are to be turned on when taking a
runway and turned off when leaving a runway. The
only time the strobe lights are turned off in flight
is during flight into IMC to reduce the strobe effect
that could instigate flicker vertigo.
In modern times, though, things have changed. We now
have LED lights, or we should have LED lights. While we
have new and improved lights, we don’t have new and
improved unwritten rules or a new and improved cadre
of ramp police. So, I think it is acceptable for new rules
to be written.
A fair summation for the new rules for flying with LED
lights should be: Turn on all lights and leave them on.
That’s it. Period. Turn them on and leave them on.
External aircraft switches should be dusty switches, also
known as cockpit switches that don’t get moved much.
But every time I teach this new rule to pilots, I get huge
pushback. I’ll hear lamenting such as “We must follow the
MAY 2025 checklist,” “I don’t want to annoy others” or “That’s not
what my instructor taught me.” It seems that old habits
are hard to kill. The ramp police are out in full force.
There might be some written rules related to external
lighting in Part 121, 135 and military jet flying but only
because of SOPs (standard operating procedures) that are
inherent to those operations. In Part 91 flying, though,
there is no rule for operating external lights on an airplane
other than FAR Part 91.209. That regulation mostly
pertains to night flight and does not give specific guidance
for use of landing lights, logo lights, strobe lights or any
other type of lighting bolted on the airplane during
daytime operations.
With this discussion, I’m going to assume you already
have LED lights on your airplane. Don’t have LED lights?
Tsk, tsk, let’s change that today. LED lights are far better
than old-style incandescent lights. LED lights don’t create
extra heat, use hardly any electricity and the bulb life is
more than 20,000 hours (far longer than any GA airframe
lifespan). In today’s aviation world, there’s simply no
reason not to change to LED. So, if you use incandescent
lights, then you should probably read the unwritten rules
(above) and act accordingly. But, if you have joined us
here in modern times, you’ve upgraded to LED and the
rest of this article is germane to your flying.
Strobe/Anti-collision lights: In the old days, a strobe
light was annoying if turned on while on the ground. The
strobe light was intended to be annoying; it was meant
to draw attention, visually shouting, “Here I am!” There
was nothing worse than waiting in line for takeoff and
having some rookie ahead of you turn on their strobe light.
Old-style incandescent strobe lights blinked at 7 to 14
beats per second, a rate which mysteriously can create
flicker vertigo. Flicker vertigo is a real thing that can be
completely incapacitating, and there’s no reason that
any strobe light in aviation should flicker in the 7 to
14 beats per second range. Today, we’ve got LED strobe
lights that are designed to not pulse at a frequency that
can elicit flicker vertigo. Modern LED strobes do a great
job of pulsing at a rate that is obvious yet not annoying.
Nav lights: We’ve been told not to use position/nav lights
during the daytime because for decades the incandescent
position lights had a limited life. A reasonable owner/
pilot would not use the position lights to save them for a
night flight. In turbine airplanes, everything must work
and a burned-out nav light could cause the trip to be
delayed or canceled until maintenance can replace the
bulb. Now we have LED position lights available with
a 20,000-plus-hour bulb life, which should never need
replacement. You can turn on your LED position lights
and leave that switch on forever, making it a deserved
dusty switch in your airplane.
Landing light and taxi light: Why would a pilot not
have these on all the time in flight? Most landing lights are
attached to the landing gear of advanced airplanes, and
when the gear comes up, the landing light is not visible.
KING AIR MAGAZINE •
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