Aviation

IAF and USAF Join Exercise

After it was suspended for several years, join military exercise between the Indonesian Air Force (IAF) and United States Air Force (USAF) was resumed July 19, 2010. Taking place at the Husein Sastranegara Air Force Base and Sulaiman AFB in Bandung, West Java.

Code-name Teak Iron 10-2, the military exercise involved 150 IAF Special Forces and personnel and 110 US. soldiers. Two USAF heavy transport planes, Hercules MC-130H from Special Operations Group 353 based at Kaneda AFB in Japan and one IAF Hercules dropped the Indonesian and American troops during the join parachuting exercise held in Bandung area.

Similar military exercise will be conducted within three years span with Teak Iron 10-2 as its initial exercise in resuming the join IAF and USAF exercises.

Majalah Angkasa

The Aircraft Light Types and Meanings

Question:

Often we see with the lights on the plane during flight, sometimes blinking sometimes steady. Is the light aircraft function the same as land vehicles for street lighting and whether the pilot is obliged to always turn on the lights during night flight?

Answer:

Three Aircraft Light Types

The light function is the same everywhere, which is to illuminate something, or so it can be seen by the other party as a navigation aid. Anyway, for an aircraft there are many different lights with different colors and has been a general agreement that the outer lights located on the left is colored Red, while on the right is colored Green. Broadly speaking there are only two aircraft light positions that are within the cabin is known as the internal light and outside the cabin is called external light.

In an aircraft there are a variety of external light. Namely Landing and Taxi Light, Runway Light, Scan Light, Wingtip Light, Navigation Light, Anti-Collision Light, Strobe Light, and sometimes there is also called the Auxilliary Light used to illuminate the vertical stabilizer to make company logo visible. While for some military aircraft there are other external lights, eg. Formation Light and Probe Light. All types of lamps are lit only when necessary.

In the aviation world flight safety is the primary consideration, for it had lights installed other than as a means of lighting it’s also to confirm the existence of such aircraft visually. Therefore some aircraft lights related to navigation safety must be lit, for example strobe lights and landing lights when going to landing, because the other function of the landing light is a sign that the wheel of the plane has been lowered. Only the taxi and runway lights used as pilot instrument to lighting the runway at night, the rest serves as the safety requirements of flying.

In addition, the angle of the light beam comply to the standard provisions with the aim that by looking at it then the direction or heading of the aircraft can be predicted. Red navigation lights (left) has an 110 degrees angle, the opposite on the right has the same angle as well, while the White navigation lights (rear) has an angle of 170 degrees. This beam angle is also applicable to military aircraft and should always be lit at night or during the day, along with strobe light.

In military aircraft there is a so-called formation light, judging by the name it serves as visibility aid in the flight formation at night. This lamp is positioned at three spots, by comparing the triangular shape of the three lights on other aircraft, the pilots will be able to estimate the distance and position relative to the flight leader. Formation light on some of today’s aircraft fighter has been replaced with a reflector (spot light) with the same function. While the probe light function is to illuminate the probe (a device for fighter aircraft (air-refueling) when it will conduct refueling at night. In basket (of the tanker aircraft), there is a reflector, by looking at the reflector shape and size it will look like a circular ring, the fighter pilots can estimate position, distance, and angle of approach without looking at the tanker aircraft.

All external lights can be controlled from the cockpit with a toggle switch position ON-OFF, Bright-DIM selector and STD-FLASH control make it blinks or steady. Generally, when a plane fly below 5,000 feet the switch will be placed to the Bright/Flash position to make other planes or controller easy to see, as often we see everyday.