All
RC fliers have gotten that "I can't tell which way it's going"
feeling when learning to fly RC. Several simple color trimming steps can help
you fly your airplane better, whether you are a beginner or top dog in
Pattern.
Most airplanes, especially ARFs, are covered or
painted to look good in the store. But in the air it's a different story. The
situation is very simple—if you can't see it, you can't fly it.
To
successfully fly an RC aircraft, the pilot must have good orientation and
distance perception. The eyes estimate aircraft orientation based on the
perceived position of the model's outer edges, and the relationship of these
outer edges to the edges of any discernible trim markings on the airplane's
wings or fuselage. Distance perception, in turn, depends on a combination of
one's perception of the aircraft's outside edges and its estimated
orientation.
After you have located your airplane and estimated how far away it is, you
must immediately recognize several attitude orientations:
·
Is
it flying toward me or away from me?
·
Is
it upright or inverted?
·
Are
the wings flat, vertical, or tipped?
·
Is
it flying horizontal, upward, or downward?
·
Is
it flying parallel to the runway or vectored?
·
Is
it flying perfectly vertical or skewed sideways or fore/aft?
The
following suggestions will help you with distance and attitude perception.
Visual acuity and contrast perception diminish with age, but by using correct
color concepts, even senior fliers will find that visual orientation of their
aircraft can be consistently and reliably achieved.
Solid-Colored Aircraft
RC airplanes are flown in all kinds of weather and background conditions. A
solid-colored aircraft will sooner or later fly into a condition where it
blends into the background. This will result in a complete loss of location
and orientation since no edges can be perceived. The absolute worst, in my
opinion, is a silver Mustang in a heavily overcast sky. Yellow Cubs are tough
to see when back lit by the sun. I had a dark green airplane that would
disappear when I landed with a background of green trees. Red Stiks
and dark blue airplanes go invisible in late evening and storm conditions. A
solid-colored airplane is easier to cover, but it won't do you any favors up
in the sky.
Wing and Horizontal Stabilizer Shades
The top of the wing and horizontal stabilizer is
normally lit by sunlight. The bottom of the wing and horizontal stabilizer is
shadowed. Coloring the top lighter and the bottom darker keeps this same
relationship even in changing lighting conditions.
ARFs
are classic blunders in coloring. Either they have identical top and bottom
wing colors, or they put some token color on the top of the wings and leave
them white underneath. They look good in the store, but don't help the
beginner at all.
I
always recommend that beginners cover the bottom of the wing and the bottom of
the horizontal stabilizer with dark-blue contact paper before flight.
When
flying at a distance of 500 feet or more (depending on the size of the model
and lighting conditions) you can't see colors, because the cones of your eyes
that perceive color are 2,000 times less sensitive than the rods, which
perceive illumination.
In
these circumstances, your gray-scale vision (your perception of lightness and
darkness in a black-and-white image) provides your orientation and depth
perception, not color. Any series of adjacent colors on your aircraft that are
intended to facilitate orientation should therefore be gray-scale opposites.
For example, a series of bands consisting of red, yellow, blue, and then white
is desirable. Don't assume a series of "color opposites" such as
red, green, blue and black will be effective. These all have the same dark
gray-scale shade and will show an equal tendency to disappear in a deep blue
or heavily overcast sky.
If
you use the wrong series of color bands, you won't know how far away your
aircraft is, and you won't even know which way it's heading to bring it pack.
Also, don't rely on intricate patterns. They blend together to form edgeless
fuzz approximately 100 feet away. You can test potential color schemes for
gray-scale perceptibility by video taping and playing back alternative color
schemes on a black-and-white television or on a color television with the
color control turned down.
Actual Patterns to Use
The best color scheme for beginners that I have
found is a combination of large starburst patterns on top of the wing and
horizontal stabilizer, and a solid dark color underneath the wing and
horizontal stabilizer.
Beginners
consistently become perceptually disorientated when flying at a distance,
especially when the airplane flies at a 45° angle away or toward the pilot,
since the aircraft silhouette is identical. With the starburst pattern, all
the beginner has to do is slightly roll the wings towards him, and the
starburst pattern becomes an arrowhead, pointing in or out, the direction of
flight.
Start
by covering the bottom of the wing and horizontal stabilizer with any dark
color. The exact color could be black, deep red, dark blue, or green, it
doesn't matter; they will be the same gray-scale color at a distance. Then put
a 2-inch strip of some light color along the leading edge of the bottom. Do
the same for the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer, and make the light strip
roughly 1 inch wide.
The base color of the top of the wing must be a very light color such as
white, yellow, or some other very light color The starburst pattern starts out
at the center of the wing, from 3/8 inch under the wing’s leading edge to
roughly 1 inch back from the leading edge at the top. Then it is a large
"pie slice" to the wing tip, where it extends from 3/8 inch under
the wing leading edge to the trailing edge on the top. A second pie slice of a
different dark color extends from the center of the wing to points one third
and two thirds out on the wing. Both sides of the wing are colored like this
as is the top of the horizontal stabilizer.
Landing Considerations
Landing requires keeping your wings flat and
knowing where you are in the landing approach. You are generally close to the
airplane during the later stages of the landing approach, so your color
perception is improved, but the wings will be edge-on to your line of sight.
The leading edges should be very prominent against any background such as blue
sky, white clouds, dark overcast, distant mountains, or green trees. All of
these items have spectral lines toward the higher frequency blue or green
region, so a very simple solution would be to have a low frequency color such
as red or orange on your wing and horizontal stabilizer leading edge.
At
the field where I fly in
The
leading edge red or orange pie slice is wrapped around the leading edge so
that it has the maximum area of visibility when edge on. The 2-inch strip of
white on the bottom of the wing near the leading edge will become visible
during the landing flare, aiding in precision landings.
I
prefer a white background on the top of the wing and horizontal stabilizer,
with a bright red leading edge pie slice and a metallic blue inner pie slice
on trainer airplanes. The same metallic blue under the wing looks nice, but
any dark color works fine
Fuselage and Rudder Coloring
The same coloring rules apply to the fuselage. Keep
the top of the fuselage light, and the bottom dark.
The
sides of the fuselage should aid you in flying horizontal passes. A solid
color fuselage is very difficult to keep straight and level because all of the
aircraft reference lines are curved. Light blue-and-white fuselages (a
favorite ARF color scheme) blend in with the sky and clouds too well, and will
become invisible under some lighting conditions.
Draw
a line along the thrust line of your aircraft, roughly splitting the top and
bottom of the sides in half. Make the top half of your fuselage sides a light
color. Make the bottom half a dark color, usually one of the wing pie slice
colors.
Analyze
how you fly. Beginners and experts, who fly inverted much of the time, should
make the fuselage line color demarcation exactly follow the thrust line.
Beginners fly airplanes with lifting, flat-bottom wings, so the aircraft
fuselage side flies a straight line.
The
expert flies an airplane with symmetrical wings, so he flies at a slightly
raised altitude to maintain level flight, whether upright or inverted.
Therefore he should also have the fuselage line color demarcation exactly
following the thrust line. When doing a horizontal pass, he should maintain an
equal rising thrust line sight picture whether upright or inverted.
The
interesting situation is the beginning aerobatic pilot. His routines do not
include horizontal, inverted passes, but his maneuvers do include many
horizontal flight components. He will usually be flying an aircraft with
symmetrical airfoil wings, so the aircraft will be moving through the air with
a slight upward orientation. He should offset the fuselage side color
demarcation upward at the tail of the aircraft by roughly an inch. Now he can
practice his horizontal passes by keeping the fuselage side lines parallel
with flat ground.
The vertical stabilizer and rudder should have very wide horizontal bands of
color. Make the top of the horizontal stabilizer the same color as the wing
tips. Then put a light-colored band, and below this a dark-colored band,
usually the same color as the inner pie slice on the top of the wing. The base
color of the vertical stabilizer and rudder should be the same light color of
the wing.
Another
variant for the vertical stabilizer and rudder that works well on trainers
with very big tails—such as the Kadet
series—is a starburst pattern on the top of the wing. This aids the beginner
in determining the direction of travel when flying at a distance. The tail’s
starburst pattern becomes an arrowhead pointing out the direction of flight.
Looping
Consider what the usual looping problem always is for the beginning aerobatic
pilot. The pilot does not begin the loop with his wings flat. He usually
corkscrews in or out. Proper coloring of his low-wing or mid-wing airplane can
be a major help.
Make
the wing tips stand out. I usually make the outer 2 inches of each wing and 1
inch of each horizontal stabilizer the same bright red that I color the
leading edge. If you follow my advice above on the wing bottom and the
fuselage sides, the wing tip can be visually correctly placed for a perfect
loop. If the wing tip is too high, resulting in a corkscrew out, the pilot
will see the dark wing bottom. If the wing tip is too low, resulting in a
corkscrew in, the pilot will find that the wing tip blends too well with the
bottom of fuselage side. The correct sight picture will be the wingtip cleanly
placed against the upper lightly colored fuselage side. Look at the
International Miniature Acrobatic Club or Pattern airplane pictures in RC
magazines. They always have a dark color on the top half of the fuselage side
into which the wing tip blends, causing looping problems.
Geometric Shapes
Humans can recognize different geometric shapes 1/10 of a second faster than
colors. I use this phenomenon to help me with the vertical rolls performed in
advanced aerobatics. Instead of a solid dark color on the bottom of my wing
and horizontal stabilizer, I put four large circles on the bottom of the wings
and two large circles on the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer. The
noticeably faster recognition of the round shape verses the line shape aids me
in nailing the vertical rolls.
A
number of people at my field have copied my bottom circles without knowing the
reason why I use them. The solid colored bottom is preferred unless you are
doing vertical rolls.
Sunglasses
Several years ago I flew with some expensive Serengetti
Driver sunglasses. These had a red tint to them, I guess to cut down on the
ultraviolet region. I lost visual perception on a solid dark blue airplane
during a landing approach and crashed.
Fortunately
they were stolen at a hobby store a week later, and I got some RayBan
aviator sunglasses with a blue-gray tint. What a difference!
Red
is at the low frequency part of the visual spectrum, and blue is at the high
frequency part of the spectrum. Red or yellow-tinted sunglasses reduce all
colors to high-contrast shades of gray, making your aircraft in the air appear
completely different from the appearance of your aircraft at home or in the
pits. Gray, light blue, or light green tinted sunglasses make the airplane in
the air look just like the airplane in the pits, and because your vision is
extended into the high frequency part of the visible spectrum, you will have
twice the visual perception range!
Final Thoughts
·
Evaluate
color schemes for visibility first, beauty second. Dark-colored airplanes are
more difficult to see in overcast skies and in the evening.
·
Scale
airplanes are a special problem. Warbirds were
colored to avoid detection, just the opposite of RC airplanes. Avoid flying
scale-colored airplanes until you a very experienced flier.
·
Avoid
dark colors on the fuselage where your battery and receiver are located. The
heat buildup can result in loss of battery capacity and premature radio
failure.
·
Don't
fly when someone with a airplane identical to yours
is already flying. ARFs and yellow Cubs are
particularly susceptible to this problem. Several years ago two fliers were
flying with identical ARFs. When one of the models
landed, both modelers went out to get the airplane. Much to the entertainment
of the folks in the pits, one modeler discovered that his airplane had crashed
out in the field five minutes previously because he had lost track of which
airplane was his, and he was "flying" the wrong one.
