Van's Air Force
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Infra red or Enhanced vision
- Thread starter jakej
- Start date
Giving this some serious thought myself. I'll be working on my -14 QB wings this winter or next spring and plan to install a mount and all the wiring in the process. Asked them at OSH if they sold an install kit as I probably won't install the full system until sometime after I'm flying. They don't but said they could probably provide a base plate. Didn't ask what they would charge for that.
I've been a corporate pilot for about 37 years now and consider EVS to be one of the Big Three safety advances of recent decades, along with TCAS (or other traffic awareness systems) and in-flight weather. Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to fly with an EVS system. I'm just flying a couple of Lear 45s and most (all?) of the fancy corporate EVS systems include some type of cooling system for the IR camera to increase the sensitivity of the sensor. That requires a bigger airframe and bigger airframes require bigger suitcases (the reason I haven't sought out opportunities to fly those bigger airframes!). Max-Viz doesn't have that, of course. That being said, I have seen a number of their demo videos and think that the system should be quite useful for night operations, particularly where there is a risk of animals on the runway. Not so sure about how well it would function in a daytime, hard-IFR environment but not too many of us are concerned about that. Not sure whether I will be or not. Right now, I'm thinking that I would like that capability but I may not end up having enough testosterone to put myself in that position in an E-AB. In fact, in my entire career, I can think of only a handful of occasions when it might have been helpful in my day job (fortunately, I've never had a position where I was flying a heavy schedule for any length of time).
I've been a corporate pilot for about 37 years now and consider EVS to be one of the Big Three safety advances of recent decades, along with TCAS (or other traffic awareness systems) and in-flight weather. Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to fly with an EVS system. I'm just flying a couple of Lear 45s and most (all?) of the fancy corporate EVS systems include some type of cooling system for the IR camera to increase the sensitivity of the sensor. That requires a bigger airframe and bigger airframes require bigger suitcases (the reason I haven't sought out opportunities to fly those bigger airframes!). Max-Viz doesn't have that, of course. That being said, I have seen a number of their demo videos and think that the system should be quite useful for night operations, particularly where there is a risk of animals on the runway. Not so sure about how well it would function in a daytime, hard-IFR environment but not too many of us are concerned about that. Not sure whether I will be or not. Right now, I'm thinking that I would like that capability but I may not end up having enough testosterone to put myself in that position in an E-AB. In fact, in my entire career, I can think of only a handful of occasions when it might have been helpful in my day job (fortunately, I've never had a position where I was flying a heavy schedule for any length of time).
Still flying with the GRT camera package under the wing of the RV-8. I just don't do that much night flying these days to have much to add over what I wrote about it several years ago (you can search here or on the Kitplanes web site). It takes some practice and training to understand what it does for you, but is a nice (but not essential) enhancement for night flying.
Paul
KRviator
Well Known Member
Because I am a nice bloke, and I have found not everyone is up to snuff on searching the interwebz, here is IronFlight's thread, Seeing in the dark, and here is bkthomps' YouTube video referred to.
