I am trying “Live Weather” for a change and - here right now - it’s dark outside.
I am trying to fly the Diamond Katana and the cockpit is absolutely dark. OK, my bad - I gotta turn on the lights - so I go to control settings to figure out how to turn the lights on.
I have:
Panel lights on
Panel lights off
Pedestal lights on
Pedestal lights off
Cabin lights on
Cabin lights off
and
Toggle panel lights
Toggle glare shield lights
along with
Set panel, glare shield, pedestal, cabin lights.
When I bind panel lights on/off and pedestal lights on/off to buttons, turning them on seems to enable what looks like the “flashlight”. Toggle light “X” appears to do nothing.
What I hope to accomplish is to turn on the instrument back-lighting for all the instruments, both on the left and right side of the instrument panel. Absent that, some way of evenly illuminating the instrument panel.
Note that the number of adjustments and buttons on my controller is limited and I cannot assign more than three or four actions to the three or four buttons I have left to assign. (Unfortunately, the dimmers expect to be bound to up and down buttons instead of a potentiometer/axis control.)
I cannot imagine that the Diamond Katana has no way to illuminate the cockpit instruments.
Until this is resolved I am compelled to only fly with daylight conditions set.
Ideas would be gratefully appreciated.
P.S.
I want to use the Diamond Katana since it’s the same plane I have flown in my other flights and I want to compare apples to apples.
You are absolutely right - I noticed after looking at the cockpit “in daylight” that there are no instrumentation and/or cockpit lights whatsoever.
Doh?!
You can’t fly this beastie at night? Sure looks like it.
Another thing I discovered, (all my prior flying has been in the daytime), is that the cockpit instruments on the Cessna 172, (analog), are not backlit. The only source of instrumentation lighting is a panel light that shines on the front of them.
I am soooo used to instrumentation being backlit, but then again I’ve never built or serviced avionics for small GA aircraft either. The smallest aircraft I ever built instruments for was the Cessna Citation class of jets which had backlit, (edge-lit), lights. Everything else had acrylic face-plates and needles with illumination from behind, (and was for much larger aircraft!), except for certain military aircraft instruments that were edge-lit).
The only placard I remember seeing was to caution the pilot that both cockpit canopy latches have to be locked.
Bummer!
What happens in the case where something untoward happens and you get stuck out after nightfall?
I remember a case I saw on YouTube where a poor fellow was flying as a passenger in a Cessna, (172, I think), and the pilot died at the controls, so he ended up not being able to land until after nightfall and had a totally dark cockpit. By The Grace of God, he got down in one piece and the number of pieces of the plane after landing was mercifully few.
