DG lights, which do you use and when?

[Marcel]

The stock Delta Glider has Nav, Beacon and Strobe lights. I'm wondering which lights should be used for takeoff, orbital flight, docking, etc. Is there a protocol for this? What do you folks do? I know that the lights have no bearing whatsoever on what you do in the simulator, but I'm curious!
BTW, I just made my first docking of a stock DG to the ISS port 5, then undocked and did it again next orbit when it was light. It was harder than I thought it would be! I'm going to dock at all five ports on this thing for practice until I get it down.

 

[Cobalt]

All of them, but I just love lights. Christmas lights, running lights on semi-trucks at night... The other day I was at this bar that had ride-ins for motorcycles, and there was a Harley with these blue lights around the engine. Looked really cool because the glow wasn't too harsh.


Okay, seriously, if I remembered I could use them, I'd probably just leave them all on for the sake of the ship being more visible. If I were docked I'd probably cut them off since it wouldn't be necessary.

 

[tblaxland]

All of them, but I just love lights.

If you love lights, you might like [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3399"]our 120km long Ananke momentum exchange tether[/ame]. Here is a screenshot (view at full size and look for the line of lights above the horizon):

There is a scenario in the download where you can watch it spinning across the sky from a ground based camera.

 

[ryan]

The Strobe, Nav and those lights dont actually produce light, they dont illuminate anything so there just there for show.

 

[TSPenguin]

The Strobe, Nav and those lights dont actually produce light, they dont illuminate anything so there just there for show.

As Marcel said, they don't do anything.
But I am wondering what the correct use for them would be.
In the athmosphere I tend to use Nav and strobe.
In orbit I only use beacon, unless I am aproaching something, then I turn on nav so that the other party can identify my bearing properly.

 

[ryan]

Sorry if i didnt read it all, i havnt used the internet in about 2 weeks and you know when you loose your internet and typing skills, you know?

 

[golden_eye]

I usually leave them on all the time. I just follow the aviation rules for them which say beacon and/or strobes day or night and navs at night. Not sure what the rules are about orbit though, if any

 

[Marcel]

I usually leave them on all the time. I just follow the aviation rules for them which say beacon and/or strobes day or night and navs at night. Not sure what the rules are about orbit though, if any

But if you just use Navs at night, you'll be turning them off and on every 45 minutes in LEO. :huh:

 

[Marcel]

OK, thanks for your replies! I love lights too. I leave them all on for ships that are landed on distant pads at KSC for eye candy, and leave the nav lights on at all times for ships that are parked near runway 33. I figure that the cold fusion reactors that work outside of Utah (how else do you get that isp?) can power those leds indefinitely. For the ship I'm using, I'm leaving navs on at all times, and using beacon in the atmosphere and strobe in space, and turning strobe off when docked, In contrast to TSPenguin. Thanks for helping me decide!

 

[TSPenguin]

For the ship I'm using, I'm leaving navs on at all times, and using beacon in the atmosphere and strobe in space, and turning strobe off when docked, In contrast to TSPenguin. Thanks for helping me decide!

I turn strobes off when docked too. I usaly even turn everything else off.
Just for docking aid I enable the lights. I hate it when things *blink* at me, and as a commander I don't want to be blinked at when looking at my own ship docked to the station

 

[Marcel]

I turn strobes off when docked too. I usaly even turn everything else off.
Just for docking aid I enable the lights. I hate it when things *blink* at me, and as a commander I don't want to be blinked at when looking at my own ship docked to the station

Yeah, but I still leave the navs on so I can see my ship when I'm in the Earth's shadow.
In other news, I've just docked with ports 4 and 3 on the ISS, and am starting to feel more competent at it. I still need more practice, though!

 

[TSPenguin]

Do you dock with all realism settings?

 

[pilotpercy]

nav lights should be turned on just during the start up checks and left on until during the shutdown checklist. strobes go on during pre-takeoff checks and off during after-landing checks. the nav lights can be used to deduce the orientation of a craft because if you can see the green light you know it is moving left --> right and if you can see a red light its vice versa.

 

[Star explorer]

all of them

 

[Marcel]

Do you dock with all realism settings?

I've got Complex flight model and Damage and failure simulation set to off, and the other three realism settings set to on. I'm still new at this. I've been building my skills up one step at a time with the short term goal of going to the moon and back. Once I do that, I think I'll start over with Sputnik and all the historical spacecraft I can find in their chronological order with full realism settings. We'll see who launches Orion first, me or NASA! Orbiter is a wonderful hobby!

 

[Hashy]

Just the way I've been flying around (hopelessly) with the DGIV lately, I pretty much have them on all the time, unless I'm shutdown on the ground. If im on the ground and I'm opening/closing something, deploying radar, opening/loading/unloading/closing cargo bay, nose cone, hatches, radar, even with engines shutdown/off while on the ground, ill have the lights going as a kind of "proximity" thing.. Telling anyone around or on the ground to stay clear.
In dock, if the DGIV is totally shutdown, no occupants, everybodys off in the station doing nothing, then the lights will be off too.
If somebody is doing EVA's around the station, regardless of them interacting or going near the docked DG, ill have the lights going.