The World in Shades of Green
The last week was pretty unusual, we spent it night flying. Since that tends to be the time our Air Force usually ends up doing a lot of it's work we had to practice our night employment. We flew every night taking off about 30 sunset, cause nobody likes stretching the night out. In fact everyone hates flying at night. I didn't understand this cause I've always liked it and as I took off on Monday and flew into a beautiful sunset (just cause the sun set at ground level doesn't mean its set when you're at 25,000ft) I thought they were crazy. But I began to understand once it got dark and we rejoined on the tanker to do some aerial refueling.
The Night Visions Goggles (NVGs) we wear are very cool, they take the available light and magnify it 1,000s of times so that you really can see pretty well under a partial moon or even starlight. Every thing is displaying in varying shades of green, so it's a pretty different view. So rolling up to the tanker (looking like an alien spaceship with all it's lights shining) was fine but then I had to take the gogs off to refuel because they don't give you any depth perception at all. When I took the NVGs off the tanker disappeared! So here I was flying 10 feet from this huge jet full of gasoline and I couldn't see it! All I could see was one red light and another white light which seemed directed straight into my eyeballs, and I had to fly formation off of them just praying the tanker didn't turn until my vision adjusted a little. Next I had to slide under and refuel off this thing that I could barely see (needless to say, the first time was not real pretty).
Aside from the tanker, things were a little better but it's still disorienting pulling Gs and maneuvering at night (we don't dogfight though, that would be nuts). I did kinda of enjoy it though, flying home there was enough time to enjoy things. The mountains, with a little snow on top, look incredibly beautiful through the gogs. Even if it is all green, there's enough beauty in the world to still overwhelm me in just one color.
The Night Visions Goggles (NVGs) we wear are very cool, they take the available light and magnify it 1,000s of times so that you really can see pretty well under a partial moon or even starlight. Every thing is displaying in varying shades of green, so it's a pretty different view. So rolling up to the tanker (looking like an alien spaceship with all it's lights shining) was fine but then I had to take the gogs off to refuel because they don't give you any depth perception at all. When I took the NVGs off the tanker disappeared! So here I was flying 10 feet from this huge jet full of gasoline and I couldn't see it! All I could see was one red light and another white light which seemed directed straight into my eyeballs, and I had to fly formation off of them just praying the tanker didn't turn until my vision adjusted a little. Next I had to slide under and refuel off this thing that I could barely see (needless to say, the first time was not real pretty).
Aside from the tanker, things were a little better but it's still disorienting pulling Gs and maneuvering at night (we don't dogfight though, that would be nuts). I did kinda of enjoy it though, flying home there was enough time to enjoy things. The mountains, with a little snow on top, look incredibly beautiful through the gogs. Even if it is all green, there's enough beauty in the world to still overwhelm me in just one color.
posted by Jonathan Hassell at 23:20
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