Searched for a bit but had no hits on this topic. So here we go. Light noise/reflections in the pilot house at night. Have their been any advancements in glass, lights, digital displays, masking tape, to help cut down on this nuisance? Curious what ya’ll do to combat this obstacle. Thanks. Stay safe.
I know of a ship who painted the entire overhead black so it wouldn’t reflect light. Looked like a damn cave.
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We put black tape over some of the outside deck lights, leaving a strip to supply enough light for pax access and seating.
Stupid arsed surveyor made us take it off as it was emergency lighting near the boats so now the wheelhouse is flooded with light again.
There are embarkation floodlights directly above these lights.
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No. The makers of digital displays clearly have no fucking clue about night vision or bridge watch standing. The more digital displays we get the brighter the wheelhouse gets.
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Sometimes it works well to walk off the bridge and stand on the side of the wheelhouse deck and look at the real picture if the digital lights, buttons, and alarms and all that shit gets annoying…A pair of good 7:50 binoculars work quite well.
Digital displays have to be made so as to be visible during daytime which has a detrimental effect at night. The bridge guys ended up using tinted plexiglass covers to tone them down.
yea, i don’t get it, it’s like dark is just not suppose to exist!!, and don’t even get me started on the interstate competition to create the biggest most reflective road signs possible to design.
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It could be a good idea if they brought in a requirement that all bridge equipment had to have an external means of dimming on any piece of equipment, be it a port to connect a wire or a wireless means (like Bluetooth) of controlling level of light.
So that all lights can be dimmed from one central unit and someone doesn’t have to spend a long time going around individually dimming pieces of equipment.
I’d heard about some people who work on big bridges having to dim over 100 pieces of equipment, it takes one person about 30 minutes or so to get them all dimmed.
Those monster Raycast consoles were great, we had a transparent charcoal tinted piece of plastic/vinyl we cut to put over the top of the buttons . Could still see them if an alarm was talking to us.
This topic has amused me for decades now. Day or night, navigators are fixated on the ECDIS and radar displays. Very little red in an ECDIS display. A lot of green in a radar display. Some navigators focus on these non-red, glowing screens to the detriment of looking out the windows. To be honest, is the concept of maintaining optimum night vision in a wheelhouse, after so much direct exposure to non-red light, even realistic anymore?
Mind you, this is from a guy whose company trains navigators by sending them out for two weeks in coastal waters without recourse to electronics of any kind. So I understand the reason for night vision. I train in an environment where it is necessary. But has technology relegated the concept on commercial voyages, if not to the dustbin of history, then resting on the kitchen counter next to the dustbin?
Looking out the window has worked for centuries.
Ye Olde Mark 1 Eyeball, rarely beaten.
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And once again, as it has been since the 1970s, the subject is brushed aside. One can almost say navigators are blinded to it. 
Or less than enlightened. 
Or merely in the dark. When they should be seeing red.
Please stop, you’re giving me the blues.
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A simple trick I used on small boats that had only a compass before electronics became prevalent was to paint the clear bulb with red nail polish.
Old trick.
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