KC135 Aircraft LED Lighting Success Story. PROBLEM: Replace aging incandescent navigation lights (wingtip and tail), boom spot light and pilot director lights with modern LED versions on the KC135 tanker aircraft. Multiple brightness level adjustments and flash modes must be preserved, and covert modes must be added.

These lights provide positional and trend information with respect the receiver aircraft position within the refueling envelope by the color indication and white characters.

Feb 10, 2020 · Two rows of lights on the tanker’s belly called Pilot Director Indicator or PDI lights illuminated on contact with receivers. Left row tells the receiver pilot to move up or down. The right row tells receiver’s move backward or forward.

Aug 20, 2008 · Teaming with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Night Vision Center of Excellence of Mesa, Ariz., a light-emitting diode, or LED-based system was designed to replace the KC-135's wing and tail navigation lights, boom nozzle light, upper and lower strobes and pilot director lights without any internal aircraft wiring changes.

Jul 31, 2023 · JSGME ready improved PDL lights (Pilot Director Lights) for the KC-135 tanker (and MPRS). Especially useful for VR users. It's a compromise of making the textures more intense while increasing the contrast of the others as well as darkening them a bit.

Mar 29, 2019 · The F-35 Lightning II program recently completed testing on an improved lighting assembly with the KC-135 Stratotanker that will enable the Navy and Marine Corps F-35 variants to refuel behind the tanker at night.

Air-to-Air TACAN: KC-135 range only, PACER CRAG range & bearing, KC-10 range & bearing, 200NM max range. Clearance: Down track, in block altitude, to primary AR freq. Tanker early: Holds at ARCP, left turns (normal).

The present U.S. Air Force operational tanker fleet (KC-135 and KC-10) utilizes director light systems that provide direction queuing to receiver pilots after contact has been made between...

Sep 2, 2008 · The system addresses current needs of tanker aircraft during night air-toair refueling operations, and consists of solid-state visible and near-IR light-emitting diode based programmable replacements for selected existing incandescent lights …

Apr 14, 2021 · A few questions regarding the strip lights on the forward underside of KC-135s to aid the receiver pilot during refueling... 1) How would they look in daylight, with the plane sitting on the ground, power off?