Now you're Talking
As I got older, I found it increasingly difficult to see my model airplane in flight. Not that I needed glasses, you understand. It became more important to get the right "dark" glasses because of the high cost of prescription lenses. This short paper goes through the tangled trip I took, lists mistakes I made, and (hopefully) will save you from the same.
Most of us bought our original dark glasses because they made us look "cool" and made our eyes feel more comfortable in bright light. We can, however, also count on tinted (dark) glasses actually helping us see the airplane against the variable backgrounds we deal with: sky, clouds, trees, ground, etc.
I'm also a clay-bird shooter, and in that sport we have many of the same vision problems as RC fliers do. That connection didn't register to me until I was well into the RC glasses problem.
(You young people with the eyes of eagles could profit from this too. My 27-year-old son, who is an Unlimited-class IMAC flier with that proverbial eye-of-eagle, is also a believer.)
Recommendation (short version)
- The best all-around color for sunglasses for model flying is a light brown with no perceptible added color tint (no red, green, or blue). You want them to be as neutral as possible.
- Have the shade as light as you can while retaining eye comfort.
- Bright sun is uncomfortable but not the real danger; ultraviolet (UV) rays are. Use UV coating on all glasses—colored or not.
- Avoid very dark, nearly opaque glasses; they cause your pupils to open, admitting more UV. Lighter shades keep pupils more contracted and restrict UV entry.
- Avoid blue or heavy blue-blocking tints that remove blue but overemphasize red, turning everything unnaturally red.
- Try a cheap light brown flip-up shade on your clear glasses to test the effect before investing.
Why a light brown tint works
The primary objective of a tint is to help separate the light image of your airplane from all the other light coming from everything else. The darkness of the glasses reduces all the light entering your eyes, including the light coming from your airplane—that's not what you want. Ideally you'd amplify light from the airplane, but on a civilian budget the practical approach is to reduce the light from other sources so the airplane stands out.
If your glasses have a "color," they pass light of that color and attenuate other wavelengths. Most background light is concentrated toward the blue end of the spectrum—the sky is blue; even cloudy light is biased toward blue. So the last thing you want is blue glasses.
"Blueblockers" are intended to reduce blue glare, but many go overboard and attenuate everything except the red end of the spectrum. They do work to increase contrast in some situations, but they also make everything look red.
A light-brown tint reduces intensity near the blue end of the spectrum while transmitting most of the rest (red, yellow, green) without narrow-band enhancement of any color. That produces a generalized contrast enhancement between airplane and background.
Practical tips and experience
- Try a cheap light-brown flip-up colored plastic shade on your clear glasses at a drugstore. That tint should appear to enhance contrast between your airplane and the background.
- My prescription glasses are now ordered with an American Optical standard Number 2 Brown tint. Number 1 Brown is a little too light for bright days but might suit other conditions.
- There is no perfect solution for all airplane colors and all backgrounds; light brown is a good compromise.
In any case, please wear some kind of glasses when you fly—tinted or not—with a good UV coating. UV causes cataracts and other eye problems.
Bruce Cronkhite 6783 Rockglen Ave. San Diego, CA 92111
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
