night flying and changing fuel tanks

[av8erjm]

My flights in the Bonanza so far had been mostly day time, but the post about the taxi lights not being enough to see, so I tried it. I have the dynamic lighting and the taxi lights light up enough to find my way around the airport. Now that raised another situation. I went ahead and took off, gear up and everything is working fine, until I went to switch tanks, at first just with the panel and inst lights on, I couldn't ''feel'' the tank switch and then with turning on the dome light I still couldn't find or ''feel'' for it. So I guess my question is how do any of you night flyers handle this situation. I don't like the idea of my head buried in the cockpit looking for the fuel tank switch on the floor. When flying the Comanche at least by turning on the dome light I can see which tank I'm using and which tank I want to change to. Maybe make the selector switch in the Bonanza fluorescent orange would help

[Nick - A2A]

Hello av8erjm,

I'm guessing that you use FSX rather than P3Dv4, so you don't benefit from the proper dynamic spot lighting present in the latter.

If so, it's true that the fuel selector is barely visible in darkness. However, one solution is to simply assign keyboard shortcuts to this control using the input configurator. I'm pretty sure that the fuel selector in the real aircraft is designed to be operable by feel alone, so the current level of lighting is probably quite realistic. For what it's worth, the movable spotlights in the P3Dv4 version represent retrofitted David Hoffman Products lights, and aren't part of the standard equipment.

Thanks,
Nick

[Ron Attwood]

Wot he said.