Best colours for visibility at sea

And most of the high-vis sticker materials are reflective, at least here in the US, so this takes away some of the problem with seeing red and other colors at night with a spotlight. Even something as small as 25 cm ^2 high-vis patch shows up real well at night in a spot. Just have to replace it every few years as the outer layer clouds due to UV.

 

Leo,

You touched briefly on an important point. Specificity. It IS dependent on the operating area, conditions and circumstance. That one is entirely up to you to evaluate however.
You may want to consider orange, black and yellow stripes, very wide. Either vertical, horizontal or diagonal or somewhere in-between, again, depending on your application.

Great question though.

-Tom

 

Some like it as a touch, most like it predominant.

Cost? Black and white paint is always the cheapest, orange is more expensive.

 

Whatever the cost, orange is the high visibility colour at sea. The ocean racing classes require orange on foils to aid recovery in a capsize.

 

Yes it does. I used aluminized fiberglass cloth as reflector in a satellite dish. An overkill though as the wavelength of a microwave will not pass through a one millimeter mesh opening. It gets reflected. So we used a fine aluminum wire mesh in place.

It is interesting to note that fiberglass and kevlar boats have very low radar signature. More so with composite aircraft. It is not visible on radar so it uses a transponder. Not the same case with carbon fiber construction. It is conductive.

 

Yah...hard to see a composite boat on radar. I was told that the Amateur rocket guys use aluminized fabric in their rocket fuselages to aid in radar tracking the rockets trajectory. Ive never seen the fabric used on boats.

 

Yes, the suggestions so far point to the "marine bee" look.
With reflective patches as suggested by jeh.

 

I have used this orange fluorescent paint from Jotun.
It has excellent brightness when it is new but you have to repaint every 2 years
to keep the fluorescent bright. To make it last longer I paint 3 coats of clear over it.
Axel

 

It is sometimes specified as a "radar/ground reflector". A layer used underneath the radar or an antenna. It is used mostly in house top and electrically connected to the sides, eventually connecting to the bottom via a separate ground plate. Some specify embedded stainless steel wire mesh with an opening of not more than one millimeter. In aircraft repair manual, I have seen illustrations where there is a copper(?) wire mesh embedded in the composite structure.

 

Interesting. So this implies that in the composite wheelhouse or carbon mast laminate of an ocean going vessel , a layer of aluminized fabric shall be embedded ,. I have never seen it spec ed. Is there any technical info ?

 

It depends on whether it is night or day. At night the type of light used affects visibility too. For example, fluorescent colors are highly visible during the day because they transform UV into visible light. With searchlights, they often look brownish.

 

Most of the communications equipment suppliers are aware that we are building composite (patrol) boats (lots of it) and a supplementary manual was supplied to us.

I guess that to be "electrically visible" by radar from above, you need a "reflector" and for antennas, it is to increase efficiency. Terrestial antennas uses the ground as a reflector, in composite boats, if you do not have a ground reflector, most of the energy is spent throwing the electrical energy upwards.

Sorry I don't have the manuals anymore but sooner or later you will come across one. One manual was so impractical, it described a ray radiating from the base and with a concentric ring radiating outwards while keeping the mesh opening to less than a millimeter. As if they are describing a spider web. Others just a circular metallic plate.

 

One question. Why does the sea looks green during the day but becomes bluer as the day ends?

 

Not for carbon as it is already electrically conductive. Fact is there are carbon fiber antennas.

 

great consideration must be given to the crew uniform
http://youtu.be/JmcA9LIIXWw