To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 14:49:47 -0400
From: Chuck Counselman <ccc@space.mit.edu>
At 1:12 PM -0400 6/23/03, Kc0kra@aol.com wrote:
>...A guy could get tired painting his tower twice a year. Camo,
>white, camo, etc........
I covered my tower with color LCDs from junked laptop computers. I
drive the LCDs with video signals from an array of LCD cameras, so
the tower always looks like its background, day or night, cloudy or
bright, four seasons of the year. I got the idea from the movie
_Predator_.
This is not quite as far-fetched as it sounds. During WWII,
successful experiments were done with dim lights shown onto the sides
of ships to hide them in the dark. It was successful, since what was
being spotted was the dark silhouette against the horizon. It wasn't
practical for operational use, however. Another odd scheme used was a
colour called "Mountbatten Pink", a slightly, but definitely, pinkish
grey.
The most useful thing that camouflage painting can do is break up the
straight lines so that the observer can't easily see the shape of the
object, so can't categorize it, and so tends to dismiss it. Therefore
the actual color isn't as important as the irregular pattern.
73, doug
|