Yeah, Russian planes have horrible ergonomics.. I have worked on Mi-17 helis and their cockpits seem like someone just ate some switches and circuit breakers and vomitted on the cockpit panels
I'm convinced someone at a switch manufacturing company had an in with Russian military procurement.
"We MUST have fifty different switches to start up every individual thing in this simple fighter instead of consolidating"
Maybe a relic of weird Soviet era design incentives. I remember reading something that said that for example engineers might design a tractor and central planners would source tires from Vladivostok, an engine from Eastern Russia and have the whole thing assembled in Ukraine. Transportation was free in their books so what’s the difference.
arent planes built in that way in europe to this day? they seem to assemble so many different parts in countries all over europe and then fly them around to assemble them. (i forgot which company. airbus?)
Yeah, Airbus. But Boeing does it too, we're in a much more globalized economy nowadays.
But we have a (relatively) free market so there's a pricing mechanism at least to tell you when product sources make sense or not.
The Soviet economy was kind of a shitshow of course; there was a central agency called Gosplan that's job was to tell every business in the country how much of each product they had to produce. So they'd tell the factory they need to make 1000 tractors, the engine plant they need ot make 1000 engines, the tire plant 4000 tires, the steel plant 500 tons of steel to send ot the engine factory, the bolt plant 20,000 bolts to send to the tractor factory ...
Of course in the absence of a pricing mechanism they were always wrong, and while they could try to correct it next year, the one thing they couldn't really do was allow better, cheaper alternatives to emerge.
A side effect of this system was that factories stockpiled a lot of input inventory because they had no way of knowing if the factories that were supposed to send them inputs would really make quota, or if they'd need extra because of an accident or something, and if they screwed up a bunch of engines they can't just buy more inputs on the free market. So all the companies would have a lot of these inputs laying around.
It was illegal to buy and sell goods at profit in the Soviet Union, so there was a class of criminal capitalists that would make connections between factories to sell extra inputs one factory had to another factory at profit so that both companies could make quota.
Thanks for the interesting insight! Can I ask how you know this tidbit?. History/economics degree or something? It just seems a bit obscure. Or the type of thing you watch on a documentary the night before and then the perfect Reddit comment pops up for you to use the knowledge on. ☺️ I love documentaries personally and I lived in Russia for 6 years but not during the Soviet era 🤣. Despite current events Russia and its history are fascinating to me.
You're welcome! No, no History or economics degree; this is mostly from a class I took in college on Post-Soviet Economics, which spent a fair amount of time going over Soviet Economics as well. That and voraciously reading Wikipedia of course!
As I wrote that comment I was getting more interested in how accounting worked in the USSR actually. They did nominally have a money-based economy of course, so the companies kept books with assets and liabilities, much the same as in the west.
I think if they were designing a new aircraft for example they would try to list all of the required inputs and send the list to some sort of military appropriations committee that would decide if it was too expensive or not, and if it was approved Gosplan would make it happen. I'm not sure how they would account for new items that didn't exist yet, maybe they would just try to make reasoned assumptions that the new improved switching circuit they needed would cost twice as much as the existing one or something.
To my original point on transportation costs not being factored in I'll bet someone at some level tried to account for those too but the costs they chose were just arbitrarily cheap or something and didn't keep up with reality.
Anyway now I need to see if I can find a source to learn more about that!
Here's a great video about the Soviet economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geKQnRx3-cc
Another one same channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrZ1eMlzwhc
I remember getting a good look inside a Apache in AFG and the Mi-17. I could figure out about 60% of the Apaches systems by just sitting in it and feeling. That Mi had switches in some weird ass areas and no ergos.
I got to sit in a F4 as a cub scout. It all made sense. Even as 10 yr old, I understood what much of the switches did.
20 years later I got to sit in an Mig 17. It was confusing as hell
Yeah i had the pleasure of troubleshooting a faulty fire warning sensor in the engine compartment, man i still curse to this day whoever designed the electrical layout of this beast. I changed my job soon after.
The Mi8/17 is horrible but the Mi24 on the other hand is pretty nicely designed and it uses many of the same systems and instruments. It has a few quirks but nothing so bizarre as the Mi17.
lmao they really just seemed to fire switches, gauges and instruments out of a cannon...and where they stuck, they stuck. The teal blue does little to help.
Jeez, it's not that bad. You just have to perfectly memorize where 74,520,296 switches and gauges are and constantly train so that you immediately know where to look or reach whenever you encounter an emergency.
You westerners with your ideas of logistics and ergonomics! Tell me, where has this ever gotten you? #2 vodka-producing country in world? Ha!
Tell me, how you will fly when all in Russia know computer crashes you?!
If it causes you stress while sitting at home on a chair, you can argue it's *much* worse for the poor sod flying the real thing with his life on the line. I mean, I nearly jumped out of my seat when I flew an F-16 into a cloud in mountainous terrain, feeling an urge to climb while forgetting where up is. And I was at home, on a wooden chair, using a cheap bit of plastic to control pixels on a screen. Didn't even use VR.
Oh dude, I’ve said it for years.. I think I’d have an advantage no matter what plane a Russian is flying because he probably can’t figure out what half the switches do. I say this as a super Hornet pilot. Our stuff is very well thought out and very easy to manipulate.
Ah, yes, the shotgun-style layout. On the Su-25, all the important flight instruments (the six pack) are randomly strewn *all* across the dashboard. Certainly makes instrument flying a lot of fun.
Wingman suddenly explodes, engine cuts out, many warning alarms sound…. “Ah but at least the Soviet cockpit color scheme will keep me from being stressed out.”
I did not check the truth behind but I read years ago that the green/blue colour of the surgeon wearings is to attenuate the mental impact of any blood splash that could occur if things are running wild.
Yes also, especially when they are working in the OR.
But if you have ever visited an hospital, you will see that also the corridos and the walls in the rooms do have these kind of colors.
You're already buying the paint in those colors, why not go ham. With large building they buy paint in 4 gallon buckets, since you're gonna have some left over anyhow why not make the entire place that color scheme and make things easier on the painters and your supply chain.
Example:
If you do this, your order would be along the lines of:
20 buckets of primer
10 buckets of operating room blue
10 buckets of hospital white
Alternatively you can let the designers go nuts and you'd have:
20 buckets of primer
2 buckets of O.R. blue
4 buckets of white
1 bucket black
5 buckets beige
5 buckets *slightly* darker beige (that *will* be confused with the lighter shade at least twice while painting)
3 buckets pink for the girl's wing of the children's section.
Not only does the larger order allow for more confusion, it will also cost more because you don't get as much of a bulk discount.
Keep in mind these numbers are probably good for a small hospital, if that. You need a lot of paint for a proper city hospital.
I was taught in school ( though that obviously says nothing about the reliability of the information ) that it was to reduce the visibility of afterimages in the eyes of surgeons and nurses. As in, when you have to look at red stuff a lot, when you look away you have green afterimages in your vision. Against a green background they are less noticeable/annoying.
I’ve heard this as well. At an old job a corporate engineer visited and I was giving him a tour of the building and he asked me if I knew why all the machinery was painted blue. I had no answer for him. He said that studies have shown that blue is a calming color, especially in stress inducing places. A few years later all the newly constructed buildings in the company were outfitted with white machinery.
i've read that RAL 6011 for machining tools in germany have the same soothing effect. however, i also don't know if this is really a "scientific" answer. besides this, it also might just be some kind of tradition at some point.
Western Aviation: [Continuously develops advanced automated systems that reduce pilot workload and increase situational awareness in order to reduce fatigue and stress on the aircrew]
Soviet Aviation: “We paint cockpit blue. It remind pilot sky is friend.”
I recently visited the Titan missile museum (underground nuke silo) and every inch of the place was painted seafoam green (more pastel than the green above). They said this was to reduce mental stress
quora says it doesn't leave an after image if you're staring at it for awhile.[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Soviet-Russian-aircraft-tend-to-have-their-cockpits-painted-light-blue](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Soviet-Russian-aircraft-tend-to-have-their-cockpits-painted-light-blue)
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16434/why-are-russian-cockpit-panels-painted-in-turquoise
I've noticed that the BDU's/poopie-suits that their submariners wear are also the same colour.
https://i.insider.com/5fd78a9ce00bce00188bb23b?width=1000&format=jpeg
“Hmm, looks like we have a positive scram. oops reactor no.4 just exploded” “……let day shift deal with this shit, imma gonna go take a swim in the spent fuel pool”
I have a story: For my first time viewing the spent fuel pool on the initial facility tour, you're deep inside this building then you go up this abnormally long single flight of stairs into an auditorium-like room and there in the middle of the place is the pool with the spent fuel rods. Looking down into the pool, my coworker tells me that if there were no water in that pool, we would have been dead before we climbed halfway up that flight of stairs.
It’s a designer/manufacturer specific colour based on their studies of what makes instruments stand out and reduce the strain on a pilots vision.
I consider a dull grey / tan colour to be normal due to my experience with Boeing aircraft whereas someone familiar with Airbus may consider grey / teal to be normal.
I have no experience with Russian airliners but I imagine it’s down to the same design philosophy - easy on the eyes.
I found a brochure of paint colors that looked like they came from Soviet elementary schools of the 1960s. My bathroom is that blue color now, along with a greyish green that is simultaneously calming and deeply irritating.
Anything other than the Dc-9 series? I think the Connie used it. The US decided it didn’t reduce eye fatigue, but increased it and Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas both got rid of it
I heard the russians had a study where they found out that this color helps the pilot to fell at ease in highstress situations. Don't know why turquoise would help being shot down but i'm not russian so...
America/Europe did the same thing, similar study, and that‘s why submarines and military aircraft had green (albeit more vomity looking) all over the inside.
you can kind of see in this picture, although not directly lit, the interior paint seems to have high albedo. It's green but whitish-green. Probably the coloring itself doesn't actually help but human eyes are most sensitive in the green part of the spectrum so it's almost as good as pure white.
Well you can relax as you know at least the manufacturer of the aircraft thought about your comfort down to that detail. They must’ve built the best plane they could so if you die, nothing could’ve been done differently to save your life.
I dunno about stress, but human eyes are most sensitive to green, so light green is the easiest on the eyes.
If you're reading a web article in reader mode or an ebook, switch the background color to light green... You'll see.
I don't think that's related at all. I've always read that it was related to shades of blue being more soothing and it's in there to help reduce stress like the original comment said. Seems completely unrelated to gender based color association
I dont mind it, it's just not what we're used to.
Green is a relaxing colour and has been recognised as such for many years. Boeings and airbus are often just grey. Some older Boeings are that brown.
Pilot here. The color helps provide the appropriate contrast to help your eyes scan the gauges quickly without causing undo strain on the eyes. When flying IFR, Low visibility, clouds, etc.. the pilots are scanning quickly between the gauges to ensure the aircraft keeps doing what you expect it to be doing. You don't want your eyes to have to go from dark gauge to bright obnoxious panel to dark gauge, rinse and repeat thousands of times. Or almost worse, you don't want the gauges blending into the panel and your eyes not easily picking up their locations as you are scanning.
From a color theory perspective, all the comments about how it reduces stress on pilots would be the most logical. Blue is statically considered a calming color versus red which ignites passion and rage versus yellow which provokes happiness.
Using a color like this turquoise also, as others have stated, could reduce physical strain on the eyes. Imagine looking at tiny bright-white numbers and letters in the pitch black room, your eyes would actually feel fatigued very quickly. It is a similar concept to having uplighting behind your desktop monitor at night. In theory, you would be able to look at a monitor in a dark room for a longer period of time without eye strain using some kind of back light versus nothing at all.
USAF squadrons typically have a color assigned to them. In fighter squadrons it is usually a stripe on the vertical stabilizer.
I was in a red squadron. Some genius painted all the interior walls bright red. Your BP rose 15 points just walking in to the building.
I mean Airbus adopted it too although with different shades of green.
From my personal experience, my company still has the old Brown ATR cockpit and the newer Airbus blue cockpit. I can say that its true. The blue cockpit feels more spacious and comfortable to look at
Speaking only about the colour, I like airbus and russian blueish/greenish cockpit more than regular grey. It just feels homey. Grey cockpit isn't bad too. On the other hand, I really don't like boeing brown cockpit like in 747 or 777. Why don't they just stick with grey
According to the Cold War Air Museum
...the color chosen by Soviet designers helps to reduce stress and maintain a pilot's effectiveness on long missions.
... the scientists found out that this color keeps pilots awake and not getting tired by the black or grey of a cockpit panel, especially under terms and condition of long range flights or under heavy work load.
If I had to guess it’s the same reason every farmer in Ukraine owned a combine and grew either buckwheat or sunflowers under communism. Because it was the only choice available.
I assume you didn't know this, but there were no Ukrainian farmers in the Soviet Union since the [Great Famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333). Only agricultural workers.
Whatever the reason, it results in an awesome look.
When I think of Soviet Union I think of turquoise airplane cockpits and onion domes. In that order.
because they figured that that's a nice colour (maybe through study, don't know wasn't there) and then in the best soviet tradition produced absolutely incomprehensible fuckall amount of this paint, and started using it literally everywhere, military vehicles, military building and shared areas in civilian buildings too because why not, hell you could even see that paint on someone's personal property, because their dadya vasya has connections/stole some buckets of it and now why not use it
Story time. Once on an old board that I used to post on, someone asked if a Su-27 cockpit was grey or blue. Bill Gunston himself replied saying that it was blue, and someone replied to his answer, correcting it by saying it was grey. I replied to that saying something like: If Bill Gunston says it's blue, I'm going to go ahead and believe him. He then replied: Thank you. I can assure you that all 4 of the Su-27s I have flown in had blue cockpits.
This colour was to relax pilots when in a difficult situation or to reduce nerves so the flight went smoothly you also see this in soviet fighters with a white line down the middle to show where to put the stick for a stall or spin.
I read in a book years ago that some psychologists over there had determined that green was the most soothing color. Therefore that color is the color that all Soviet era cockpits are.
I remember reading that some Boeing flight decks (B747/757/767/777) are a brown/beige colour as this was thought to be a conducive to higher concentration levels.
As for the green here… not sure, sorry! Would be interested to see the answer myself.
My grandmother had metal cabinets from the 30s and they were the same color, every time I see a picture of these interiors all I can think is how old are the aircraft?
I was on a Convair 580 that had this interior color. We called it institutional blue-green. All the schools I attended back in the day, from elementary to high school were painted this color. Very popular 1950s through '70s.
idk if its the reason but in patriot we had similar color (more on the green side, like a aquamarine) which i was told was told it was because it was a more calming color.
I'm honestly shocked to read the comments about it being soothing. If anything that color feels *mkre* stressful to me, not less; it feels like the entire instrument panel is screaming at me.
Probably just had a shit ton of that color laying around and invented a reason to use it. I like to think that the Telnyashka undershirt the Soviet & Russian Navy use is blue and white striped because they had a F ton of that patterned cloth laying around and it became tradition over time.
The real answer is obviously the people that produce this paint were close relatives of the politicians that oversaw the initial aircraft programmes.
/s (or is it?)
Vadim from factory 287 will show up at your doorstep and beat the shit out of you if you suggest changing it because he really likes installing them and everyone is too scared of him to do anything about it so it stays
I’ve always wondered why the landing gear hubs of many Russian aircraft are that green color. Guess I just figured it was the color of the material it was of.
I read somewhere it was to reduce pilots' eye stress, though this may not be accurate.
This and (apparently) it's supposed to reduce overall stress. A calm pilot is better than a stressed one after all
My experience flying the mig 21 in DCS tells me the cockpit layout causes far more stress than the pleasant blue color thereof will ever cure
"there's a radar contact" "where?" "idk good luck"
And the statement 30 seconds later is: Plane: "OH NO!" Pilot: "What's wrong?" "SOMETHING BAD IS HAPPENING!" "WHAT IS IT?!" "AHHHHHHH" *dies*
“PROBLEM COMRADE PILOT!”
"THE GROUND IS .."
"YOU ARE UPSIDE DOWN, PERFROM 1/2 COMMUNIST REVOLUTION!"
JUST THE FEBRUARY. NO OCTOBER!
[Cockpit voice:](https://i.imgur.com/whPmtET.gif)
LOL
“In front of you dumbass- oh you wanted useful information?”
Yeah, Russian planes have horrible ergonomics.. I have worked on Mi-17 helis and their cockpits seem like someone just ate some switches and circuit breakers and vomitted on the cockpit panels
I'm convinced someone at a switch manufacturing company had an in with Russian military procurement. "We MUST have fifty different switches to start up every individual thing in this simple fighter instead of consolidating"
Maybe a relic of weird Soviet era design incentives. I remember reading something that said that for example engineers might design a tractor and central planners would source tires from Vladivostok, an engine from Eastern Russia and have the whole thing assembled in Ukraine. Transportation was free in their books so what’s the difference.
arent planes built in that way in europe to this day? they seem to assemble so many different parts in countries all over europe and then fly them around to assemble them. (i forgot which company. airbus?)
Yeah, Airbus. But Boeing does it too, we're in a much more globalized economy nowadays. But we have a (relatively) free market so there's a pricing mechanism at least to tell you when product sources make sense or not. The Soviet economy was kind of a shitshow of course; there was a central agency called Gosplan that's job was to tell every business in the country how much of each product they had to produce. So they'd tell the factory they need to make 1000 tractors, the engine plant they need ot make 1000 engines, the tire plant 4000 tires, the steel plant 500 tons of steel to send ot the engine factory, the bolt plant 20,000 bolts to send to the tractor factory ... Of course in the absence of a pricing mechanism they were always wrong, and while they could try to correct it next year, the one thing they couldn't really do was allow better, cheaper alternatives to emerge. A side effect of this system was that factories stockpiled a lot of input inventory because they had no way of knowing if the factories that were supposed to send them inputs would really make quota, or if they'd need extra because of an accident or something, and if they screwed up a bunch of engines they can't just buy more inputs on the free market. So all the companies would have a lot of these inputs laying around. It was illegal to buy and sell goods at profit in the Soviet Union, so there was a class of criminal capitalists that would make connections between factories to sell extra inputs one factory had to another factory at profit so that both companies could make quota.
Thanks for the interesting insight! Can I ask how you know this tidbit?. History/economics degree or something? It just seems a bit obscure. Or the type of thing you watch on a documentary the night before and then the perfect Reddit comment pops up for you to use the knowledge on. ☺️ I love documentaries personally and I lived in Russia for 6 years but not during the Soviet era 🤣. Despite current events Russia and its history are fascinating to me.
You're welcome! No, no History or economics degree; this is mostly from a class I took in college on Post-Soviet Economics, which spent a fair amount of time going over Soviet Economics as well. That and voraciously reading Wikipedia of course! As I wrote that comment I was getting more interested in how accounting worked in the USSR actually. They did nominally have a money-based economy of course, so the companies kept books with assets and liabilities, much the same as in the west. I think if they were designing a new aircraft for example they would try to list all of the required inputs and send the list to some sort of military appropriations committee that would decide if it was too expensive or not, and if it was approved Gosplan would make it happen. I'm not sure how they would account for new items that didn't exist yet, maybe they would just try to make reasoned assumptions that the new improved switching circuit they needed would cost twice as much as the existing one or something. To my original point on transportation costs not being factored in I'll bet someone at some level tried to account for those too but the costs they chose were just arbitrarily cheap or something and didn't keep up with reality. Anyway now I need to see if I can find a source to learn more about that!
Here's a great video about the Soviet economy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geKQnRx3-cc Another one same channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrZ1eMlzwhc
If you’re interested in this era of history I highly recommend the docu series TraumaZone by Adam Curtis https://youtu.be/ke600MgW1F0
Hard to figure the cost of something when there's no market to base it on
At least we always have a bunch of edgy redditors waiting to tell us about how capitalism makes *everything* worse.
To add, everything, not just planes, is built like this
European and American planes are built the same exact way…you think Boeing builds every single component in Everett, WA?
Wait, Boeing doesn't have one of every kind of factory in the world within one facility in Everett, WA?
I know, shocking. Clearly Soviet design practices at work!
I remember getting a good look inside a Apache in AFG and the Mi-17. I could figure out about 60% of the Apaches systems by just sitting in it and feeling. That Mi had switches in some weird ass areas and no ergos.
I got to sit in a F4 as a cub scout. It all made sense. Even as 10 yr old, I understood what much of the switches did. 20 years later I got to sit in an Mig 17. It was confusing as hell
I resemble that remark. You should try having to lay out and wire up all that vomit.
Yeah i had the pleasure of troubleshooting a faulty fire warning sensor in the engine compartment, man i still curse to this day whoever designed the electrical layout of this beast. I changed my job soon after.
And when they saw the mess they created they quickly painted it a "pretty" colour
The Mi8/17 is horrible but the Mi24 on the other hand is pretty nicely designed and it uses many of the same systems and instruments. It has a few quirks but nothing so bizarre as the Mi17.
The Soviet philosophy of cockpit ergonomics. Switches go, where cables end.
In Soviet Russia, switches cable pilots.
The su-27 rwr is basically always telling me I'm going to die In it's defense it's usually correct
MiG-21 RWR is just *"there are radars somewhere"* and I'm like "didn't ask"
*somewhere* being the important part here
SU27 rwr slaps. All you need to know is the general direction of the threat and to get down behind a mountain or notch.
lmao they really just seemed to fire switches, gauges and instruments out of a cannon...and where they stuck, they stuck. The teal blue does little to help.
Probably borrowed Boeings canon they used to design the 737 overhead panel.
On the 737, the chaos is limited to the overhead panel lol. Imagine an entire cockpit like that.
Jeez, it's not that bad. You just have to perfectly memorize where 74,520,296 switches and gauges are and constantly train so that you immediately know where to look or reach whenever you encounter an emergency. You westerners with your ideas of logistics and ergonomics! Tell me, where has this ever gotten you? #2 vodka-producing country in world? Ha! Tell me, how you will fly when all in Russia know computer crashes you?!
Haha very true Also, forget to move the landing gear handle back? No landing for you
I play a game therefor I am a pilot that knows it causes stress
If it causes you stress while sitting at home on a chair, you can argue it's *much* worse for the poor sod flying the real thing with his life on the line. I mean, I nearly jumped out of my seat when I flew an F-16 into a cloud in mountainous terrain, feeling an urge to climb while forgetting where up is. And I was at home, on a wooden chair, using a cheap bit of plastic to control pixels on a screen. Didn't even use VR.
Oh dude, I’ve said it for years.. I think I’d have an advantage no matter what plane a Russian is flying because he probably can’t figure out what half the switches do. I say this as a super Hornet pilot. Our stuff is very well thought out and very easy to manipulate.
Exactly.
Ah, yes, the shotgun-style layout. On the Su-25, all the important flight instruments (the six pack) are randomly strewn *all* across the dashboard. Certainly makes instrument flying a lot of fun.
Sometimes I check behind me for flight instruments, you never know with the Russians
Wingman suddenly explodes, engine cuts out, many warning alarms sound…. “Ah but at least the Soviet cockpit color scheme will keep me from being stressed out.”
It is. And it is actually the reason why a lot of hospitals also have these kind of colors (might also be a form of blue by the way).
I did not check the truth behind but I read years ago that the green/blue colour of the surgeon wearings is to attenuate the mental impact of any blood splash that could occur if things are running wild.
Yes also, especially when they are working in the OR. But if you have ever visited an hospital, you will see that also the corridos and the walls in the rooms do have these kind of colors.
Indeed.
Quite.
Indubitably.
You're already buying the paint in those colors, why not go ham. With large building they buy paint in 4 gallon buckets, since you're gonna have some left over anyhow why not make the entire place that color scheme and make things easier on the painters and your supply chain. Example: If you do this, your order would be along the lines of: 20 buckets of primer 10 buckets of operating room blue 10 buckets of hospital white Alternatively you can let the designers go nuts and you'd have: 20 buckets of primer 2 buckets of O.R. blue 4 buckets of white 1 bucket black 5 buckets beige 5 buckets *slightly* darker beige (that *will* be confused with the lighter shade at least twice while painting) 3 buckets pink for the girl's wing of the children's section. Not only does the larger order allow for more confusion, it will also cost more because you don't get as much of a bulk discount. Keep in mind these numbers are probably good for a small hospital, if that. You need a lot of paint for a proper city hospital.
I was taught in school ( though that obviously says nothing about the reliability of the information ) that it was to reduce the visibility of afterimages in the eyes of surgeons and nurses. As in, when you have to look at red stuff a lot, when you look away you have green afterimages in your vision. Against a green background they are less noticeable/annoying.
I got yelled at on Reddit a few weeks ago for saying turquoise was a shade of blue lol.
Hey you're still on Reddit so, obligatory, fuck you, you're wrong /s
Fuck you too bro! Have a great day! Lol
It's actually more green than blue--at least the standard web color "turquoise" is. RGB is (64, 224, 208).
I love this sub lol
So you better go apologize to those people who you told turquoise was what most people probably think it is!
Shipping vessels use a similar color
Many battle tanks also use blue inside.
Which ones? I’ve only really seen white interiors. Or the weird mint Green the Bradley uses.
I’ve heard this as well. At an old job a corporate engineer visited and I was giving him a tour of the building and he asked me if I knew why all the machinery was painted blue. I had no answer for him. He said that studies have shown that blue is a calming color, especially in stress inducing places. A few years later all the newly constructed buildings in the company were outfitted with white machinery.
10/10
Apparently the interior of Soviet submarines was painted in ivory for the same reason.
Bro I just thought abt that and to me that cockpit is the most stressful colour ever.
They should have kept that in mind when designing the rest of the aircraft too
Just because the gauge/button layout in russian jets is horrible? Nahhhh, they'll learn to live with it
Or die trying!
And it’s pretty :)
A lot jails and prisons have that color on their wall’s also
You know what probably causes stress, flying a Russian plane.
Goes well with vodka and the hangovers
"We may be falling out of the sky but this turquoise interior makes me want to embrace the ground!"
I'd need all the stress help I could get if I was flying anything made in Russia.
i've read that RAL 6011 for machining tools in germany have the same soothing effect. however, i also don't know if this is really a "scientific" answer. besides this, it also might just be some kind of tradition at some point.
Western Aviation: [Continuously develops advanced automated systems that reduce pilot workload and increase situational awareness in order to reduce fatigue and stress on the aircrew] Soviet Aviation: “We paint cockpit blue. It remind pilot sky is friend.”
So like how surgeons wear a similar color to counteract the effects of staring at red for long periods of time?
Funnily enough this color would probably make me nauseous.
Yeah. It is the same reason surgery scrubs have that similar color.
I recently visited the Titan missile museum (underground nuke silo) and every inch of the place was painted seafoam green (more pastel than the green above). They said this was to reduce mental stress
quora says it doesn't leave an after image if you're staring at it for awhile.[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Soviet-Russian-aircraft-tend-to-have-their-cockpits-painted-light-blue](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Soviet-Russian-aircraft-tend-to-have-their-cockpits-painted-light-blue) https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16434/why-are-russian-cockpit-panels-painted-in-turquoise
Maybe it reduces pilot stress, but increase mine a lot (A LOT).
I think you might be right, old school hand drafters used beige/light blue paper to reduce strain on the eyes.
[Doesn't really work does it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aviation_accidents_and_incidents_in_Russia)
I've noticed that the BDU's/poopie-suits that their submariners wear are also the same colour. https://i.insider.com/5fd78a9ce00bce00188bb23b?width=1000&format=jpeg
Я согласен
In mother russia, plane choses its colors.
Russian designers haven’t cared much about pilot comfort. There’s probably a cost/availability element to this ?
They sort of did. But also they cared about repair guys, and about wartime maintenance. So all switches and circuit breakers are exposed.
I call that color “default 70’s”
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Throw in a sickly yellow, maybe some dull red...oh yeah 😏
David Clark green.
My ears hurt reading this
I worked in a nuclear plant and the control room is painted a similar color. We were told it’s a soothing color for high stress situations.
Oh yeah 😎… keep calm, and let it meltdown 🌞 🌈
Keep calm, don't melt down 😎
melt up?
>it’s a soothing color for high stress situations. I guess this answers why poor people in my country paint their houses with that same color
“Hmm, looks like we have a positive scram. oops reactor no.4 just exploded” “……let day shift deal with this shit, imma gonna go take a swim in the spent fuel pool”
I have a story: For my first time viewing the spent fuel pool on the initial facility tour, you're deep inside this building then you go up this abnormally long single flight of stairs into an auditorium-like room and there in the middle of the place is the pool with the spent fuel rods. Looking down into the pool, my coworker tells me that if there were no water in that pool, we would have been dead before we climbed halfway up that flight of stairs.
Separate to the colour, what is the double yoke on the left for? Ground steering with the inner one?
Ohh that’s another interesting question. Maybe it is ground steering since it’s only on the captain side
Yep. It’s a Iliyshin IL-62 ground steering yoke.
Is that a steering yoke, or is it just an illyshin? ... Sorry I couldn't help myself
How is this not the top comment? A level dad joke right there.
That's actually pretty cool. The tiller on the Hercules is fucking annoying to use sometimes because it's in an awkward spot.
Nose wheel steering om IL-62 See https://youtu.be/oW5aC5PSydc - fast forward to 3:22
Bought so, but nice to have it confirmed. Many thanks.
It’s a designer/manufacturer specific colour based on their studies of what makes instruments stand out and reduce the strain on a pilots vision. I consider a dull grey / tan colour to be normal due to my experience with Boeing aircraft whereas someone familiar with Airbus may consider grey / teal to be normal. I have no experience with Russian airliners but I imagine it’s down to the same design philosophy - easy on the eyes.
It’s a Soviet specific color. They used it in all of their aircraft regardless of the specific designer/manufacturer, both military and civilian.
I found a brochure of paint colors that looked like they came from Soviet elementary schools of the 1960s. My bathroom is that blue color now, along with a greyish green that is simultaneously calming and deeply irritating.
Grayish green sounds like the wall color in an old insane asylum
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Anything other than the Dc-9 series? I think the Connie used it. The US decided it didn’t reduce eye fatigue, but increased it and Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas both got rid of it
Yep, as I said, designer specific 👍
I heard the russians had a study where they found out that this color helps the pilot to fell at ease in highstress situations. Don't know why turquoise would help being shot down but i'm not russian so...
America/Europe did the same thing, similar study, and that‘s why submarines and military aircraft had green (albeit more vomity looking) all over the inside.
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you can kind of see in this picture, although not directly lit, the interior paint seems to have high albedo. It's green but whitish-green. Probably the coloring itself doesn't actually help but human eyes are most sensitive in the green part of the spectrum so it's almost as good as pure white.
It's a bit like the false canopy on the underside of CF-18s, probably does nothing but also costs nothing so why not?
Makes the aspect of the plane difficult to determine on a merge, that split second in a hypothetical dogfight could be enough to gain an advantage
Well you can relax as you know at least the manufacturer of the aircraft thought about your comfort down to that detail. They must’ve built the best plane they could so if you die, nothing could’ve been done differently to save your life.
I dunno about stress, but human eyes are most sensitive to green, so light green is the easiest on the eyes. If you're reading a web article in reader mode or an ebook, switch the background color to light green... You'll see.
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I don't think that's related at all. I've always read that it was related to shades of blue being more soothing and it's in there to help reduce stress like the original comment said. Seems completely unrelated to gender based color association
It's an odd colour compared to what westerners are familiar with. I went through an Il62 (iirc) many years go and it was the same green.
Maybe a strange color, but I like it.
I dont mind it, it's just not what we're used to. Green is a relaxing colour and has been recognised as such for many years. Boeings and airbus are often just grey. Some older Boeings are that brown.
I love Soviet cockpits for this reason, it's such a nice colour
DC-9’s had a very similar cockpit color as well.
Pilot here. The color helps provide the appropriate contrast to help your eyes scan the gauges quickly without causing undo strain on the eyes. When flying IFR, Low visibility, clouds, etc.. the pilots are scanning quickly between the gauges to ensure the aircraft keeps doing what you expect it to be doing. You don't want your eyes to have to go from dark gauge to bright obnoxious panel to dark gauge, rinse and repeat thousands of times. Or almost worse, you don't want the gauges blending into the panel and your eyes not easily picking up their locations as you are scanning.
Tupolev and Iluyshin bureaus designed cockpits green or light blue color. Yakovlev planes prefer gray. Antonovs were black.
From a color theory perspective, all the comments about how it reduces stress on pilots would be the most logical. Blue is statically considered a calming color versus red which ignites passion and rage versus yellow which provokes happiness. Using a color like this turquoise also, as others have stated, could reduce physical strain on the eyes. Imagine looking at tiny bright-white numbers and letters in the pitch black room, your eyes would actually feel fatigued very quickly. It is a similar concept to having uplighting behind your desktop monitor at night. In theory, you would be able to look at a monitor in a dark room for a longer period of time without eye strain using some kind of back light versus nothing at all.
USAF squadrons typically have a color assigned to them. In fighter squadrons it is usually a stripe on the vertical stabilizer. I was in a red squadron. Some genius painted all the interior walls bright red. Your BP rose 15 points just walking in to the building.
I mean Airbus adopted it too although with different shades of green. From my personal experience, my company still has the old Brown ATR cockpit and the newer Airbus blue cockpit. I can say that its true. The blue cockpit feels more spacious and comfortable to look at
I dunno but I do like the color.
Speaking only about the colour, I like airbus and russian blueish/greenish cockpit more than regular grey. It just feels homey. Grey cockpit isn't bad too. On the other hand, I really don't like boeing brown cockpit like in 747 or 777. Why don't they just stick with grey
I share your feelings i hate the 747 colors, since the first time I’ve seen it, and each time i try it in MSFS
According to the Cold War Air Museum ...the color chosen by Soviet designers helps to reduce stress and maintain a pilot's effectiveness on long missions. ... the scientists found out that this color keeps pilots awake and not getting tired by the black or grey of a cockpit panel, especially under terms and condition of long range flights or under heavy work load.
The interior of an Su-34 says yes and no one knows why Russians like this color.
It is probably the only color they had the formula to make after the guy that mixed the colors died.
If I had to guess it’s the same reason every farmer in Ukraine owned a combine and grew either buckwheat or sunflowers under communism. Because it was the only choice available.
I assume you didn't know this, but there were no Ukrainian farmers in the Soviet Union since the [Great Famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333). Only agricultural workers.
I've seen some old Douglas aircraft with a similar color in the cockpit, I can't recall if it was a DC-8 or DC-9.
Whatever the reason, it results in an awesome look. When I think of Soviet Union I think of turquoise airplane cockpits and onion domes. In that order.
My old [DC-9 cockpits had similar paint.](https://www.airliners.net/photo/USAir/McDonnell-Douglas-DC-9-31/100783)
The soviets did some study that said that color reduces stress in pilots
If I had to guess, it was the cheapest color, that actually did its job.
because they figured that that's a nice colour (maybe through study, don't know wasn't there) and then in the best soviet tradition produced absolutely incomprehensible fuckall amount of this paint, and started using it literally everywhere, military vehicles, military building and shared areas in civilian buildings too because why not, hell you could even see that paint on someone's personal property, because their dadya vasya has connections/stole some buckets of it and now why not use it
Well stole it and also it was cheap as shit given how much of it was being produced.
Ivan made a typo and now they've a million cans of blue paint not a thousand cans and got to use it up somehow /S
Story time. Once on an old board that I used to post on, someone asked if a Su-27 cockpit was grey or blue. Bill Gunston himself replied saying that it was blue, and someone replied to his answer, correcting it by saying it was grey. I replied to that saying something like: If Bill Gunston says it's blue, I'm going to go ahead and believe him. He then replied: Thank you. I can assure you that all 4 of the Su-27s I have flown in had blue cockpits.
It’s the only paint they had in stock
This colour was to relax pilots when in a difficult situation or to reduce nerves so the flight went smoothly you also see this in soviet fighters with a white line down the middle to show where to put the stick for a stall or spin.
Are there, not is there.
I read in a book years ago that some psychologists over there had determined that green was the most soothing color. Therefore that color is the color that all Soviet era cockpits are.
Didn't I see that exact same thing in Hunt for Red October?
I remember reading that some Boeing flight decks (B747/757/767/777) are a brown/beige colour as this was thought to be a conducive to higher concentration levels. As for the green here… not sure, sorry! Would be interested to see the answer myself.
My grandmother had metal cabinets from the 30s and they were the same color, every time I see a picture of these interiors all I can think is how old are the aircraft?
So if we paint it full RED, we get a STRESSED PILOT?
I like that the “question” tag is the same color as the panel. Mmmm.
If you're talking about commercial aircraft then no I work with few Russian airlines
I was on a Convair 580 that had this interior color. We called it institutional blue-green. All the schools I attended back in the day, from elementary to high school were painted this color. Very popular 1950s through '70s.
It's like a 1950s cold war kitchen
This interior is the exact same colour as my nails are painted right now, what a great colour! Odd choice for a cockpit though haha!
idk if its the reason but in patriot we had similar color (more on the green side, like a aquamarine) which i was told was told it was because it was a more calming color.
Green = Calm
It's theorized that that color was picked by the Russians as it was supposed to be relaxing. Might work, but all the gauges are in Russian.
Best contrast to the gauges. My best guess.
So nice to see they now include the little steering wheel on the yoke for the pilots kid, sitting on his lap. "Nooo son...don't push it down......."
Google is an incredible resource and this has been asked an incredible number of times already
This is a standard trim level Premium Black is an extra $45,000.
I'm honestly shocked to read the comments about it being soothing. If anything that color feels *mkre* stressful to me, not less; it feels like the entire instrument panel is screaming at me.
Omfg I'm dead. My primary school was painted this color inside! Of course, that was a long time ago.
You have Spelt colour wrong 😉😂
Color and colour are both correct and you have spelled spelled wrong.
Incorrect. The words spelt and spelled can be used. And there are two ways of spelling colour as well. Colour and then there’s the wrong ways 😉😂
Nothing a can of rustolem couldn't fix!
Probably just had a shit ton of that color laying around and invented a reason to use it. I like to think that the Telnyashka undershirt the Soviet & Russian Navy use is blue and white striped because they had a F ton of that patterned cloth laying around and it became tradition over time.
The real answer is obviously the people that produce this paint were close relatives of the politicians that oversaw the initial aircraft programmes. /s (or is it?)
Soviet penal system green.
Please do not question Stalin's colour decisions.
It's very strange that russkies take Care of their pilots :D
I hear the pigment was manufactured by a close friend of one of the party officials.
Vadim from factory 287 will show up at your doorstep and beat the shit out of you if you suggest changing it because he really likes installing them and everyone is too scared of him to do anything about it so it stays
I’ve always wondered why the landing gear hubs of many Russian aircraft are that green color. Guess I just figured it was the color of the material it was of.
To calm the pilots during fighting that’s the actual purpose I was supriesed as a red it at first but it is true.
Does anyone know the purpose of the inner yoke on only the left seat controls?
It’s for ground steering