The Eyes Have It

Such realities tempt pilots to treat sunglasses as incidentals, to be arbitrarily replaced with whatever is convenient and available. In reality, a good pair of sunglasses is perhaps the least appreciated and most necessary item for pilots who fly in daytime. Anyone operating any kind of machinery outdoors needs good sunglasses, but pilots, even those flying at only a few thousand feet, have special needs that cry out for special lenses.

At low altitude, the right sunglasses can help pilots pick out traffic in an atmosphere sometimes obscured by haze and smoke. Similarly, aviators operating in the high sky have a particular need for good glasses, but for opposite reasons. At 18,000 feet, half the Earth's atmosphere lies below, so there's less filtering of the sun's rays and exponentially more glare to worry about.

Glare has always been my primary nemesis. Over the years, I've tried every possible kind of sunglass, Ray-Bans, Oakleys, Maui Jim, Serenghetis and enough off-brands to equip an air force. Indeed, I probably have a dozen varieties of Polaroid, sun-blocker, anti-glare and ultra-filter glasses kicking around my desk that I wind up cleaning and using now and then, only to discover why they didn't work for me in the first place.

I seem to have a special problem with extremely bright sun, probably because I've flown several hundred photo formation flights snuggled up on the wing of a photo ship, inevitably looking pretty much straight into the sun while a photographer snaps pictures of "my" airplane.

Even when I'm only cruising, just about the time I become adjusted to the glare of an afternoon sky while checking for traffic, it's time to bring my eyes back inside a dark cockpit, and scan the instruments. Repeat this procedure perhaps 50-75 times during a three-hour cross country, transitioning from extreme glare to comparatively dark cabin shade, and it can be tough on your eyes and even tougher on your disposition.

Recently, however, I was contacted by some folks at Zurich International up in Elk Grove, Calif., regarding their line of Extreme Glare Sunglasses. They claimed to offer superior glare protection and the ability to see a flat panel display without sacrificing the view outside the airplane.

In case you hadn't noticed, flat panels are the rage these days. Most general aviation panels come standard with large Garmin displays, such as the G1000 and G500. Even those with a mixture of steam gauges and portable GPS receivers can benefit from a glare-free cockpit environment.

My natural reaction was been there/done that, but there was something about Zurich CEO Bruce Holden's comments that suggested his Z-XG glasses might indeed be different.

They are. Holden explained that what he's selling isn't a specific configuration of sunglass, but rather a technology that may be applied to any form you specify. He feels his glasses are superior to anything on the market. His comment was, "Our technology can be used in any frame made by any optical or sunglass company in the world."

Holden didn't just stumble across this technology at a Swiss science fair. He has been a professional optician since 1973, and he knows whereof he speaks.

A few weeks after our conversation, a package arrived from Holden with four pairs of glasses enclosed, each emphasizing a different aspect of sunblock technology. Tints range from a rose to a medium gray, depending upon your needs. The rose highlights colors and makes it easier to spot other aircraft or identify clouds. The medium gray is most effective at blocking glare.

In my earlier phone conversation with Holden, I had emphasized that any good pilot sunglass should wrap around to block glare from low angles on either side. Sure enough, all four pairs wrapped around without making me look too hip hop (a virtual impossibility, in my case).

Zurich glasses come in two styles. The pilot-style shades are standard glasses that wrap around and provide the slim look that many aviators prefer, while the fit-over variety are designed to cover your normal prescription glasses to offer sun blockage without requiring you to remove your custom tri-focal or progressive lenses.

I took the entire box with me on a recent Sunday afternoon burger flight to Santa Paula, Calif. After some major rain events, the area was luxuriating beneath relatively clear skies and 70 miles visibility, a perfect situation to test sunglasses for glare reduction.

Holden had sent along three pair of slip-over glasses with varying shades of protection and one pair of pilot-style bifocals in my prescription. Slip-overs may not sound like a good idea with the tremendous variety of frame styles available. My prescription glasses featured fairly conventional, square-ish lenses, and to my surprise, the Zurich glasses seemed almost made to fit over my super Crizal progressives.

Pilot Peggy, the friendly neighborhood veterinarian, and I launched in the family Mooney, and headed up the coast in dazzling sunlight. Holden had provided me with two styles of temples, the first a simple, Velcro® strip that was pretty much guaranteed not to interfere with a headset. The second offered standard, plastic temples that wrapped back over the ears and were infinitely adjustable.

The glasses themselves look durable, and they are. The lenses are molded not only around the sides but over the top in front, the better to block the sun at odd angles. The Z-XG lenses are specifically designed to protect against all UVA and UV-B rays and about 65% of UVC light.

You can mold and bend the temples to fit around your ears without fear of breaking anything. Zurich glasses are made of a General Electric ballistic polycarbonate with a quartz coating that makes them extremely tough. The lenses are 2.5 mm thick with no metal hinges to corrode, and Holden says one pair was tested with a .22 rifle bullet, and the lens wasn't penetrated. In fact, when Holden goes to air shows, he'll sometimes pound on the glasses with his fist to prove that they'll hold up to rough treatment.

Evaluating the effectiveness of sunglasses is at best a highly subjective judgment, but there was obviously significant improvement in several areas. I've tried a variety of different lenses for flying, including heavily polarized glasses, and while they work well for blocking outside glare, they can become almost totally ineffective when you shift your view inside the cockpit.

Zurich's Extreme Glare designs aren't polarized, so that wasn't a problem with Holden's products. For one thing, I could see the LED readouts of my Garmin radios better than I had before. I tried looking back and forth several times, inside to outside and back, and after a short adjustment period, I could see in both high glare and no glare pretty well. Clouds over the mountains stood out rather than fading into the background, and the digital instruments were still readable. There was quite a bit of traffic flying on this chamber-of-commerce Sunday afternoon, and after the TCAS bonged at the two-mile scale, either Peggy or I could fairly easily pick out the bogey from the clutter below. I tried looking through the lenses at oblique angles to check for waviness or other inconsistencies, but none were obvious.

This was with the maximum glare-reduction medium gray-tint glasses. Later, I switched to the rose lenses and watched the colors brighten and the definition improve even further. If many of the other glasses in my desk drawer are simply "me-too" products, the Zurich Sunglasses are definitely superior in most respects.

Zurich High Glare Sunglasses come with a three-year warranty in the pilot--style and a five-year warranty in the slip-over variety. Typical sales price is $59 for the basic slip-overs, with prescription glasses typically going for $99. For more information call Bruce Holden at (800) 533-5665 or drop him a note at bruce@z-xg.com.