reported earlier AEKRAN supposed to look like this?

[Lixma 06]

There was an entry in the patch notes - 

Quote

• Added sound when scrolling messages on the AEKRAN, and slightly adjusted the message format.

Before patch

 

Post patch

 

Is it supposed to look like this? Seems janky to me; though I've never seen one in real life.

 

[AeriaGloria]

36 minutes ago, Lixma 06 said:

There was an entry in the patch notes - 

Before patch

 

Post patch

 

Is it supposed to look like this? Seems janky to me; though I've never seen one in real life.

 

Hehe, the Russian one was always good but now the English one is perfect. 
 

The main display of Eakran of this version is not LCD. 
 

See, the Eakran records things on film. The way it records things, is by punching holes with a palladium tipped needle. 
 

So what you are seeing is the film after it has been punctured by the palladium tipped needle with the message, and backlit with a yellow light! 
 

Then after flight you can open the Eakran, take the roll of film out as a perfect recording of the inflight failures and statuses. 

[Lixma 06]

Interesting!

I figured it was just a miniature version of these...

[MAXsenna]

9 minutes ago, Lixma 06 said:

Interesting!

I figured it was just a miniature version of these...

Haha! Me too!  

[AeriaGloria]

It holds 18m of 35mm film, and that palladium tipped needle punctures it fast enough to write every message in half a second

[UWBuRn]

8 hours ago, AeriaGloria said:

Hehe, the Russian one was always good but now the English one is perfect. 
 

The main display of Eakran of this version is not LCD. 
 

See, the Eakran records things on film. The way it records things, is by punching holes with a palladium tipped needle. 
 

So what you are seeing is the film after it has been punctured by the palladium tipped needle with the message, and backlit with a yellow light! 
 

Then after flight you can open the Eakran, take the roll of film out as a perfect recording of the inflight failures and statuses. 

Wow, i always knew it was a film being rolled, but i also taught the message were prestamped and rolled back and forward, not that each message was printed on its own!

[AeriaGloria]

Yea. I just haven’t read the docs enough recently to remember if it also records the time data like Ka-50, or if that’s handled by flight recorder. Either way. It’s a pretty interesting solution. 
 

Palladium, backlight punctured film instead of displays, it’s practically steam punk in an 80s plane. Now those top 3 windows are proper LED displays I believe. 

[addman]

Good lord! that's so Soviet. I love it.

[BIGNEWY]

there are some issues with the English cockpit that we have reported and testing a fix for. Hopefully we will have a fix soon. 

thanks

[Wrcknbckr]

16 minutes ago, addman said:

Good lord! that's so Soviet. I love it.

Being purely mechanical could it have something to do with survivability after EMP due to a Nuclear attack?

Edited October 24 by Wrcknbckr

[Dragon1-1]

Probably more to do with ease of manufacture, as well as the clever way to combine display and message logging. Notably, you could recover the film roll after the plane had crashed, solid state storage wasn't a thing back then, and a separate tape would have added a lot of complexity. This thing is actually pretty much a small dot matrix printer with a continuous roll of film, both familiar and reliable technologies.

[AeriaGloria]

.

[Кош]

This technique was very common in industrial computers at the time, for logging mostly. To a degree, it's an off the shelf solution.

[Hawkeye_UK]

Have to sat spotted this tonight, but also thought no big deal really, fascinated to hear the background on how it worked in real life!

What I would say however, the loss of the VSI is a nightmare, and really does need a hotfix rather than running metric or waiting until the next big patch update.

BUt yea really was fascinated that it was a camera roll perforated in cockpit, and then there for analysis post flight.  I also thought it didnt look that bad that people are going on about, but thats just me.

16 hours ago, Wrcknbckr said:

Being purely mechanical could it have something to do with survivability after EMP due to a Nuclear attack?

Yea a camera film will not be affected by an EMP pulse

[Fox One]

On 10/24/2025 at 3:19 AM, AeriaGloria said:

See, the Eakran records things on film. The way it records things, is by punching holes with a palladium tipped needle. 
 

So what you are seeing is the film after it has been punctured by the palladium tipped needle with the message, and backlit with a yellow light! 
 

 

 

That is not how it works. There is no punching and puncturing involved.

 

The film used resembles regular 35mm film, only it is thinner. On one side of the film there is a very thin metallic layer (if you put it against your eyes, you can see through it).

 

Inside the device, there are rows of many pins facing the metallic layer. When a message needs to be made, an electrical current is applied to specific pins that are forming the necessary pattern of characters. Between the tip of each energized pin and the metallic layer a small electric arc is formed. Each electric arc is locally destroying the metallic layer, creating a dot. Each dot created is an area where the metallic layer is gone and only the transparent part of the film is left. The dots are NOT holes in the film.

 

Then the message created is advanced to the viewing window.

 

In the attached picture, real Ekran film from my collection. The only holes in it are the rectangles on the edge of the film.

[AeriaGloria]

How interesting, thank you. I assume the electric current is partly why palladium was needed

Edited 14 hours ago by AeriaGloria