I like the UV idea but...
A quote from ledsupply.com "Caution: UV light is harmful to eyes and skin."
Now, I'm sure that you couldn't do too much damage with a couple of LEDs, but I could image that if you used one of the tubes and did lots of nightime driving, you may notice either some eye strain or degredation of the interior parts lit with the UV. Any degredation would likely be very slow though, as sunlight has lots of UV too and takes time to damage anything.

I like the tritium idea, but it's one of the world's most expensive substances, is always "on" and will decay over time. I have tritium night sites on my SIG P220. There's nothing better. But they only last about 10 yrs. and cost close to $100 for what amounts to less than three tiny drops of the stuff.

After all this experimenting, I think it would just be easier to convert to 993 gauges;).

We have LED lights in the back of our corporate airplane (we were the launch customer for our type plane on these lights) and we have been having a problem recently. Got a new flight attendent and she was always cleaning the galley right before landing.

The white lights from the galley coming forward really killed our night vision in the cockpit. The last two night landings I went back and selected the light controls to color. Changed the galley work lights from white to red and the change was unbelieveable!

Before we had problems picking out the airport and landmarks at night during the approach. Now with the red she can get her work completed and we can see 2-3 times better. I have used the red lights years ago in a car (hand painted the bulbs) and liked them in the car as well.

JoeA