lighting question.

[drakonis]

ok so im geting some of umis lights. so there are 4 lights on the mast. the top is an anchor light and the 3 towing lights. should i have all 4 lit? or just the 3 on the face of the mast? now i only have just enough room in teh mast to run 1 set of wires to the top for the mooring/anchor light. the towing lights wire will be run up the front of the mast. visible i know but theres no choice. theres a ladder on the back of the mast and no room under the rungs. so if i run all 4 at once i can run them in series? or is it paralell? im going to run all lights off 12v. amiee is supplying resistors to reduce the voltage for the single lights. but i dont have the room on the mast. what can i do? ill try to post a pic of the tiny mast tomorrow. i wanted to run all the wires inside but its too small to do so. thanks in advance. doug.

[Ghost 2501]

Drakonis, the anchor light will only be lit when at anchor.

the 3 on the mast face would be lit when under way.

There are two ways to approach this:
using a common negative, and one wire going up the mast to the anchor light, with the wire that feeds the mast face lights on show. rather than cut the wire, remove the insulation and solder the + of the wire with (resistor if LED) to the bare wire, then put heat shrink over the join. as you only have 1 wire on show going up the mast with a spur off for each of the lights. you could then add a piece of heat shrink and a wire to the other lights that you would also have on the mast, which you would replicate as dummy lights. this will make the feed wire look like the conduit used to carry the multitude of wires on the real ship.

at the base of the mast, as you are running 2 circuits, take a servo extention lead, use the BLACK or BROWN as the common negative, then say the white or orange (signal) to feed the anchor light, and the remaining color, (probably red) as the feed to the towing lights.

to do this effectively you will need a longish servo lead, this will enable you to remove the superstructure sufficiently to gain access to the model for charging, bilging, switching etc without having to disconnect the wires.

in line with your speed controller, get a robbe relay or similar with two connected outputs on the 3 point block (action kit does a similar one to the robbe, but though it has the 3point connection block, only two of the 3 are functioning), take a two wire lead from the battery with an inline master switch, (on a relay would be nice also but not essential).

the battery live would pass through the master switch and to the centre terminal of the robbe relay, then the two side terminals would be used to feed the mast and anchor lights. sitting stationary in the water, your anchor light would be on display, an all round white LED. as you feed in power to the motors, the anchor light would go off and the mast lights would come on.

By using relays I managed to get the lights on Nord Icelandia to sync in with functions
Nord Icelandia phase2 lights (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im8gdH83lNw) (2 min 15 sec)


Visible as she sails unrestricted are as follows:
foremast light (white)
sidelights (red + green)
masthead light (white)
stern light (white) - ONLY VISABLE FROM THE STERN

the red white red on the mast sides mean restricted manouvrability, there are special lights for towing as well depending on the length of vessel being towed

http://www.bosunsmate.org/seamanship/lights.php

[Umi_Ryuzuki]

I typically break it down to three or four switches.

Running lights - Port, starboard top mast light(or top two), stern lamp.
Towing lights - bottom mast light and stern yellow. (red white red if the tug has them)
Flood lights -
Search Light...

Run any the deck lighting with the running lights

:)

The resistors are tiny, I hang them down under the lamp like the
"P" trap under the sink, then solder the hot wire to them. No one
has ever commented that they look out of place. Maybe their just being nice... :o
Also, if you pick up 1/4 or 1/2 watt resistors of the same value,
you can gang up and common colored lights, and put the larger
resistor inside the deck house under the mast, or in the superstructure.

You can run them in series, just make sure the voltage of each LED
adds up to 12v in any string.

[pompebled]

No one has ever commented that they look out of place. Maybe they're just being nice... :o


They look like connectors, hanging down from the lamp, if they're painted over, they look 'scale'...

Regards, Jan.

[Ghost 2501]

I seriously need to bury the wiring on Nordie's mast arms.

[JOHN SCALE BOAT]

If you look at the mast on the Relient you can see conduit running down the back. This acts as the second conductor. Solder on lead of each lamp to the mast and the other to the conduit. Then in the cabin you can place your droping resistor in which you will now need a higher wattage or in my case I built a varaible voltage regulator to adjust the brightness.

[drakonis]

thanks for the replies. this is cool. i like the idea of the lights working in conjunction with the esc. but i think im going to just do switches.