44" night foamy - Work in Progress

[Fuegodeth]

Hi all,
I'm very glad to see the new forum and want to contribute. The plane is not completed yet, but is far enough along to demonstrate the night flying aspect of it.

So far, the wing is pretty much complete. There are 16 Led's embedded in the leading edge, trailing edges and wingtips. There are 4 tri-color LED's in pockets in the wings. The pockets are lined with foil, so the colored light only comes out on top of the wing. These led's were pricey at $2.50 a piece but were very cool. They change colors and blend from one color to another making just about every color in the rainbow as they do so. The LED's on the edges of the wings are mounted in clear drinking straws that are in channels cut into the foam on the edges of the wing. Then they are covered with strapping tape. It's the kind that has fibers going across as well as lengthwise. It makes a very nice light diffusing effect. The leading edge is only 6 blue LED's, but makes a pretty continuous bar of light. There are resistors soldered to each LED leg, and 22G wire is used throughout. I thought about using magnet wire, but figured I would probably end up breaking it and messing it all up, so I took a weight penalty by going with regular wire. The wiring is routed underneath the drinking straws, and is all connected in parrallel to a center branch of wires along the center line. It makes it so you can't see any of the night flying characteristics of it during daylight, and keeps the extererior slick to reduce drag.

Here are some build pics of it. It's blue foam basically. And it has really turned out to be a tough wing. Lets just hope it flies. I will add on to this thread as I go, and show the fuselage build, and overall installation.

[Fuegodeth]

Youtube Video of the lights:
44" night foamy LED setup (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW_bmAK3exw) (0 min 14 sec)

[foam and tape]

WOAH, thats the coolest night flyer i have ever seen :D :eek: :cool:

[Fuegodeth]

Here's some of the info about the proposed plane. The radio gear is stuff I already had, so that influenced equipment choice in that area.

44" Wingspan
48" length
Estimated final weight 40-42oz
480sqin wing area

HXT 900kv motor 42A cont. (UH/HC special:rolleyes:)
CC Thunderbird 36 ESC
xcite 2200 3s 20C/40C lipo
4 x HS81-MG servos
Hitec 5ch rx
12x6 or 13x6.5 APC E prop, depending on current draw.

There are 50 LED's - 6 Blue, 10 Green, 4 Tri-Color, 30red. I got them from www.goldmine-elec.com (http://www.goldmine-elec.com) along with resisters for each one.
I'm using a 1A fuse between the ESC and the LED setup, in case there's a short it will just shut off the lights and not fry the ESC. Hopefully the 3A BEC on the thunderbird will be up for it. If the overall current ends up being over 1A, then I'll have to get a 1.5A fuse, and might consider a separate BEC.

During testing, I'm using 5v source from modded PC PSU. Very handy.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=766470

Anyway, that's all i can think of at this point. Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

[Pudknocker71]

I nominate you to do the LED how to sticky! :eek: :D

[Pudknocker71]

I would like to see how the a scratch light set goes together with resisters, fuses and such w/ + & - side of wire. I'm cuting apart an LED light set from Target that doesn't have a fuse installed.

A fuse inline sounds like a good idea against a short. Where do you get such a fuse? What does it look like?(Just thought -I don't know what kind of draw these have so you might not be able to answer that) :confused:

[Fuegodeth]

Ok, the fuse and holder are available at radioshack. it's just a small inline fuse holder for the smallest size of tube type fuse (5x20mm).
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102784&cp=2032058.2032234.2032302&parentPage=family
That was basically the smalest thing I could find. It's about .2oz total, so I figured I could deal with the weight as the safety factor is a big comfort. I might be able to land a plane in the dark with no lights, but I can't land one with no radio control.

As far as +/- goes for the LED's, I didn't have a guide, I just used the power supply to test polarity, and then soldered the resistor on the negative leg of all of them, so that I had the resistor as a reference when putting the LED's in the plane.
I saw this link yesterday, and it was better than any reference I had used.
http://www.theledlight.com/ledcircuits.html.

I primarily used this
http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz
to determine resistor values. I actually miscalculated from my original plan. My first choice was to use a single lipo cell to power the lights, so I based it all off 3.7v, and ordered 100ohm resistors for the 2.1v led's and 15ohm resistors for the 3.3v led's. However, after ordering everything I figured out that there is a wide range of voltage from a single cell, and that the BEC would be better. So, I had the wrong resistors. I went back to the calcluator and figured out that with 100ohm resistors on the small LED's, I would be drawing 30ma instead of 20ma, so no problem there. On the larger ones, I used 100ohm instead of the 15ohms originally planned. That resulted in 20ma instead of 30 for the larger LED's. I figured it was close enough and just put 100ohm on everything, and that seems to be fine. I'm using a wattmeter inline with the power supply when I test the setup, so it shows the total current. With 20LED's going it draws .4A, which is what I expected. I'm expecting about 1A for the total setup with 50 LED's.

[Fuegodeth]

I would like to see how the a scratch light set goes together with resisters, fuses and such w/ + & - side of wire. I'm cuting apart an LED light set from Target that doesn't have a fuse installed.

A fuse inline sounds like a good idea against a short. Where do you get such a fuse? What does it look like?(Just thought -I don't know what kind of draw these have so you might not be able to answer that) :confused:

I'll try to post some better closeups of the wiring and LED installation when I'm doing the fuselage, so that this might be of more use to people. I'll also show how the complete wiring setup goes together once I get to that point. I think that will be helpful too. Thanks for the great feedback guys. I'm happy to answer any questions I can.

[zagimon]

Wow, truly one of the coolest wings I've seen. Can't wait for the final product. Great job Stu.

[Fuegodeth]

Thanks Buddy. It's been taking a while to get it done. I think it will go alot faster now that I have my process figured out.

[Pudknocker71]

Thanks for the info. I'll be getting that RS fuse tonight. ;)

[Fuegodeth]

You are welcome. Glad I could help.

[Fuegodeth]

Well,
I still haven't finished this thing. The holidays came around and I got busy... and I'm also working on another plane. I've also decided to paint the fuse with glow paint, and after reading around about BEC's, I think I'm also going to go with a CC BEC unit, as the LED"s area already drawing 1A, and I have 4 HS 81's on this thing. I might actually use the ESC BEC to power the LED's and the CC 10A BEC to power the radio gear. If I can figure out how to wire that. Not sure if that's possible. The reason for going with the paint is the weight of the wing so far. It's heavier than I expected, and I don't want this thing to be a brick. I've got the fuse cut out, I just need to cut the bevels for the hinges, round the edges, install servo's cover, etc. I'll try and get it done soon. I can't believe it's been this long since I started this build.:eek:

[zagimon]

Hey fuego. Maybe there could be a separate switch for the lights. How many volts are the lights. Maybe there could be a single large capacity cell for these in the wing or something. Looks good. What ever you do, I'm sure it will be cool.

[Fuegodeth]

The resistors on the LED's are setup for 5v input voltage. So, I'm stuck with that, unless I want to tear them all out and switch resistors. There will be a switch for them though. The 30 or so LED's going now pull right at 1A as shown on my wattmeter. Continuously, that's too much for a BEC that's trying to power servos as well. I think a park BEC is the way to go.

[Fuegodeth]

Well, after 141 days (according to the thread details) of builders block and procrastination, I am finally working on this thing again. I was debating a lot of things, but mostly procrastinating and working on other stuff. I thought about doing glow paint for the fuselage, and actually got some, but I've settled on doing the LED's, like the wing. Everything is cut and sanded. I just need to finish soldering them all up then I can tape it, cover it, and mate the wing and fuselage, and then do control surface hardware.

I did get a CC 10A BEC to use. I'm a little confused on the wiring. Do I want to power everything from that BEC, or just use that for the LED's and use the regular BEC on the TB36 to power the servo's. I'm using 4 x HS81's on it, so that's a little heavy load at 3s for the TB36 BEC. Would be cool if I could power the LED's from the BEC on the ESC and use the 10A BEC for the radio gear. I think I'm going to end up with the 10A BEC powering everything though. Although, I'm going to have to have a Y connector in there because the receiver is only 5 channel. I'll get it all worked out, I'm sure, but any advice would be welcomed on that.

[don crashum]

UFO! UFO! AHHHHH!!!!! :D Different looking but nice!! ;)

[Fuegodeth]

wiring of LED's on the whole thing is done. I never did get it finished this weekend. It will look much more conventional once you can see the outline of the fuselage and control surfaces.

[Fuegodeth]

Ahh, finally some more progress. I've gotten a lot done this weekend.
The wiring of LED's is complete. All phases now plug into one rx style plug. I have a CC BEC powering LED's and flight controls. I have removed the red wire pin from my ESC to disable the BEC. 2 Y connections were necessary to get it all to work. 1 of them allows the BEC to share an rx slot with a servo, and the other is to split power from the BEC to the lighting system and to the flight controls. It all seems to work very well. I still have to glue the wing in place. It's just a press fit at this point. Same for the horizontal stabilizer. I also have to cover the fuselage, add the flames on the wing, do the landing gear and tail wheel, mount the motor, install pushrods, and get the radio programmed for it. So, still a bit of work to do before she is flightworthy, but we are getting there. At least now it's all straightforward stuff like any other plane. All the "unique" work is done. I've attached some pics so you can see how it looks right now. Obviously it will look a lot better when it is completely done. I hope to be flying it in a couple of days, but that probably means a couple of weeks going by past building history.

[zagimon]

Man, I need one of these. Good work Stuart. You've outdone yourself.

[Fuegodeth]

I forgot to update the thread.... The lights were nice looking, but the plane was overweight, underpowered, tail heavy and flew like a drunken dog. However, I did bring it back down in on piece. So, I pulled the motor and esc, etc and hung it up in the garage. I used a wall wart that puts out 5v at 1.5A and can plug it in and have it as a light show in the garage whenever I want to see it.