Three LED's

[CygnusX1]

I just bought a 3 LED kit for my first attempt at night flight. I got a red green and white LED kit. I would like to install them into my Easy Glider Electric so that I can take some Winter night flights over the frozen lake.

What would be the ideal locations to mount the three LED's to get the best use of them. Under the wings? Over the wings? leading edge? Tail Top? or Fuselage end?

Suggestions please so that I don't lose my plane in the darkness! :eek:

Thanks,
Dave

[Gary Morris]

If you only have 3 lights, red, white and green you DO NOT have enough lighting for safely flying at night. I am flying a Slow Stick with 40 LED's and occasionally I loose orientation going towards me or away from me when it's at eye level. Look at Walmart in the Christmas decorations department and pick up three or four strings of the red, green or red and green light strings. They come with 10 LED's to a pack and you can easily wire them up using the included battery box, (uses 3 AA cells), or you can use and old speed controller and just use the BEC from it to power the lights. I hope this helps!

Gary Morris

[Pudknocker71]

I had 22 LEDs and would say that's was not enough either. Read through this forum. There are some realy cool tricks you can easily do with cheap Walmart/Target light sets.

[Diggs]

Well to be overly redundant, I too agree that 3 LEDs won't cut it. My 4 LED slow stick flew away never to be seen again!!

Diggs

[foam and tape]

if you only got 3 mount one on the rudder, i have flown on one single red LED mouned on the rudder. To me it seems as more LEDs you put on the plane the harder it is to see the whole plane i have a slow stick with 2 battery oporated LEDS on the wing tips and one little red LED on the rudder. flown it at 2 o'clock in the morning :D


but, I recently built my e-flite S.E.5.A with 4 lights as soon as it took off i lost sight of it :confused: :eek: it has a strobe light on the rudder that flashes every 3 seconds......... too late it ended up planted into the ground shortly after takeoff :rolleyes: no damage at least :cool:

[yarsmythejr]

Well, not to toot my own horn...but my Slow Stick flies with only 6 LEDs and I have no trouble seeing it or following its orientation. Sure, it could use a few more but my setup works fine for me.

Red & green lights on wings tips. 2 white LEDs on leading edge of wing and 2 white LEDs on the stabilizer. All 4 white LEDs flash.

Dave, I would recommend you add a few more white lights so you can spread them out along the wing and tail surfaces.

-Lee

[CygnusX1]

Gee, I'm glad I asked you guys! sounds like I need to at least double my LED count, if not tripple. I will take a look at additional string lights or maybe two lengths of EL wire added under the wings.

It is really dark out here so I fully expected to see the LEDs clearly. However, I have no idea how well I would be able to determine orientation since I've never even seen an RC plane fly at night.

Thanks for the advice. I have read through many of the posts here but I tend to go minimalist with stuff...maybe this is not the place to minimize! :o

-Dave

[Wayne V]

I have had two night fliers, one was the FlyRC Banshee foamy and the other was a modified banshee with only 2 green leds mounted low and pointed at the wing to illuminate it, from below it looked like two eyes crusing around the sky, it flew fairly slow and orientation was never a problem. Best thing to remember is when you look up at your plane you can only see the bottom of the wing and tail so any lights pointing forward or lighting the top of the plane don't really help.

[yarsmythejr]

Thanks for the advice. I have read through many of the posts here but I tend to go minimalist with stuff...maybe this is not the place to minimize! :o -DaveThe best part is that the cost of LEDs is pretty low, especially if you buy them in bulk. I picked up my LEDs from this vendor on EBAY: Sure Electronics (http://).

If you can solder, you can do this yourself. You'll need to pick up some resistors and thin wire...but when you're done, you can have a plane that looks like this: Sparky's GlowDog (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8821137&postcount=31).

Have fun with it. Post your results when you have it ready.

-Lee

[1toslope]

It is good that you asked because 3 would definitely not be enough.

[Scooter04]

I fly with 6 lights on a Moth. 2 red, 2 green, 2 white strobes. The advantage of the biplane is when you put the light betwwen the wings, both wings reflect light and basically start to glow so I think you get a little more visibility than a mono wing set up the same way. I don't have any trouble seeing the Moth, but the more lights the better in general.

I've used the lazertoys kit with success. You can solder in additional led's for a couple bucks a peice. Resisters included, kind of idiot proof so it worked well for me. :D

[jhaywood]

3 would be tough, but if it is a sailplane it is doable. I have flown up to 1000 pound uavs on 4 lights. red/green on wingtips, a blinking red on the tip of the vertical, and a white under the nose to light up the ground just before touchdown. We even flew "aerobatics" with trainers lit this way. It is not hard at all, but you have to pay attention to what you just did in order to keep orientation. We would even fly them in from a mile out using nothing but the wing tip lights as guidance.

Jeff

[RU4GOD2falcon]

3 would be hard had 1 light system on aerobird parkflyer scary but do able

had 8 on my nextar able to fly ,the problem i had was the transmitter led light (like a light in my eyes) me bad

have 12 on now should have at least 15

what i also did rubber band small flash light to each wheel (like landing lights )
got hit once after a fun fly (had no control)scary to say the least thankfully was able to regain control the plane comming inverted straight at me
thanks falcon

[CygnusX1]

3 would be tough, but if it is a sailplane it is doable. I have flown up to 1000 pound uavs on 4 lights. red/green on wingtips, a blinking red on the tip of the vertical, and a white under the nose to light up the ground just before touchdown. We even flew "aerobatics" with trainers lit this way. It is not hard at all, but you have to pay attention to what you just did in order to keep orientation. We would even fly them in from a mile out using nothing but the wing tip lights as guidance.

Jeff

Tonight was my maiden night flight and that's exactly what I had to do. Concentrate on what i did last so I could remember the direction of the plane. Muscle memory from daytime helps alot. It was almost like flying on instinct sometimes. I had no problems, and even did a few loops. I only have bright light strips on the top and bottom of the main wings and that's it. Here are the photos of the beautiful flight with a surprise guest, Aurora!

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9019750&postcount=16

-DAVE

[RU4GOD2falcon]

CYGNUSX1 great job , nice pics also
falcon

[simhatus]

Hi

I have a fledgling glider equiped with led's about 70 in all.

http://hometown.aol.com/Simhatus/fledgling_night_3m.JPG

The colors arn't to clear from the pic but they are:

red: right wing and tailplane
blue: left wing and tailplane
orange: around front of fuz and nose
white: around rear of fuz and fin

Had one flight so far in total darkness off a cliff over a beach, was no problem to orient and fly.

This is the plane as origonal without the lights fitted:

http://hometown.aol.co.uk/Simhatus/fledgling_1m.JPG

Simon