Recently, my wife and I had a baby and since then R/C flying time has been scarce. I have from about 8:30pm till I want to go to sleep to fly RC. As difficult as that sounds. it's not too bad as there just so happpens to be a soccer field a few blocks from my house. I'd love to fly there at night using bright LEDs in the wings and glow wire to run on the inside of the fuselage. The problem is, I'm having trouble coming up with a plane. I want a high wing, semi-aerobatic electric plane that can carry about 2-3oz of lighting equipment as well as another 2-3oz of video equipment. I want to make night time aerial videos of my area. It would have to be a kit or at least an ARC so that I can install the lights and cover with transparent film. I am thinking of a .25-.35 glow conversion of a decathlon, citabria, or simiar, but I can't seem to find anything electric or glow. Any thoughts? I'd really want to keep it smaller then a .40 size glow as it is only a soccer field. Thanks.

night video is going to be very, very costly for that situation. CMOS cameras are out (poor night vision), so you need at least a $150 ccd camera. (that is just the camera, not counting power system or transmitter)

GWS beaver, not very accrobatic, but it will shrug off the weight no problem. I have flown mine at night many times.

Taking the videos at night will be very hard. most of the camera's will be reasonably heavy without the equipment. I think that you should have someone else with you, with a tripod night lens camera to get any reasonable footage. It will looks great with LED's on your plane, giving you a different affect. Best of luck anyway.

Thanks for the thoughts on the camera system. I live in a very urban area where the city is highly illuminated at night. As a beta test, I can connect the intended camera to my laptop and make some night time video of the city from an overpass that has about 200' elevation. I'll try that and post the video here.

Any thoughts on the plane itself?

I've set up a Mountain Models Dandy Sport with Glowwire and it works quite well. I put it in the wing, running through the existing vent holes in the wings and along the leading edges of the tail group.

I'm not sure how well it would cope with the video equipment as well - it would depend on your choices of power system and also how tight that flying site really is (especially obstacles on the main landing approach direction).

With a light lithium-based power system in particular I suspect it could be done. Total weight in the 16 ounce range, maybe - much safer than a .25 to .40 sized glow conversion in the space of a soccer field.

Well, I did a little night time recon of the highway system with my mini-camera. Low level light sensitivty seems to be pretty good. Here is a small 2 minute 6mb clip of me driving around Sunday night around 11 pm. I tried to get just the part of me on the overpass, but my editing skills are not there yet. I drove with the camera on the dash and then stuck my hand out the moon roof when I got to the overpass. Kinda hard to drive and do this at the same time. (No flames please, I was cautious).
http://www.bijouxdesigns.com/video/Night%20Movie.wmv