Any Aerosun VX reviews?
 

I believe Akarmy to be one of the few to have installed the Aerosun Vx. Looking for any experience with performance of these units. Have these improved the dead-zone in front of the aircraft? I have the older Aerosuns (8 vs 12 LEDs) in the LE of my 7A and love them. I'm at the point with my -10 where I would like to install the Duckworks kit if going with LE lights, but the new Aerosun tip lights caught my attention. Ideally I would like to keep the LEs in tact if I could gain acceptable performance from tip lights.

I'm at a similar point, about to close up my tanks and move to the leading edges. I was really interested in the Aveo ziptip concept, but they don't seem to be getting any closer to an actual product, so I gave up on them and ordered Duckworks kits.

I would like to hear some performance reviews of the Vx as well. I haven't cut my LE holes yet, so there's still time to change. Personally, though, it doesn't seem like the Vx would necessarily address the dead zone issue. But that is of course 100% conjecture on my part.

So what type of "performance" review data do you want?

Since I'm in phase 1 I can't fly at night yet, so I've done some aiming against the hangar wall and use them in wig wag mode during the day.

Everyone comments how bright and visible they are when I'm in the air...

Assumed you were still in phase 1. The wig wag during the day is definitely an attention getter, which was my primary motivation for my Aerosuns in the LEs of my 7A. Just wondering how the dispersion off the front is - for taxiing/landing. Looking forward to your thoughts on the lights once you get a few night landings in. Thanks.

Agreed. I'm not so much concerned about general brightness - it seems you can get ridiculously bright lights to put anywhere you want, so recognition isn't a concern of mine. The built-in wig-wag isn't really a selling point for me either, since I intend to use a VP-X and its automatic wig-wag feature.

But the consensus I get from reading about people with wingtip landing lights is that the area directly in front of the nose is not well illuminated due to shadowing from the fore-aft portion of the light recess. The design of the Aveo Ziptips looked like it would mitigate this issue by essentially doing away with the cutout entirely; meanwhile, the Vx units look like they project forward a bit, which might cut down on the shadowing, but I'm curious how much.

So I've done some "dusk" landings now. First off the lights are directed fairly straight forward due to the tip location. There is some scatter towards the middle, but not much. This seemed fine with a taildragger as it lights up the sides where you are looking over the nose anyways and gives you light where you need it to keep things going straight.

The challenge is getting them aimed down the right amount to light up while taxiing with a taildragger. Right now I have them mostly level which worked out ok on landing as the down angle of approach had them hit the runway in front of me as I was landing. But taxiing they were up in the air. I'm going to work on sanding the cutout a bit more to allow them to angle down a bit and see if that helps. Here's a picture lighting up the hangar wall.

Untitled by akarmy, on Flickr

Thanks for the pic, Andy. Those look pretty darn nice! The location of the beam does't look much different than mine in the LE.

I had installed the Duckworks leading edge 4-1/4", intending to get the brightest bulb (at the time I thought it was the Aero Engineering with the $950 price). Not totally happy with the price, I then bought the Aerosun Vx (for my RV-10). The install was very difficult with my Safeair LR tanks. On the hangar wall they are much brighter than an MR16. In the leading edge I bought the new Whelen Parmetheus Plus (great price point) I saw at Airventure. I now feel confident there will be sufficient light with a decent price.

Evolution,

Was the install difficult because you already had the Safeair tanks in? I'm debating on the ER tanks and too holding out for ZipTips but not counting out a LE kit.

Yes, the Safeair tanks made it very difficult with the spacing/tolerances of the lights.

Hi Andy, any luck with the vertical adjustments?

dave

Good reminder that I've not done anything about it yet. It's on my list, but so is flying every time is sunny out! :)