LED landing lights - too bright for taxi?
 

A question for those of you who have installed the much brighter LED landing lights like Baja Squadron Pro, the Fly LED combo landing lights and others. I am salivating over the options available to replace the PAR 36 LED landscape bulbs from Amazon on my 6-A. Have you found your new landing lights to be too bright for others on the ground during ground ops? If so how have you worked around that? One advantage I see to Paul's FlyLED combo landing/taxi lights is the ability to wire the fourth aim-able LED separately as a taxi light. Currently I have only one landing light switch and I assume I would have to run a new taxi light circuit through my VPX Pro to do that. (Note I am not a builder). I would appreciate insights and suggestions.

I used AeroLED's Sunspot 36 series landing (left wing) and taxi (right wing) lights. The taxi light lens fans the lighting laterally to light the area in a much more useful manner than the landing light's spotlight effect pointed straight ahead. Plenty of illumination, and I haven't heard any complaints from other pilots.

https://aeroleds.com/sunspot-36-products/

Knowing my Baja Squadron Pro lights might offend others, I've put most of the hardware in place to fit two small LED flood lights in the engine cowl. They'll fill in the area of lower light intensity immediately in front of the aircraft that results from having the Squadron Pro's mounted out in the wingtips. Plus I figure if I'm around other aircraft I can just use the small flood lights so as to avoid burning out the retinas of other pilots. I strongly suspect folks will not like the brightness of the big LED's, particularly if the taxiway or ramp is wet and that light reflects upwards into their eyes.

Would you please post some pix showing how you did this once you are finished? It sounds easier than running a new circuit to the wingtips.

I would be happy to share whatever info I glean. Unfortunately we're now in the depths of winter so I'm unlikely to complete the rest of this modification until spring weather arrives. I'm in the middle of doing the annual inspection right now and progress is very slow, thanks to the temperature inside the hangar hovering around -10C. Needless to say, I anxiously await warmer weather!

Perhaps there's such a thing as too bright.

Are we sure PAR 36 bulbs aren't good enough for this application?

I don’t think there’s any such thing as too bright! :-) Kinda like too much horsepower or too much money.

I’m planning to install wing mounted FlyLEDs in each wing. I’ve already decided that I’ll have to be careful about blinding others during taxi operations. Most airline types take some care to extinguish blinding lights when approaching oncoming traffic. I’m used to doing this at work... I’ll just have to adopt the technique for “little airplane” ops.

On a related note, extinguishing taxi lights is one way some pilots indicate they’re giving way to conflicting taxi traffic. Two planes approaching an intersection? Ground control says XYZ Airline, give way to Southwest. XYZ airline extinguishes taxi lights indicating to the Southwest crew that they may proceed to the runway at their standard 43 knot taxi speed unimpeded. :-)

Actually we have a speed limit at SWA. 30 knots groundspeed...🤣

Dave - I can think of only a very few instances where the standard PAR36 landing light is even close to good enough. Likewise for the PAR36 in taxi light configuration.

For taxi lights, some LED lights can be configured to provide far broader "spread" than a PAR36. Most importantly, the LEDs can do it without hot spots and shadows inherent in typical PAR36 lamps. The LED lamps can also be configured to produce whiter light, producing better contrast - our eyeballs love contrast.

When looking at landing lights there is no PAR36 that has ever made me feel comfortable touching down at our wildlife-infested airport. With the pair of Baja Squadron Pro LED lamps out on the wingtips I feel much more confident that I will be able to transition from landing speed to taxi speed while having a clear view ahead.

If you haven't tried a good LED landing light, and if you actually operate at night, you owe it to yourself to try out this modern lighting technology. It truly is a huge step up from traditional PAR36 lamps.

My sympathies for the winter weather extremis. If you were in Birmingham today you would be inspecting in your favorite t-shirt. A weird New Year's Day down here.