landing light experience - single or dual?

Does anyone have in-flight experience with a single landing light? Does it give enough light?

Go duel if you can!!

Having flown in a chase plane yesterday while I watched my aircraft do its first flight, I can say without a doubt that the wig wag function on my RV-12iS is out standing, so bright and easy to see.

Definitely go with two. The wig wag is your best anti-collision device.

Always good responses from ATC over our dual lights, especially if we flip on the wig wags.
Where dual lights really stand out (if they are used in real night conditions) is in taxiing back to the hangar.
With only one light in the left wing for example, & it's really dark, the left side of the taxi way is really lit up. But if you have a right turn, it's like guessing where to fall off into a black hole.

more light is good

Thanks everybody for your replies.

The man at Vans said he flew the single-light version, and thought it would have been good to have more light.

I had a one landing light RV4, and it was ?adequate? to make a night landing, but just barely. From a collision avoidance perspective, it was inadequate. Now in my new RV4, I have two bright wing leading edge landing lights and from a ?be seen? point of view it is very good. My RV4 is green - like primer green (I didn?t build/paint it).... - and from above, I look like a wheat field in June. If it wasn?t for my wig-wag, very bright, landing lights, I?m stealth visually. When I?m in the traffic pattern, everyone can see me. That?s what I want.

The single landing light in my RV-12 is barely adequate for night landings, actually barely adequate for taxiing. No doubt, I'd opt for two ...

I?m doing a single landing light for my Rv6a, I am documenting
The process here.

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=180457

Highly recommend dual

Aside from the excellent wig-wagging, the extra light is great for night landing and navigating around a dimly lit airport.

Incidentally, here's those two lights in action during the morning commute.
Morning flight in the rain IFR in an RV-12

night flight video

Thanks for the great video!

- What display is that? (Looks great!)

- The landing lights seem bright from in the cockpit. Do they bother you? Have you thought about doing something so they wouldn't shine toward the pilot so much?

I am reminded of the aviation gallows humor:

If you have to make an emergency landing at night always turn on your landing light. If you don?t like what you see.....Turn it off!

I asked the tower yesterday to report me in-sight from 10 miles out and my single landing light on pulse. It was a high overcast day. They reported me in sight with binoculars at about 5 miles and with the naked eye about 3 miles. I thought it would be better than that; the led light is very bright even in daylight.

The distance would be much better at night but I am flying sport pilot rules and doing no night flying.

[email protected] said:

Thanks for the great video!

- What display is that? (Looks great!)

- The landing lights seem bright from in the cockpit. Do they bother you? Have you thought about doing something so they wouldn't shine toward the pilot so much?

Click to expand...

I have dual Garmin G3X Touch displays, which I am quite fond of.

My wig-wag is automated by my Vertical Power unit and go solid at 70KIAS, which is a great feature.

The lights are bright, but don't reflect into the cockpit, except in clouds or heavy rain, which I filmed in the video; it's very reflective in the video, mostly because I'm aiming the camera at them and it's raining hard, otherwise it's ok. I normally just turn them off in those conditions, but I was on approach to land at Palo Alto, so that's why I had them on.

During normal night flight without heavy weather, I leave them on for wig-wag recognition. You don't really see the lights in normal flight unless you're looking at them, but I get comments all the time from tower controllers and other pilots along the line of we're "lit up like a Christmas tree" and can easily be seen 10 miles out. Worth it.