Over the past couple years as LED NAV and Strobe packages became more popular, I've heard one thing about some of the systems. People complain about having noise generated by the LED's or Drivers, and it affects their avionics or audio. I've always done what I can to eliminate noise possibilities.
In both of my planes I have a single-point ground, and run nearly everything that requires a ground, to it. I do sometimes utilize airframe grounding but more often than not, I run a ground wire. Considering the rumblings I've heard about LED kits, I ran a ground for my NAV and Strobe wires.
One of the other things I did was to go with one of the lights that I have NOT heard complaints about, regarding noise. Many users will use other brands such as AeroLED's, but considering that there is virtually no cost savings by going with them, I went looking to Whelen at OSH last year.
I picked out my tail strobe as the Orion 500 series, which I liked the looks of also. In the end, I did not use their LED Wingtip Nav/Strobes, because I had a friend who did a DIY system that had no noise, and I copied it. But for ease of installation the Orion 650E system looks really nice as well. I spent a couple of nights building my own. For the tail position light and strobe combo though, you're going to have to look for a commercial product.
The Orion 500 has a great heat sink and looks to be very well made, so then the only question left was where to purchase it. I buy a lot of stuff from Spruce, but in this case I found that one of our own, Mike Stewart from Team AeroDynamix, is a dealer for Whelen, and preferring to support an RV guy, I went there. Same fast shipping, real good price, and good service as well. Here's their store link: https://www.teamaerodynamix.com/shop/
When it came time to install the strobe, I ran into one small complication... our RV-14 I believe uses the same rudder fairing as the RV-9, and when I inserted the strobe into the hole, the width of the fairing was just slightly too narrow, and I hate fiberglass. But, I wouldn't have sacrificed and gone another route anyway, so I had to set out and tweak it.
I'll write more inline with the pics. Here's a photo of the strobe: (See the big heat sink)
I started by looking at where exactly the strobe hit. Then marked it and cut out a notch in the fairing with a grinder. If I'd have been more careful I may have been able to make it smaller.
One other thing I carefully did was to grind the back corners of the strobe where it was hitting, on the deburring wheel. I found that you can actually round and remove quite a bit of the aluminum, so in the end my notches may have been able to be a lot smaller. I'm not sure.
One other difference is, due to the way the doubler is made, and the size of the hole in the doubler, you are not able to rivet in the aluminum doubler to the end of the fairing. I didn't know why the doubler was necessary really anyway other that for threading in the screws, because my RV-10 doesn't have one. So I just tossed the doubler and got the tail fairing hole sized properly for the strobe.
Once the strobe fit in, I put some tape over the strobe to protect it, and laid a couple of thin layers of glass over the notches, and after that dried, I used fairing filler to re-shape the fairing slightly. I did a slop job, knowing that I'd be doing some sanding on the fairing filler anyway. It sands pretty easily.
Since I wasn't using the doubler, my plan was to do like I did on the RV-10 and embed the nuts directly into the tail and epoxy them in place. I did find that the tail fairing aft seam was kind of flimsy and wanted to crack easily, so it was good to reinforce that with some colloidal silica and epoxy as well. I stuck some 4-40 nuts on a couple longer 4/40 screws, and put some oil on the threads. I used 2 nuts per screw, just to give more thickess, and when I embedded them into the aft side of the tail, I made sure they were inside at least 1/8" to allow epoxy to get between them and the aft end of the fairing. This would make sure they couldn't pull out.
These 2 pics show the filler and the holes:
Wiring the strobe is simple and only requires 1 power wire for the Position light, 1 power wire for the strobe function, and 1 ground wire. There is a 4th wire you can also use if you want, to sync it to other strobes. I didn't do that.
Once installed, it ended up looking pretty nice. The removal of the doubler brings the strobe in about .063", and gives it one less aluminum flange section, so it mates up nicely with the fiberglass.
Here are some pics of the installed strobe:
I did test it out now that I've been flying and there is no noise at all. I used the existing Van's wiring to connect it...at least from the baggage wall back.
(I did not use the black airframe ground wire either, but a ground wire all the way to my central ground tabs) In my plane, there isn't really too much of Van's wiring left, as the only wires I used were the ones for the landing lights, and the Nav/Strobe lights. Everything else I ripped out and re-did with my own wires, removing all of the molex connectors in the process.
I just thought I'd post this because when you read on strobes if you come to the conclusion like I did that you want the whelen, you will know what you are in for. It does require a little epoxy and glass work...maybe 3 hours worth is what I spent, but in the end it makes for a noise free strobe system that works and looks nice.
In both of my planes I have a single-point ground, and run nearly everything that requires a ground, to it. I do sometimes utilize airframe grounding but more often than not, I run a ground wire. Considering the rumblings I've heard about LED kits, I ran a ground for my NAV and Strobe wires.
One of the other things I did was to go with one of the lights that I have NOT heard complaints about, regarding noise. Many users will use other brands such as AeroLED's, but considering that there is virtually no cost savings by going with them, I went looking to Whelen at OSH last year.
I picked out my tail strobe as the Orion 500 series, which I liked the looks of also. In the end, I did not use their LED Wingtip Nav/Strobes, because I had a friend who did a DIY system that had no noise, and I copied it. But for ease of installation the Orion 650E system looks really nice as well. I spent a couple of nights building my own. For the tail position light and strobe combo though, you're going to have to look for a commercial product.
The Orion 500 has a great heat sink and looks to be very well made, so then the only question left was where to purchase it. I buy a lot of stuff from Spruce, but in this case I found that one of our own, Mike Stewart from Team AeroDynamix, is a dealer for Whelen, and preferring to support an RV guy, I went there. Same fast shipping, real good price, and good service as well. Here's their store link: https://www.teamaerodynamix.com/shop/
When it came time to install the strobe, I ran into one small complication... our RV-14 I believe uses the same rudder fairing as the RV-9, and when I inserted the strobe into the hole, the width of the fairing was just slightly too narrow, and I hate fiberglass. But, I wouldn't have sacrificed and gone another route anyway, so I had to set out and tweak it.
I'll write more inline with the pics. Here's a photo of the strobe: (See the big heat sink)
I started by looking at where exactly the strobe hit. Then marked it and cut out a notch in the fairing with a grinder. If I'd have been more careful I may have been able to make it smaller.
One other thing I carefully did was to grind the back corners of the strobe where it was hitting, on the deburring wheel. I found that you can actually round and remove quite a bit of the aluminum, so in the end my notches may have been able to be a lot smaller. I'm not sure.
One other difference is, due to the way the doubler is made, and the size of the hole in the doubler, you are not able to rivet in the aluminum doubler to the end of the fairing. I didn't know why the doubler was necessary really anyway other that for threading in the screws, because my RV-10 doesn't have one. So I just tossed the doubler and got the tail fairing hole sized properly for the strobe.
Once the strobe fit in, I put some tape over the strobe to protect it, and laid a couple of thin layers of glass over the notches, and after that dried, I used fairing filler to re-shape the fairing slightly. I did a slop job, knowing that I'd be doing some sanding on the fairing filler anyway. It sands pretty easily.
Since I wasn't using the doubler, my plan was to do like I did on the RV-10 and embed the nuts directly into the tail and epoxy them in place. I did find that the tail fairing aft seam was kind of flimsy and wanted to crack easily, so it was good to reinforce that with some colloidal silica and epoxy as well. I stuck some 4-40 nuts on a couple longer 4/40 screws, and put some oil on the threads. I used 2 nuts per screw, just to give more thickess, and when I embedded them into the aft side of the tail, I made sure they were inside at least 1/8" to allow epoxy to get between them and the aft end of the fairing. This would make sure they couldn't pull out.
These 2 pics show the filler and the holes:
Wiring the strobe is simple and only requires 1 power wire for the Position light, 1 power wire for the strobe function, and 1 ground wire. There is a 4th wire you can also use if you want, to sync it to other strobes. I didn't do that.
Once installed, it ended up looking pretty nice. The removal of the doubler brings the strobe in about .063", and gives it one less aluminum flange section, so it mates up nicely with the fiberglass.
Here are some pics of the installed strobe:
I did test it out now that I've been flying and there is no noise at all. I used the existing Van's wiring to connect it...at least from the baggage wall back.
(I did not use the black airframe ground wire either, but a ground wire all the way to my central ground tabs) In my plane, there isn't really too much of Van's wiring left, as the only wires I used were the ones for the landing lights, and the Nav/Strobe lights. Everything else I ripped out and re-did with my own wires, removing all of the molex connectors in the process.
I just thought I'd post this because when you read on strobes if you come to the conclusion like I did that you want the whelen, you will know what you are in for. It does require a little epoxy and glass work...maybe 3 hours worth is what I spent, but in the end it makes for a noise free strobe system that works and looks nice.