landing light experience - single or dual?

[RFSchaller]

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!😜

[Tony_T]

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.

[rongawer]

Originally Posted by tg2@baymoon.com

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 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.