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2 Landing Lights in Each Wing - How to wire it?

dustin_96

Member
I will be having 2 landing lights in each wing. How should this be wired? Should each light be on its own circuit back to the switch or can one circuit be used for each wing? Is the wire provided in the harness (I believe it is 16 ga.) sufficient to carry both loads? It looks like the current draw for the lights I'm using is 3.2a+4.0a=7.2a in each wing.

Thanks!
 
It´s night and it´s raining. You turn on the ONE landing landing light switch
and the circuit breaker pops. Then you have no landing light.
I would go for TWO separate switches and TWO separate circuit breakers.
Then you have at least one working landing light.

Good luck
 
The answer is, …. It depends.
If you have a tailwheel, you will want one or two of the lights aimed down, so they are useful for taxiing (IMHO taxi lights are much more important than landing lights, for typical GA night use). You may want to have taxi lights on a different circuit from landing lights, so you can turn off the landing lights on the ground, where they’ll be useless. You may want to install a wig-wag on some or all of your lights. Again, this choice will affect your wiring. Think first about what functions, if any, beyond on/off you want, and go from there.
 
WH-00125

I will be having 2 landing lights in each wing. How should this be wired? Should each light be on its own circuit back to the switch or can one circuit be used for each wing? Is the wire provided in the harness (I believe it is 16 ga.) sufficient to carry both loads? It looks like the current draw for the lights I'm using is 3.2a+4.0a=7.2a in each wing.

Thanks!

Are you using WH-00125 fuselage wiring bundle and associated wing bundles ?
 
I am attempting to use the factory wiring harnesses. It is for 2 landing lights in each wing. The more I look into it, the more I am convinced to just build my own harnesses.
 
I've seen an RV7 that has a separate circuit breaker for every light, every switch and every device. The panel looks like a business jet with a wall size breaker panel

I also see a plane with a handful of circuit breakers on the opposite spectrum of simplicity

With the modern LED lights, you may want to measure the current draw before choosing the wiring gauge. I am surprise how little current it takes to light up these new LED light. Smaller gauge size makes for a lighter wiring loom
 
On my 7 I have the FLY LED setup with landing and taxi on both wings. I wired them so that all the landing lights are on one switch & fuse and all the taxi are on a separate switch & fuse.

Note that I put landing lights in the "nice to have but not essential" category. My wire scheme just ended up that way because it's convenient. It's not the end of the world if you have to land without Landing lights. They aren't even required equipment until you get to commercial operations
 
Plans wiring harnesses

I am attempting to use the factory wiring harnesses. It is for 2 landing lights in each wing. The more I look into it, the more I am convinced to just build my own harnesses.

The Vans harnesses are 95% ok. If you cost them out adding your labor at even $20 an hour break-even. They are easy to make modifications. Add wires as needed. WH-00125 comes with 14 awg. for landing lights, I believe so use these as your higher amp landing lights most likely. Add 18 or 20 awg. for taxi lights. Use a switch for each, not rocket science. For pitot heat recommend twisted pair shielded all the way from instrument to firewall, 14 awg. Use the supplied pitot heat wire as a future wiring need.

It's easy to knock Van's harnesses but they are very close and adding wire is not difficult. Wiring harnesses require a lot of work and it's one less thing to do if you can use it.
 
The Vans harnesses are 95% ok. If you cost them out adding your labor at even $20 an hour break-even. They are easy to make modifications. Add wires as needed. WH-00125 comes with 14 awg. for landing lights, I believe so use these as your higher amp landing lights most likely. Add 18 or 20 awg. for taxi lights. Use a switch for each, not rocket science. For pitot heat recommend twisted pair shielded all the way from instrument to firewall, 14 awg. Use the supplied pitot heat wire as a future wiring need.

It's easy to knock Van's harnesses but they are very close and adding wire is not difficult. Wiring harnesses require a lot of work and it's one less thing to do if you can use it.

Thanks for this info! This really helps me.
 
FlyLED's sight has instructions for using the RV-14 wiring harness to hook up the lights.

https://flyleds.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/RV-14-wiring-harness-integration-Oct21.pdf

What I am doing is I have The-Works in the Wing Tips and 7-Stars in the leading edge. Taxi, right now (more on this) is only in the Wing Tips. Then I have a board I designed (I have spares I'm an Electrical Engineer) that will sense when the lights are turned on and then sends signals to GAD 27 to turn on 7-Stars. I have another switch to control wig-wag (didn't want speed control) so when Fly-LED's wig wags via The Works the controller board my PCB wig-wags the 7-Stars via the GAD-27.

I might make a modification to the board to allow me to use taxi in 7-Stars too, or I might use Taxi in 7-Stars and not in The Works (just a change to where taxi wire goes). If I use the taxi in the 7-Stars during wig-wag the 7-Star taxi would stay on, currently. Still pondering the modification.

In short I have three circuits for lights: The Works Landing, The Works Taxi and 7-Stars Landing.

Wig-Wag Control to GAD-27
IMG_5390.jpg

Landing Light wiring:
wiring.jpg
 
I’m installing Aveo Zip tips and keeping the factory leading edge landing light location. The power will come from a VPX Pro. The OP’s question has kept me up at night and I still don’t have a solution.

I know I’m building my own wiring harness.

I’ll have a dedicated taxi light on each wingtip and two “landing” lights on each wing. One pair of the “landing” lights will be aimed down as I’m building a taildragger.

I plan to use the VPX for wig wag functionality. My un-answers question is, do I wig wag left and right or inboard/outboard?
 
...My un-answers question is, do I wig wag left and right or inboard/outboard?

The purpose of wig-wag is conspicuity. The further apart the flashing/alternating lights are positioned from one another, the more noticeable they will be when viewed from a distance
 
Check with Aveo

I’m installing Aveo Zip tips and keeping the factory leading edge landing light location. The power will come from a VPX Pro. The OP’s question has kept me up at night and I still don’t have a solution.

I know I’m building my own wiring harness.

I’ll have a dedicated taxi light on each wingtip and two “landing” lights on each wing. One pair of the “landing” lights will be aimed down as I’m building a taildragger.

I plan to use the VPX for wig wag functionality. My un-answers question is, do I wig wag left and right or inboard/outboard?

I have early Aveo zip tip lights but at that time I was advised by Aveo not to use the VPX Wig-wag feature with my VPX but use Aveo's built in system. Stein Air concurred. The issue is it takes 1/4 second to fire the Aveo LED's and they would quickly get out of synch. The Aveo built in Wig-Wag works fine. I ended up filling the empty leading-edge light position with Rigid lights meant for off-road vehicles. I don't need runway lights to land but helpful. :)
 
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My plane had both landing lights on one switch. I did a landing at night and taxied back to take-off. As I was powering up they both went out (breaker tripped). The breaker would not re-set for quite some time because it had tripped on thermal, not load. I got the message, and very quickly re-wired them to be on separate switches. That is not a situation you want to be in on short final. Separating them gives me redundancy, and reduced the load on the circuit. This was before LED’s, but I would still never put them both on one system.
 
I'm genuinely curious about the concern with landing light redundancy? Seems like of all the things to have redundancy for, this is pretty low down on the list.

Did you guys not have to land without landing lights during your night flight requirements for PPL? It's been a line item in the night flight lessons at everyplace I've ever instructed.

Sure, I like redundancy as much as the next guy. However, landing lights aren't even required for night VFR until you get to commercial operations.

I land without landing lights frequently- every time I have a private student. It's part of the 141 syllabus at the Brand B and C employee flying club where I instruct here in Wichita.

Brand B and C also typically have their landing lights on just one switch, then taxi lights on another, which is how I'm wiring my RV.
 
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