Active control of landing light aim

Has anybody made a small circuit to control the aim of the landing light?


First step would be a servo with a manual dial adjustment.

Second step would be some brains to interact with a AOA sensor to keep the light aimed in the direction of flight.


Third and hardest step would be automatic light yaw control for crabbing and forward slips.

Makes my head hurt.

Will need a weight on wheels sensor as well, so it doesn't loose it's marbles once on the ground and slowing.

Why would you want this?

emsvitil said:

Has anybody made a small circuit to control the aim of the landing light?


First step would be a servo with a manual dial adjustment.

Second step would be some brains to interact with a AOA sensor to keep the light aimed in the direction of flight.


Third and hardest step would be automatic light yaw control for crabbing and forward slips.

Click to expand...

Why interact with the AOA? What you really want is to control the light to the aircraft’s pitch attitude, not necessarily angle of attack (the two are not the same). It would be relatively easy to adapt commercially available camera gimbal equipment to just single axis control, and they typically already contain their own solid state gyro sensors.

Whether or not this is something that’s necessary is another subject...

Skylor

Really simple

I think it would be really simple to make the lights point where the pilot is looking. That would be cool and I think very easy to do.



Says the guy spending 5+ years on a “simple” bone stock RV9A

What you want is head tracking control of the landing light. Something that tracks your eye movements and relays that to the landing light gimbal.

And just imagine all the new failure modes this will introduce. You've got to mitigate them or risk having it go dark just when you're about to flare or about to turn into the ramp to your hangar.

Dave

I’d be worried about Spacial D with moving lights at night or in clouds.

Complexity is the enemy of reliability.

The standard GE4509 incandescent landing light was a wonderfully reliable, simple product. It worked nearly 100% of the times you didn't need it, and nearly 0% of the times when you did need it!

Enter the LED landing light... The world of lighting has changed so very much as a result.

Rather than go with steerable lights, go with multiple lights. One in each wingtip in "landing light" configuration. If on tail dragger gear, aim one higher for better visibility on approach and aim one lower for better visibility in the flair. Then install another light in the engine cowl or similar location with a diffuser lens on it to act as your taxi light. The "spill" on modern LED wide-angle lenses is pretty fantastic.

I have wingtip LED landing lights (Baja Squadron Pro, 4700lumens per lamp). They are aimed as described above and I'm very pleased with the results. I'm not so happy with the relatively small amount of "spill" from these fairly concentrated spot beams. Given they are aimed to converge at a point some distance ahead of the aircraft, there tends to be an area directly in front of the aircraft where illumination could be better. That's where a FlyLEDS single lamp module with a "flood" diffuser on it comes in handy. Mounted in the cowl, it has the capacity to provide a wide, evenly lit area directly in front of the airplane, making taxi operations considerably easier on that proverbial dark and stormy night.

Any examples?

Canadian_JOY said:

That's where a FlyLEDS single lamp module with a "flood" diffuser on it comes in handy. Mounted in the cowl, it has the capacity to provide a wide, evenly lit area directly in front of the airplane, making taxi operations considerably easier on that proverbial dark and stormy night.

Click to expand...

I planned to do this, any examples out there?

Just get one or two of those FlyLEDs 7 stars nova-blasters and you can light up the whole county without having to steer at all

Plans for a Christavia MK4 said to use a simple bowden cable to raise lower a landing light.

Simple enough to mount the light on a pivot and then the cable to push /pull it up and down.

Mike

Enstrom F28F helicopters use a cable to change the angle of the light up and down. The 480 series use a servo with a switch on the collective. It's a nifty feature that I rarely use. Usually about the time during a landing that I decide I'd like a different angle I've got more important things to do and just live with it. Like another poster said the new LEDs throw out so much light it's usually not an issue.

A couple times we've installed a Nightscanner, which is basically a retractable, gimballed landing light controlled by a 4 way coolie hat switch. Again, pretty cool but last I checked I thought they cost around $13k!

In the helicopters we use multiple approach angles. In the airplane I really try to fly the VASI/PAPI, so once the correct light angle is set you really shouldn't need to change it. But if you want to see some examples of how it's done you can check out those helicopters. (Full disclosure, I work for Enstrom.)

Dennis Martin

Model servos

I intend to use small model servos, controlled by an Arduino. Plan is to have a toggle switch on the stick that changes the function of the hat switch between trim and light control. (May change my mind and instead of using a toggle switch, make it so when the hat switch is held down the hat switch directly points the light, when released the light remains where pointed and hat switch again controls trim servos.)

Only requires two additional thin wires (24ga or thinner) -- one wire for each model servo. Servos to be powered by same wire as light.

I'm already using an Arduino and a 4x20 character LCD display for trim indication.

Will probably be a while. My priority is to get the RV-4 ready for inspection (which doesn't require lights) and then, while waiting, work on lights, gear leg fairings and pants and maybe even paint prep.

Finn