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Ztron LED landing lights, anyone tried them?

petersb

Well Known Member
Looking at using Ztron Nav and possibly landing light.

The landing lights are only 2 LED's and 1350 lumens.

I believe 100 Watt auto halogen lights, the other option, are 2000 lumens .

Anyone have experience with them for night landings ?
 
yes

I have installed two landing lights, the nav lights and the tail light with strobe. Not flying yet but tested them and they work great. I worked with Warren at Ztron to build some heat sinks for the landing lights so they could be installed in the wingtip instead of the normal ductworks wing installation. Mine is the prototype. They work great and Warren was very good to work with. I recommend them.

bird
 
New model Ztron landing lights

I see that Z-tron has come out with a new configuration for their landing lights which appears to be suitable for wingtip mounting.

Anyone have any experience with them yet?
 
yes

I have the prototype that Warren and I worked up a few months ago.Great guy to work with. They are installed and have been tested, however not flying yet. They do have a heat sink on them, that must be there. Mine is a -8 so I pointed one down a bit and the other straight fwd. They work fine for me. Pics on my kitlog site.

bird
 
Interference?

For those flying with Ztron Nav/Strobe lights, are you experiencing any radio interference problems? There is a post on their own forum that lists this as a problem. Any experience worth sharing about these lights would be appreciated. I am looking at replacing my Whelen HDACF system using the same wiring which is not shielded.

Thanks,
Tom RV-7A Flying
 
For those flying with Ztron Nav/Strobe lights, are you experiencing any radio interference problems? There is a post on their own forum that lists this as a problem. Any experience worth sharing about these lights would be appreciated. I am looking at replacing my Whelen HDACF system using the same wiring which is not shielded.

Thanks,
Tom RV-7A Flying

That was probably me that posted on there forum.

I had the 24V early version units and had problems with RFI in the Com and Nav radios to the point of making both not usable. (RFI was greater than communications radio level)

I returned them and they replaced them with the 12V "New" version that has no switching power supplies in them.

Now they are quiet as a mouse. (no interferance) in fact the right wing has a wingtip nav antenna in it within 6in. of the nav/strobe light and I cannot detect any noise level change at all in the nav (or com for that matter) when switching them on to off and back on.

Also to note: I did NOT install sheilded wire for the power wire to them. Probably would do it if I were building again but never the less it is not a problem.

I would guess with the "older" version the RFI could be filtered out and that would be better (less current drain with the switching power supply) but I did not want/feel like expermenting at the time.
 
Cable source?

The nav/strobe lights call for 18 or 20 ga, 4 wire shielded tefzel wire. I am having trouble finding a supplier for this cable. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
 
The nav/strobe lights call for 18 or 20 ga, 4 wire shielded tefzel wire. I am having trouble finding a supplier for this cable. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Check with Steinair? They have a lot of stuff not listed on their website.

Other option strange enough is AeroLED.
 
The nav/strobe lights call for 18 or 20 ga, 4 wire shielded tefzel wire. I am having trouble finding a supplier for this cable. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Check at TerminalTown.com
They have some 18 and 20 gauge 3 conductor wire. You don't need a shield for the synch wire.
 
Bruce is right the synch wire does not need to be in the shield. I used 3/c shielded and then a separate wire for the synch.

bird
 
Warren at ZTron just responded as follows, would be nice if the online wiring diagram for the landing lights reflected this:

"The Nav/Strobes use 3 conductor cable, and Aircraft Spruce has it.

The ZL-LL15 only need two wires at a minimum.
If you use only one then you only need three wires (sync is not connected).
If you additionally want to invoke recognition mode then a total of four wires are needed.
The Recognition mode and Sync can be run using a separate two + shield cable of (28 up to 22 AWG),
as they consume no current.

Hope that helps,
Warren"


Thanks for the input guys...
 
Buyers Beware!

Just a warning here about the Ztron Landing Lights. They recently changed the design. You now have to wire these pair of lights in series. The output of one side feeds the input of the other side. Unfortunately, I have already wired up my plane to have the landing lights in each wing done in parallel (like they previously showed on their wiring diagram). I have the Vertical Power VP-X unit handling the wig-wag automatically, so each light unit needs a separate circuit. Email back and forth to Ztron over one of the light units burning out uncovered these facts. Seems that the new design (wiring the pairs in series) will fry the units if you don't have them fully hooked up together before you apply any power. Not the best design, in my opinion. Now I have a pair of lights that won't work for my needs, they won't take them back for a refund, and they want $50 to fix them. :mad:
 
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