Duckworks HID MR16 replacement bulbs

Hi all,

I have the older style HID 50w wingtip landing lights in my plane, and wondered if anyone knows where you can buy a replacement bulb? Duckworks no longer has them. I've searched around and can't seem to come up with one. Anyone else out there run into this?

Thanks in advance for any help!!

cj

CJ,
While my HIDs are Rigid Industries, the pictures I saw of Duckworks looked the same.

One of my bulbs went off last year and extensive searching has revealed nada for a drop in replacement.

The only thing I have not done yet is beg for used parts on VAF........hint hint. Really yes. PM me y'all.

I wound up putting in a halogen and thanking myself for building with large harness wire for just this possible outcome. In comparison to the HID illumination, it ****s. And I'm not doing LEDs. Nothing in MR16 is good enough yet.

I have been looking recently at a GE HID CMH39MR spot bulb that might work with some harness modification. I may buy one just to see if the ballast will start and drive it. No idea if it will or not.

conlimon said:

Hi all,

I have the older style HID 50w wingtip landing lights in my plane, and wondered if anyone knows where you can buy a replacement bulb? Duckworks no longer has them. I've searched around and can't seem to come up with one. Anyone else out there run into this?

Thanks in advance for any help!!

cj

Click to expand...

I have some 35w duckworks lights. I bought the 50ws and 35ws back in the day, never used them (went led instead) and had them sitting around (along with the ballasts). I sold the 50w set previously. Let me know if you want the 35w ones. I'll sell them for $25 including shipping for both.

since cj started this thread, i think he should have first dibs on your bulbs. i'll take what is left over.

PM sent! Also, Bill, that's very generous of you!

cj

I too have DW 50w HIDs sitting in my uninstalled wings but plan on going LED with these, if they'll fit. Can't beat the price at <$30 a pair but a bit on the heavy side, relatively speaking. They are very, very bright. I just could not see paying so much for AeroLEDs (though I did for nav/strobe).

Ray - I've been tinkering quite a bit with LEDs for our airplane. In fact last night I just completed a side-by-side test of two different compact LED units to be mounted in our engine cowling. And this is where things get interesting...

All LED lights are not created equal!

The $100 light, rated at 1000lm has a diffuser so it produces a broad beam of light. The $33 unit, rated at 750lm, is very clearly a spot beam. As expected, in testing the diffused light produced a very even distribution of light over a wide area, and had very little "throw". The spot beam light produced quite amazing throw for what is claimed as a 750lm output. I have subsequently chosen to go with the spot beam light as a pair of them in the cowl will provide what appears to be an illumination pattern at least equal to a GE4509 incandescent bulb.

Now for the kicker. The $100 light will break squelch on my Icom IC-A24 radio, when squelch is set to 10, at a distance of 4-6 feet. Under the same conditions the $33 light breaks squelch at 20 feet. Clearly I will have to install some external filtering if I want to use the cheaper lights which produce a more intense beam.

Oh, the cheaper light also weighs 20% more than the expensive light.

All of this to say that you should buy the lights you want, then take the time to characterize them before committing to an installation. The ones you have selected may be good, bad, ugly, or somewhere in between. With LED's it seems one often gets what one pays for.

As an aside, if you want LED landing lights that REALLY work, do a search here on Baja Squadron lights. Not cheap. They are electrically quiet, breaking squelch at 3 feet or less. I have a pair of them in the wingtips and they are extremely bright - each one of them producing more than twice the light of a GE 4509 bulb. If you're like me and are concerned about running into critters on the runway at night, these babies are definitely capable of providing an enhanced margin of safety.

Mark,

Thanks for the info. I do plan on testing and figured, at the price point, I could toss these lights (or install them on my tractor) without hesitation - should they not meet my needs.

I will be running shielded wire from the fuse to the switch and out to the wings to help with noise but that only controls so much. The LEDs themselves can emit EMI too.

I do not yet know how much I will fly at night but hope to do plenty, as I did in the Army while wearing NVGs.

Like you, Ray, my 'not so good' LEDs end up on tractors. These little wide-beam fellas are going to be tucked up into the top corners of the cab on my Kubota as the hood-mounted lights are, well, just not very good.

Shielded wire will definitely help. If I may suggest it, use a Raychem or similar solder sleeve termination at each end, wing and cockpit, and install a good grounding wire (20ga works well) in the solder sleeves. This will give you the ability to experiment with terminating the shield at one end or the other, or both in order to achieve better results.

Raymo said:

I too have DW 50w HIDs sitting in my uninstalled wings

Click to expand...

I sent you a PM Ray.

Darn! I installed the wingtip H.I.D. kit a while ago, very happy with it. I am bummed to learn that apparently bulbs are no longer available?