Panel Lights Switch?

[rapid_ascent]

I'm curious what is typically done for switching the power to any panel lighting. I'll have a dimmer setup too, but I've looked as a lot of panel pics and I don't see a separate switch for the panel light power. Are the panel lights typically turned on when you turn on your nav lights or some other indirect way? How is this typically done my most people?

[fl-mike]

I just use the dimmer to turn them all the way down. No separate switch.

[crabandy]

My panel light is just a Led strip glued underneath the glare shield and turned On With a Kick PWM dimmer switch. They were about $15 each. Still haven't flown at night but it seems to work well. I can manually dim the EFIS if need be.
It would've been cool to have 1 dimmer for everything, but my incomplete panel and $$ made this my best option.
Light strip at full intensity.

[Canadian_JOY]

I have a switch operating as a "master" switch for panel lighting. It virtually never gets used but rather is left on with the panel lights (all LEDs) left on at max brightness (about 3W total power consumption, so heat and power drain are not a concern). This comes in response to frequently flying in the fading light of late evening.

[humptybump]

I used OFF_ON-ON switches for a few different lights

PHP Code:


OFF ON ON switch to get "OFF LOW  HIGH"         for panel
OFF ON ON switch to get "OFF NAV  NAV+STROBE"   for position
OFF ON ON switch to get "OFF TAXI TAXI+LANDING" for lights 


[rzbill]

My panel lights are controlled by the Nav light switch.
It is a double pole, with one pole fused and wire sized for the nav lights and the other pole fused and wire sized for the panel and flood lights. That panel light wire goes to the dimmer controls and on to the bulbs.

My warning annunciators are automatically switched from bus voltage when nav lights are off to dimmer voltage when nav lights are on. Proper wiring and one diode takes care of that.

[rapid_ascent]

Bill that is the arrangement I was thinking about. Right now in my layout I have a separate switch but I'm thinking that I could get rid of it and just use a double pole switch for the nav light switch.

[rbibb]

Mine uses a pot with a switch as part of it. Turn past first click and it is on. Then rotate further to bring the lights up. Having said that I never turn them off, just down. Keeping the filament warm promotes longer life me thinks.

So if I was to do again I'd bag the switch entirely. Only drawback to that is that for some of the avionics the lighting is of two modes. Bright and dim. When the panel switch is on 12v is applied to the "panel dim" line on the radio, etc. and the backlighting is half intensity. Since my radios are in a console it's no big deal but if they were on the panel I'd probably want to have them full intensity in the daylight....