It's not a big enough nuisance to make me change it, but if did have an opportunity, I would put a panel dimmer on my Garmin 430W. I do have the photocell ramp, offset and minimum values tuned. Night flying levels need to be remarkably dim.
The nuisance time for me is sunrise which I fly quite often. Just before the sun breaches the horizon, but the sky is considerably lighter, the garmin is too dark. That period lasts maybe 15 minutes max. I guess I might be able to play with the offset or ramp settings some more but it would be nice to just twist a knob.
EDIT Like Walt, I do have a couple of home made dimmers in the cabin. They are for LED floods that illuminate toggle switches and separately a handful of Nulites. On each I used a 50K pot, a 5K resistor and an LM317T voltage regulator. All built and glued to the pot. Gives a 10 to 1 turn down ratio. I think I have seen example schematics of this simple circuit on EAA or elsewhere. The LM317T package usually has it too.
__________________
Bill Pendergrass
ME/AE '82
RV-7A: Flying since April 15, 2012. 850 hrs
YIO-360-M1B, mags, CS, GRT EX and WS H1s & A/P, Navworx
Unpainted, polished....kinda'... Eyeballin' vinyl really hard.
Yeah. The boss got a Silhouette Cameo 4 Xmas 2019.
Last edited by rzbill : 04-26-2018 at 05:54 PM.
|