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Lights & current state of the technology: Landing/Taxi/Nav/Strobe

grayforge

grayforge

Well Known Member
Hi folks,

I just received my QuickBuild wings and am getting ready to purchase wiring & lighting. And anything else that I need to add while the wings are open.

I was surprised to not have found a ton of info on the latest lighting choices. I found some posts from a couple years ago where it seemed HID was brighter than LED, but used more power. Saw a few movies that didn't really give me the picture I was looking for. I was wondering if LEDs had improved since then so that they are as good a landing light as HIDs. Looking to add landing/taxi lights either to the tips or leading edge. I'm pretty open to either.

I played with the LED lights at Van's factory a couple months ago, but it's hard to tell how good they are without a comparison light on hand.

Concerns are (most to least important):
  1. Brightness
  2. Heat produced
  3. Low power draw
  4. Minimal Radio Interference
  5. Cost

Is there a current turn-key kit that's a nice combo that works really well?

Thanks!
Russ
 
I, for one, would go for LED's over HID's... Even Halogen's over HID's.

Currently, I have some basic 55watt halogens behind duckworks leading edge lenses. I leave them on all the time in a wig-wag configuration. For this application, the LED's are way better (low power draw). The HID's makes the wig-wag circuit more difficult, or so I've read.

my $0.02
 
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My understanding is that HIDs use significantly less power than Halogens, though more than LEDs...
 
jbagley said:
The high power draw of HID's makes the wig-wag circuit a little bit more difficult (read: expensive).
Click to expand...

It is not difficult at all and it only costed me something like $40 to add an all electronic wig-wag controller to my HID's.

Just be sure to get ballast that are current limited on startup. (Most newer digital ones are)
 
See Rocket Bob's

post #9
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=81344&highlight=led+landing&page=3

and later his links to source of Deal Extreme. Low price of good LEDs but does take 2 to 4 weeks as they are shipped direct from Hong Kong. I wired my LED landing lights in series and no additional power supply was needed (same 5 LED group as Bob's). I also found some single hi power LED's there that use a voltage range of 3.7 to 18 (sku 11621) which I use as a tail light. I bought the NAV/Strobe LED combo at Aircraft Spruce for $396 (2 lights sku 05-04877). The T6 Bob refers to would be my choice since it works on voltage up to 22volts. I bought one for testing after I installed SKU 35241 in each wingtip. The T6 (sku 100483) is brighter, but also runs hotter. Just attach it to a decent heatsink.
Dale
RV6a with all LED's
 
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grayforge said:
My understanding is that HIDs use significantly less power than Halogens, though more than LEDs...
Click to expand...

While this may be true, unless you are building an Airbus, you will have more than enough power to drive any of the lights you mentioned.

I went with the Halogen lights in the leading edges and will replace them with LEDs, when that technology is mature enough.
 
In my -7A, I found a single Aeroled Sunlite in each wingtip provides adequate landing and taxi lighting. They have a wig-wag function built in and wiring is very straight forward. If I had more funds available, I would have used the Aeroled Sunray Plus or Micrsun.

My Whelen nav/strobe combo lights work well. I think it was Vans system #6 that they sold 5 years ago. I have no reason to change them out now, but when they break or if I were building now, I'd buy and install the Aeroled Pulsar NS90 in each wingtip and a Suntail in the back.

Mike
 
Lights and More Lights

I've been spending a lot of time recently looking at lights and LEDs. I have a set of the HIDs from DDM Tuning on order. These lights have been used by several people here with good reviews. Any LED landing lights will be much more expensive. I also ordered some of the SSC P7 LED emitters with reflectors from Deal Extreme for the taxi lights. This too looks to be a great deal. I plan to roll my own nav lights using 4 LEDs that I have selected. The strobes are still TBD I like the idea of LED strobes but the Xenon strobe is much simpler to implement.
 
We went all-LED in our recent RV-3 build, and I am very glad we did. They are simple, long-lived, and draw almost no power at all. The LED Nav/strobes are very bright, and the LED landing lights show up far better then the HID's on my -8. Best of all, with the low power draw and lack of interference, you can leave more lights on all the time, improving visibility. Our default flight configuration is with the wig-wags running - we only take them to "steady on" for night take-offs and landings.

We went with AeroLED's - a bit pricey, but solid.

Paul
 
The LED lights are GREAT for recognition lights, but so far, they are not quite as good as HID's for landing lights. Well at least nothing I have seen yet.

The LED lights are very bright to look at, but don't seem to be able to push the light out as far or as effectively as an HID.

I do think the LED lights are getting better and may in the not so distant future be as good as HID, but so far the HID is in my opinion the best option for a good landing light.

If you are looking for something to be strictly used as a recognition light, then the LED lights are a good option, however, if you want to see what is on the runway while you are on final, then (At least from all the lights I have seen) the HID lights are really your best choice.


I recently had an opportunity to have a customer send me his PAR36 LED landing and taxi lights that he bought from one of the popular experimental LED manufacturers. I was more than dissapointed in the performance. I am not trying to put down other manufacturers, I was just really surprised to see for myself what kind of performance this light put out. I was really expecting more.

So, My opinion and experience is, if you are looking for a good landing light, the HID lights are really your best choice whether you choose something from Duckworks, Xevision, or someone else. If you are looking for a recognition light, nav light, or even strobe, then the LED lights are perfectly acceptable alternatives to the 'norm'

Richard Squires
Duckworks Aviation LLC
www.duckworksav.com
 
RV6airplanePilot said:
post #9
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=81344&highlight=led+landing&page=3

and later his links to source of Deal Extreme. Low price of good LEDs but does take 2 to 4 weeks as they are shipped direct from Hong Kong. I wired my LED landing lights in series and no additional power supply was needed (same 5 LED group as Bob's). I also found some single hi power LED's there that use a voltage range of 3.7 to 18 (sku 11621) which I use as a tail light. I bought the NAV/Strobe LED combo at Aircraft Spruce for $396 (2 lights sku 05-04877). The T6 Bob refers to would be my choice since it works on voltage up to 22volts. I bought one for testing after I installed SKU 35241 in each wingtip. The T6 (sku 100483) is brighter, but also runs hotter. Just attach it to a decent heatsink.
Dale
RV6a with all LED's
Click to expand...

I've switched to the 100483 XM-L T6 lights, and they work awesome for landing lights. Extremely bright with good light distribution. Here in a few weeks (waiting on the order) I am going to be putting some in a friends RV6 that I fly and will report back. On a pitch black night I can see almost 3000 feet down our runway with these landing lights.
 
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I went with Aeroleds for everything. No power supplies, small wiries, plenty of light, WIG-WAG was by just adding one extra wire, couldn't be happier.
 
AeroLED

Ironflight said:
We went all-LED in our recent RV-3 build, and I am very glad we did. They are simple, long-lived, and draw almost no power at all. The LED Nav/strobes are very bright, and the LED landing lights show up far better then the HID's on my -8. Best of all, with the low power draw and lack of interference, you can leave more lights on all the time, improving visibility. Our default flight configuration is with the wig-wags running - we only take them to "steady on" for night take-offs and landings.

We went with AeroLED's - a bit pricey, but solid.

Paul
Click to expand...

Which ones did you use Paul? I am lookiong at the 8 led "Aerosun" for my RV 7.
 
I was looking at the Kuntzleman ones.

11-08419x.jpg


The price is right but I was hoping that someone might have some experience with them before I go and purchase them.

ACS has them here:

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/ltr.php

:) CJ
 
I'd just like to make a general comment. I've seen several posts that make comments similar to "X lights are very bright". I would like to share some of my experience in this area. I recently set up a test with 8 white high brightness LEDs on the bench. The goal of my test was to determine exactly what I needed for LED based strobes. In my test setup if I was to look at these LEDs I would say yes they are very bright. That would be my subjective comment. In fact, when I did a measurement, those LEDs were no where near bright enough to comply with the letter of the relavent FAR. In addition as I rotated the LED source the luminance level fell off as expected. To comply with the FAR you need a huge amount of light and it needs to be uniform or at least above the minimum level for the area of coverage.
 
Keep in mind, LED's do not like heat. The LED die is very small so you have all of the power focused in a very tiny area. The products I am seeing for aviation do not appear to have very robust or massive heat sinks, like those we are seeing in commercial applications.
Perhaps with the limited useage for this applicaiton it is not an issue, I don't know, but if the LED's get too hot, there life and lumen output will suffer, and suffer greatly.
The commercial lighting industry has adopted tough standards for LED's "fixtures" for life testing and lumen depreciation. It would be interesting to see if any of the manufacturers of the aviation products are testing to any given standards for operating temperatures, life, and lumen depreciation. Keep in mind, the lighting industry does not allow testing of the LED module. The module has to be put in a fixture and then tested. So bench tests do not count.

Do any of these manufactures publish operating temperature ranges? Life and lumen depreciation data at those temperatures? Are you capable of keeping the product within those specifications in a real life install?

Just because you put an HID next to an LED and it is brighter today, does not mean it will continue to perform over the test of time, especially if it is getting hot.
 
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I'm kinda leaning towards a combo setup:
  1. HID Landing lights
  2. LED Nav Lights
  3. Strobe Collision light

A really cool simulation would be to have someone get 100' up in a building/crane/silo and compare the ground illumination from each of the lighting technologies. :)
 
Jon,

For my day job I work alot with LEDs. You are correct that heat is the enemy of LEDs. The lifetime of an LED is related to its operating temperature. In the equipment that we build we require 50,000 hours of operation without significant change in luminance or color. Certainly for aircraft operation you may not need 50,000 hours of operation and therefore you may be able to operate the LEDs at higher operating temperatures. The majority of LED manufacturers do in fact publish reliability data which is based upon operating temperature and/or operating current so that information is available.

For the LEDs that I am investigating for use for my lights I determined that I would have about 1 watt/LED average. For this type of power I also determined that a large heatsink would not be required if the LEDs were separated. Now I haven't looked closely at the commercially available aircraft lights, but I was surprised by how closely the LEDs are packed given the required power output. Some of these high brightness LEDs can be operated at higher currents/power and under those conditions I suspect that you would require a more significant heatsink.
 
Do they have them in stock

rocketbob said:
I've switched to the 100483 XM-L T6 lights, and they work awesome for landing lights. Extremely bright with good light distribution. Here in a few weeks (waiting on the order) I am going to be putting some in a friends RV6 that I fly and will report back. On a pitch black night I can see almost 3000 feet down our runway with these landing lights.
Click to expand...

Bob, those are the ones I originally ordered but could not get. Did you have any luck getting them? What did you use for current control?

Thanks
 
Just another real world example, we just installed LED strobes on the back of our 10 ton dump plow trucks, while plowing during snow and darkness, the LEDs are no where near as bright as our old whelen strobes.
 
No one seems to mention where the lights will be placed. Headlights in the leading edge or in the wingtips? I prefer them in the wing tips. I purchased AeroLED units.
 
jay.pearlman said:
No one seems to mention where the lights will be placed. Headlights in the leading edge or in the wingtips? I prefer them in the wing tips. I purchased AeroLED units.
Click to expand...

I believe you are the first person that I have read about feeling this way. The overwhelming majority of opinions that I have heard have all agreed that locating the landing lights in the wing tips was less than ideal for a landing/taxi application - wig-wag/recognition is a different story. I would be interested to hear more about why you prefer the wing tips.
 
There are many who have mounted headlights in the wing tip. I did not invent the idea. With the larger plexiglass in the wing tip that are part of the kits, the LEDs fit in there with little modification. Three benefits- easy access, not having to cut holes in the leading edge, wires to the tip all go to one place.
I do not know if maintaining a smooth leading edge increases speed or impacts stall. No measurements for comparison that I have heard of.
Like so many things, it is a builder preference.
 
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