RC airplane lighting?

I was thinking about putting some LED's on my radio controlled airplane. It's electric but I thought that some LED's wouldn't drain the battery too much.

Any suggestions? Has anyone tried something like this?

I was thinking of putting a Cree XR-E star on each wing but I thought that might be overkill

In fact, it would probably melt the plastic wing material anyway when it got hot...

So long as they only get 50ma they should be fine and more than bright enough.

This plane is really light and cheap junk so I dunno if it can handle the extra weight of anything mroe than a couple bare 5mm leds and whatever the lightest wire I can find...

Depends what you want to do. Ram sells nav light kits and a few of the R/C forums have diagrams that will help you make your own nav lights. Like Blind said though...you gotta keep the current draw under control -- especially if you're pulling from your main pack and super especially if you're pulling directly from a Lipo w/o any sort of low volt cut-off on your lights.

You might want to get started by running some 3mm LED's (red & green) for the wing tips. You can run 'em off the extra channel on your Rx (if you have an extra) so you should just have to worry about a resistor. This way, you'll be going through the ESC which will take care of keeping your Lipo happy -- assuming that's what you're running...

- Chris

Ah...was writing when you posted last. Go with 3mm LED's to start and some really thin wire like ~20awg. Should be plenty as simple 3mm LED's from the shack won't want much A's.

- Chris

Red and green? Is that so you can tell which wing is which? Which way should they go?

I'm an airplane noob... This airplane sucks though it will barely fly. This is the one I have:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=92912

It's such a piece of crap I want to throw it in the trash but I can't afford a good one. I wish I could find a cheap one that flies better. This thing is very hard to keep in the air.

It's always night time when I have a chance to fly it that's why I wanted to try lights.

hellbore, a great way to remember is by using the saying my grandfather taught me; "A sailor named Red, left the port"

and it's so you can tell whether a plane is coming or going

Green on the right wing and red on the left wing. Since you're running NiMH, you can just tap off the main battery and make life easy. Just don't forget the resistor.

- Chris

I can see it now. RC model airplanes with landing lights from a real plane.