Light Up Your Model Plane for a Nite Flight!

Here's a link to a unique use of LED's used to light up a model airplane for night flying:

http://www.bijouxdesigns.com/video/night%20flight_final.wmv

Here is a link for those who have additional interest in radio control model airplanes. If you're a modeler or electronics experimenter, there is a great deal of information here that will interest you:

http://www.eham.net/articles/18218

Be sure to read the comment section and to click on the hotlinks. There are several videos and related pages to access.

Pretty cool lights on the plane. I also do rc flight, and sometimes I fly at night. I have a different lighting setup though. Maybe you should post this over at www.rcgroups.com or www.wattflyer.com or www.rcuniverse.com I bet some of those guys would enjoy this post.

DN

Thats cool. I made my own lights for my RC plane using the lights from toys. It was awesome because it flashed like the strobes on a real aircraft. RC planes are a ton of fun.

Please don't get me started on another hobby, this one is expensive enough:mecry:

I used to put cheap 1AA (maybe 1AAA) lights on my RC car at night.. I had one (white) in the front and a small bike blinky on the back so I could see which direction it was pointed.

That's very cool! But I wanted to see more of the plane itself. I used to be into R/C flight too, still have my model planes and helis just no time to play anymore :shakehead.

Folks here often get a laugh out of 'Gil Grissom' on CSI because on every episode his team will go into a dark building, ignore the light switches and stumble around with these little penlights. (Why not just turn the lights on?) Besides, I thought cops wanted six D cells so they could do some clobberin' if the need arose.

Anyway, all this talk about flashlights has kindled my interest in buying one. (No, not the itsy-bitsy penlights that Gil uses on his TV show.) What would be a good LED light that is moderately sized – say about two "C" cells in size? A blinky strobe would be nice to have on it (but it wouldn't necessarily need to do an S O S in code). 2 or 3 brilliance levels would be nice too.

Does anybody make such a device?

I think the name is "Gil Grissom."

edit: I know it's not flying but I had a color micro camera (w/ sound) installed in a RC truck looking out through the windshield and the video hooked up to a Commodore 64 monitor (showing age here). Let me tell you, it was cool. Attaching a light to it and having it zoom around in the dark sounds like fun. Problem is, I misplaced the transmitter. . .

About the light your are looking for, how much are you willing to spend and how much output? Also, what batteries are you going to use?

Some of the smaller lights that you can find here, like this one, have more output then the 6D maglite and most cops have a baton on them for clobbering.

The light in the plane look really great. Too bad I don't have any good RC things.

:welcome:

I have a Nitro RC plane. But that one had like the really old style wraped wings only clear. I have lights on the wing tips that I bought at a hobby store. They are a light set that runs off of two C batts that are stored in the fuselage. Two wires come ot of the batt box, one for the right side which is green and another for the red left side. the wires run to a little board with four 5mm white LEDs soldered to it. The LEDs are actually really bright, Id guess 20 lumens out of all four. The board has a metal base and it screws into a transparent bubble, one red for left and one green for right. When it's screwed in after you put it together, you epoxy it to the wing tips.

-Evan

Lightguy27 said:

They are a light set that runs off of two C batts that are stored in the fuselage. -Evan

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Two C batteries? Sounds kind of heavy. You must have a fairly large airplane.

TenTango said:

Two C batteries? Sounds kind of heavy. You must have a fairly large airplane.

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Or one that can take payload. Even the GWS Slow Stick people have been putting digital cameras on them to turn into AP planes.

2 C's isn't very heavy in comparison.

I got two Cree P4's mounted on a little aluminum plate at the front of my Extreme Flight Extra for landing lights, powered with a 7.2V lipo, and red left green right wingtip lights (5mm) with a 3.7V nimh..

^^^^^^
That sounds awesome, got any pictures?

TenTango said:

Two C batteries? Sounds kind of heavy. You must have a fairly large airplane.

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Well it is a larger plane. It's wingspan is about 4 feet and it's powered by an O.S. .90 with a performance prop for like 9 pound of thrust. Th plane only ways about 5 fully loaded with fuel and C batts.

-Evan