Halogen/LED RC Lighting System.

[rhysduk]

rc lighting system

Hi Guys.

Im an avid RC Flyer flying both IC and SS and also Heli's.

I have a new plane in the making, and would like to add a lighting system to it. Nothing to complicated, just a few simple leds here and there to simulate a real plane.

Here's what i would like:

• Tail Light. (Flashing)
• Wing Tip Lights (1 on Each wing)
• Landing Light.

For the Wing Tip Lights, one will be BLUE and the other RED.
The Landing Light (which will be situated under the nose of the plane) is ideally going to be the brightest of the lights.
I was thinking of using a small 6volt 10watt Halogen Capsule. With this running of a set of 5xAAA 1000mah 1.2volt Rechargeable Batteries. This should give me around 40 or so minutes of running time from the HALOGEN CAPSULE alone.

I'm hoping to run the leds off of this source aswell, seeing as this a RC plane, weight needs to be kept to an absolute minimum.

If there are any other RC enthusiasts on here, they will know that I could run 5 or more leds off of the Rx (Receiver) battery for many hours without even worrying about the battery failing, if it did, thats one lost model.

So guys and gals, any suggestions and tips etc?

Im having trouble sourcing high power leds at a 6volt source.
Could some recommend a mcd value please?
Especially if you think i can get away with one of a very high brightness a few 10 thousand mcd's!

The key is brightness (hence my thought of using a halogen capsule for the bottom landing light.)

Many thanks guys
Rhys

 

[rhysduk]

rc lighting systems

No-one?

 

[plusminus]

led rc lighting systems

I have found a lot of Power leds at the Farnell site. All with a Vforward <6V.

For the tail flash light you can search for ic's also used in photo cameras and telephone photo cameras. They are high power/ small / lightweight.

 

[geezergeek]

rc light system

I've done a lot of freeform LED stuff in the last couple of years so I hope I can provide some help, but first I have a couple of questions: 1) How big do u want your colored lights to be? (physical size) OR, what scale model are u building? 2) Why are u looking for 6v specific led's when one can simply attach a small current limiting resistor? (Yes, I know you're bat-pac is 6v...) Why not consider either a high power white led, a MRxx halogen replacement, or even better a small array of white led's mounted in clear lexan to provide broader dispersion angle of the radiated light. A "big plane" example of such an array is featured in last months kitplanes magazine. They were constructing a LED based strobe, so I know leds can provide ample luminosity to a scale model. A source I have used for LEDs for some time is "LED HK", (for "LED HONG KONG") They have a store on ebay and can provide led's, power led's, led's with built in flashers, multi-color led's, multi-color led's with flashers and a variety of different types of prebuilt arrays. They ship air express from hong kong, averaged 2-4 days from order to led-in-hand, and their prices are the best I have been able to find anywhere. They have some high intensity red/blue leds with built in flashers that might look good on your colored light placement requirements. Some food for thought anyway, could save some weight on your rig by not having to carry all the power for those halogen bulbs, lot of heat on those things usually too....Let me know how I can be of further assistance, maybe u can post some pics of flying at night/dusk when u finish the build. regards, Joe (geezergeek)