Night Flying

Flying in the darkness of the night … how the **** we gonna see the plane? We have to see it to be able to control it don’t we?






Well … it all about the lighting i.e. navigation light. In our case, using proper LED (light emitting diode) with different color at the right place and the right sequence. Believe me, its easier to fly very high at night. I’ve been involved in night flying since the past 3 years. It all started when my ‘sifu’ bring me to BMNF site. Its just amazing to see all those lights in the dark sky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja0kxGvhIg4

Here I would like to share some of the setup that I’ve learned and usually used on my plane for nightflying.

First the lighting setup. The concept is, your lighting setup should be able you to see/recognize your plane orientation. So you should be able to know your plane attitude from a far in the dark. Here is how I usually do it on my nightstick.

2x green led on right wing – one pointing side way and one pointing down.

2x red led on left wing – one pointing side way and one pointing down.

1x blinking led (build in circuit) on the tail boom – pointing down.

1x red led or blinking led on the top of the stabilizer – pointing up.

2x white led in the front – one pointing forward lighting the propeller and one downward.

I’ve been using this setup on all my nightfly.

Now the circuit. U could just buy one at your local hobby store or you could build one yourself and using our free channel on the RX to power it if you have some basic skills in soldering. I’ll show you how I do it. You don’t have to be an electronic wiz to build one, just by follow the steps. You’ll need:

-         wire cutter (cutting n stripping wires)

-         Soldering iron

-         Servo connector

-         Resistor (150 ohm)

-         5mm LEDs (superbright – clear plastic) which could handle 5v

-         Two color thin wire

You have to know that LED have + and – terminals and resistor doesn’t. so make sure you pay attention on those polarity when you do your soldering and connection.

-         decide your lighting setup and cut your wires in proper length.

-         Strip each end of the wires.

-         Start soldering as the picture below.

-         Plug the servo connector to one of  the channel on your RX.



i know this is not much and might as well not as complete as it should be. You could just drop waht ever question you have and i'll try to answer.

http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/components/led.htm futher reading on LED.