My new night canopy (progress pictoral)

[jaywhy]

I wanted to have a dedicated night canopy that I could leave a light string on, and swap canopies for night-time. I leave the tail string on fulltime because I like the visibility the orange adds.

I hate cutting out canopies, and with the plastic I didn't feel like painting - so I decided to try something with drilling holes. And flames. I started by laying tape on the canopy so I could draw out the flame design.
Then, the drilling begins....

[jaywhy]

After a number of nights in front of the tv drilling... and drilling... and recharging the drill... and drilling...

The drilling is done - I now need to go through and smooth out all the rough edges. Time for some x-acto-ing, and sanding... and x-acto-ing, and sanding... and filing, and sanding...

Coming soon - I attach the lights. I'm excited and a bit nervous to start night flying.

[flyinfool]

That looks very interesting and unique.
I will love to see the finished product.

[ViperDrags44]

jaywhy


We need a update!!

Very original idea! I would like to see what the latest progress you have done on the beast!


Thanks for the posts

Brian

[veegor]

JAYWHY? ........I think your name says it all!! Because your thought on this REALLY Was a brilliant idea!!!! THAT IS GOING TO LOOK NICE ! IT'S going to turn out good!

[58dgrizz]

Wow, man that is so cool, a way new Idea on the night flying thing. I saw some tape that glows that may look really cool on that thing from the inside. http://www.lighttape.com/ don't know much about this stuff but seems like it might work. I can imagine it would look way cool.

[jaywhy]

Well - current update is there is no update. Sorry.

I tried a few ways of putting the lights on running with the flame design - but it just isn't cuttinng it. Just writing this now I realized I need to try stringing the light on totally inside. Otherwise I was going to just string the lights on like a normal canopy...

It's coming - I can't wait to fly with lights on. I'm just taking my time because after that much work, I don't want to screw it up while finishing it!

Thanks for the support!

[Inch High]

When I saw the first few pics, I thought.........."What is this nutbag doing to his canopy"????

Then I took a look at the semi-finished canopy...........

Nice........................

Keen to see how it turns out.

[jaywhy]

Haha! Yeah - I think the girlfriend didn't get the idea at first either. Hard to explain so I just did.
Thanks...

[SlowWhite]

Although this is my first time looking into Night flying and I know nothing about it other then my experience 10 years ago with just glow sticks you get at walmart and blades with only 1 LED. But on one of the threads that's stickied to the top there was a link to a place that had "glow sheets"

Basically looked like a sheet of paper that glowed. after seeing your design I would be curious to see how that would look if you put it on the inside. I'm picturing it so all you'll see at night would be the flames?. Now if it'll actually turn out that way I don't know but might be worth a try.

Edit heres the link:
http://www.glowire.com/Merchant2/mer...tegory_Code=RM

Here's the Picture of a Fury which I think is using the sheet stuff. (I'd love to know how he did this)
http://www.glowire.com/canopy.jpg

[mudbogger2]

(I'd love to know how he did this)

His name is Mike Demita. https://www.helifreak.com/member.php?u=168"MadMan" on the forums. I believe he applied one of the glow sheets to the canopy and then used black tape with the letters cut out so the letters would glow.

He would know better than I would. Might try PM-ing him.

[jaywhy]

In case anyone is still curious - I finally finished it! It took some time laying out the wire first with tape to get everything aligned right. Then the zip ties and a little shoe goo inside the canopy where I didn't want to use zip ties. Then of course the light string tied together the ends of the flames, so, I had to paint the light string black where I didn't want it showing through the back of the canopy. In the end I'm happy with how it turned out. A little funny how much work it ended up being, considering the reason I decided to drill the flame holes was to avoid the pain in the butt of x-actoing out the normal air slots in the canopy. It was worth it though - and flying at night is sweeeet (and a lot less hot out!)

[jaywhy]

This vid is mostly hard to see - but there are some good spots where you can see the heli. It's much much easier to see in person. First time night flying, and really my first time flying side-in FF. (I had a brief second of nose-in, but it was too far out to really see in the video.)

Trex 450 Night, Side-in flying (4 min 34 sec)

[jaywhy]

Any comments or critiques? Good or bad, I can take it! Actually, I especially want to hear what doesn't look right. Thanks!

[flyinfool]

OK, You asked for it.
With the flame pattern of holes that you have, look at the Glowire.com website, they have glow sheets that you could put on the inside to light up all of the holes. You might need to paint the canopy black to stop light from shining through the plastic.
I like lots and lots of light on my helies. To me and my blind eyes, you need more lights.

[terrybeb]

Great start, love the flame holes.....As the guys are saying, try the glow sheets and paint the inside black. That may do the trick. It's certainly up in the 90% Way Cool category just need to tweek it a bit.

What I don't like is that you can see the wires underneath the canopy and that the light is not evenly spread out. I'm hoping that the light sheets would correct that issue.

[Ecklund1]

I was going to say the same thing, maybe find a way to diffuse the light so you see the hole design, not the wire. Other than that, very cool work.

Oh, and your avatar is going to cause someone to have a freaking seizure.

[jaywhy]

Awesome guys - thanks for the input. It's nice to get different perspectives, after so many hours it's hard to imagine anything's not quite right with it!

It was a decent attempt - but now I want to see how it would look with all/just the holes lit up. (Like you guy's all seem to agree on.) So... paint the inside black, then either try something like glowire's product OR, maybe some kind of light diffusing semi-transparent tape on the inside over the holes would do the trick.

I've got another light driver I wanted to run off the main 3 cell lipo - for more lights, and I like the idea of having a backup light system on a different battery. (The current lights run on a little 2 cell.)

Well, be sure to check back in another 3-4 months to see if I've made any progress!

Thanks again for the input guys...