Night flying led logic?

[jmtyndall]

Im thinking of building a night rig on a 300x. But I want to understand the logic before I tackle it. Do you do different colors left and right? Or top and bottom? Front and back etc?

The only kits I know of are the perfect regulator kits, so thats what ive been thinking of using

[myxiplx]

Typically you have different colours on the top and bottom of the blades, and then different colours on the nose and tail.

The colours are up to you, just pick something that let's you easily see the orientation of the heli.

I'm building a rig for my 250 at the moment, if I can get the chassis lights finished this weekend I'll get some pictures posted up.

[Skidpad]

I used colors on my canopy that mimic'd the colors of my blades, ie, my blades are red & white on top, so my canopy is red on top, and my skids are white on top. My blades are red, green, and blue on the bottom, so my canopy is green on the bottom.

I tried to reduce the number of color "palettes" on my heli...I wanted it to be as basic as possible, yet be as obvious as possible without being cluttered by too many different colors. In keeping with that, my boom and tail fin are white, and I put a small strip of blue on the back of the fin - when the heli is tail in, it can be hard to see the end, and the small strip really helps show you where it is.

Its all personal preference, but night flying is a blast - well worth the time & effort to make a night bird!

[jmtyndall]

That sounds reasonable. Makes sense not to have all one color, and not to have a hundred colors. Do you have two LED on top and three on bottom?

Lets see a few pics. Which LED kit did you use?

[myxiplx]

Whoops, forgot to come back and post pics. This is how I did the 250, its a different approach but I'm really liking it. The two tail lights in these wide positions mean you never lose sight of the tail, I'm finding orientations really really easy with it.

And the different colours top and bottom also make it a piece of cake to see where the disc is.

[myxiplx]

PS. There's a video of it flying in my build thread.

[Skidpad]

I used led's from Value Hobby (the regular ones, about $4.50/meter) in red, white, green, and blue.

1: To control the brightness of the led's I'm using a dc-dc voltage regulator I bought off ebay for about $8. Works great; shown in another thread (about dimming) in this forum.
2:My system is powered by a 3s-1000 battery.
3:Blades are RotorTech Luminous (not the Aurora version).

Let me know what other questions you have.

Pics (were taken before it was completely finished, so the wiring and stuff wasn't tidied up yet) :

[jmtyndall]

Guess I'm coming back to this project. Thinking of going with the perfect regulators kits.

green top, white bottom on the blades
then maybe red/blue on the airframe

[Skidpad]

^^ that's great! The Perfect Regulator kits are quite slick, and a good way to have DIY night blades of any size. Keep us posted on your progress... Night flying is an absolute blast, and one of the best moves I've made in the hobby.

[rcflyersd]

Here's my Night Magic blades just before I installed canopy and boom lighting for "navigation"

Mark

[Skidpad]

^^^^ very cool! Love the NM bldest