DIY Night blades

[Screebo]

Originally Posted by eppy

Ah, great news. XeroGear list the kits on their website (Link).
I was about to give up as I could not find any suitable copper tape out there.

I will also try to make a centrifugal switch on my blades, should not be too hard, and very cheap.
Just a tiny conductive tube with a spring inside that will touch and close the circuit when the blades are spinning.

The mercury idea would also work, but you have to store the blades at the right angle to keep the lights off.
i.e. in the blade holder they would possibly be on (?)

Check out This page for an example of centrifugal switch (The small brass tube soldered on to the pcb).

Well that does it! Since Xerogear now has very affordable complete kits, I jumped on board. I'll be setting up blades for my and my friends Gaui 550 when they arrive. I'll keep my magni-visor handy after reading about those tiny solder joints. Good find, Eppy!

[Airworks]

these led's are so small i made a setup for a led foamie prop , will be cleaning up the design and making solid next.

sorry for the bad pic , camera just wont take a good pic holding it.

32 in ws foamie so a fairly small prop ACP 9x3.8

[flyinfool]

Can you post a pic of the prop not moving?

[kavic5150]

hey Airworks, would you want to sell a few of those LED props? What kind of batteries do you use?

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by flyinfool

Can you post a pic of the prop not moving?

+1, let's see how it works!

[Airworks]

once i get it straitened out ill post good pics. right now its sloppy as was testing and such.very makshift to make it work and see if it works.which it does thus far.a bit glitchy with the cobb'd up building i did but works none the less.

[Airworks]

k, update on new nite blades as i already crashed the first setLOL

[Screebo]

Bit of good news. I'm better at soldering than I thought!
I received the two XeroGrear Night Blade Kits and picked up two pair of RCP 500mm CF blades. the Xerogrear kit had 18 LED's! 6 white ones, 6 blue ones and 6 green ones. I only used three per blade so I had tons extra. I can see where it may take some folks a couple trys to get used to soldering such a small contact. The little Tenergy 1s bats already had gorilla strength double back foam tape on them. Nice connectors with an extra for the charger were also included. The Copper strip is perfect and has a heck of a grip. I chose to mount the LED's as per the instructions except I put the LED's on the top of one blade and on the bottom of the other. They provided the right amount of shrink wrap that compressed nicely over the batteries once I had checked out the circuit.

Yes, those little buggers are sure tiny but they dropped into the small solder puddles and just took like a bear to honey. Here's the best part, I put the finished set on the balancer and to was perfect, I'm mean perfect. My luck is usually otherwise.
My buddy is not quite as technically obsessed as me but does have a nice Gaui 550 much like mine with all CNC head upgrades, fiberglass canopy, two colors of cold string lights and soon...................his own DIY night blades just like mine made by yours truly. Thanks to all for pushing me into this mess!
Extra credit to the folks at Xerogear for great service, a killer deal on the very nice quality product, clear instructions and everything you will need to plug in and get your neighbor's attention! Some pics soon to follow.

[Screebo]

Originally Posted by Airworks

k, update on new nite blades as i already crashed the first setLOL

Wild, Mon! Real nice job. Cleaver placement of your LED's. It must surely look like the start of an invasion at night!

Edit update:

Today, I checked balance and mounted my newly completed DIY CF blades to the Hurricane 550. I also mounted the gift set on my friend's Hurricane.I couldn't wait to flight test them and guess what? They flew just great. Just a little tracking adjust then smooth, rock solid and very colorful flying. As mentioned, I have one blade with LED's only on the top side and one blade reversed. I was concerned that the light circles might not be complete with only one blade tracking from under or over viewing positions. No worries, even in the daylight, one could easily see that the layout suggested by Xerogear in the kit worked out just great. What a blazing difference between my Align 325mm night stockers and the 550mm honkers with my own DIY lighting. I'm real happy.
Now I'm REALLY paying attention to this forum! BTW, I enjoy night flying oh so much more than in the day time. And the sound of the Gaui 550 spooling up and down in the darkness is awesome.

[weezbad]

got some ms blades last week. did not know people were making their own... as soon as i finish up my pogo pylon racer i'll get to the night raptor 50 v2...don't wanna put them on the trex 550..and i have 3 raptors with lots of parts and 2 spare sets of carbon blades... i have been flying lots of night planes, some fast some slow so this is a great transistion for me...tried the blade 400 with night blades but they were so weak (align) i didnt do more than hover it.

[blindpilot]

I am looking for the copper tape that you make night out of what to lookout for I seen some but don't know of it will work

[kaos]

Here is the link to the conductive copper tape.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electron...pper_Tape.html

use the 1/4" tape. I cut each strip into 3 strips of the length I need and just tape on the blade. which gives me 1/12" wide copper tape. It is fairly easy, just mark a line and cut it with a pair of scissors. these tapes are very thin. the weight of 1/12" is next to nothing. the adhesive/conductive is pretty good at staying on the blade. but when you tape to wires the conductive part does not work very well, still suggest use solder joint. on a flat surface, connecting from tape to tape , the conductivity is very decent. only you don't want to retape them, after retape, the conduction is not reliable. Because the tape is so thin, soldering is a very easy thing to do too.

I have not found any conduction through the CF with this tape.

Here is a pic of what I have on the blade using this conductive tape.
https://www.helifreak.com/showthread...=243791&page=5

[TheBum]

Does anybody know whether XeroGear is out of business? Their domain expired yesterday.

[SB]

Originally Posted by TheBum

Does anybody know whether XeroGear is out of business? Their domain expired yesterday.

I'm not sure, I did some custom work for him on a small prototype scale a while back, and after trying to contact them a bunch of times, through in the towel.

[TheBum]

I'm going to build my own 430mm night blades. Would 300mcd be sufficient for the LEDs? They're easier to find than the 400mcd and brighter ones @ 20mA.

EDIT: Let me rephrase the question: what is the absolute minimum mcd rating to be at least as bright as the Align night blades?

[kaos]

some super bright 1210 led are rated at 4-600 mcd at 20mA for blue, white and possibly green. red usually is less around 2-300 mcd or less. and these are brighter than Align night blade. i have compared these with my Align 325 mm night blade. but this comparison is not exactly the same thing. Align blades has a plastic cover over the led. mine don't. that may contribute to the brightness of my 1210. the led I use is from HK strip converted. very bright. I can't stare at the led directly, it will blind my eye.
I believe 1210 is the same as 3528 (3.5 mm x 2.8 mm).
I have noticed until you get to the bigger size led (10 mm or bigger), most leds runs on 20mA.

[TheBum]

I had some leftover XeroGear green and red strips, so I'll scavenge LEDs from those. I'll probably just buy a strip of blue LEDs to finish the color scheme. I always likes Align's night blade color scheme: I always though of green as grass and blue as sky, which correspond to the upright orientation.

[guya]

well .. thank you guys for this very good thread.
i made my 1st home made bight blades yesterday, hopping to try them at weekend.

here is my copterX 450






[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCU3wR-ZMdM[/ame]

Guy

[TheBum]

Looks nice!

BTW, I edited your post to reduce the size of the inline images. In the future, please use the IMG640 option for displaying images when they are excessively large.

[guya]

Originally Posted by TheBum

Looks nice!

BTW, I edited your post to reduce the size of the inline images. In the future, please use the IMG640 option for displaying images when they are excessively large.

ok

thanks.