Easy swap from day/night stup?

[banditpowdercoat]

Ive done some reading, and tried once with blades and glowstix. Didn't turn out well. I've seen some well done rigs, but I dont want to do a dedicated night setup. Something that could convert in 15min or less? Is it possible? Heli I want to do is my Protos 500

[TheBum]

You'll want a dedicated canopy. A beater that has been dinged up works well.

On my Atom 500, I used LED strips spiraled down the boom and then a zip tie at the back of the frame to secure it. I have a dedicated tail fin.





For my strut lighting, I put strips top and bottom and wrapped the wiring halfway around the struts. The wire is wrapped around the back of the front strut and around the front of the back strut, so putting the assembly on is pretty simple.

[Timtreo]

^ +1 Having a beater canopy with LED strips wired together with one battery connector makes it easy to swap to a day time canopy. I run a 2 cell 300mAh battery (perfect brightness for my setup) with a JST splitter that connects one to the canopy and the other to the rest of frame, skids, boom, and tail fin lights. But mine is a dedicated night flyer anyway. Pics in my album. You might be able to stick some good velrco on the led strips in spots for the frame and then just peel everything off still wired together for the daytime. I would glue the strips to the one side of the velcro though.

[4cyclic]

All good ideas.

Bum, what is the wire for that is under boom spiral ?

[TheBum]

Originally Posted by 4cyclic

All good ideas.

Bum, what is the wire for that is under boom spiral ?

I wired strips three-in-series as well as in parallel so I could run 6S across them, effectively getting 2S across each strip while providing an even load for the battery cells without wasting power. That wire is for the rear end of the series connection. In order to run the wire straight instead of spiraled with the strip, there's a bullet connection at the front that I connect after wrapping the boom.

[4cyclic]

Interesting, thanks for info. Are night tail blades really necessary for 3D flying orientation ?

I was thinking just doing a down tail fin strip like you did to save time going from day and nite setup (back to topic).

[TheBum]

I couldn't tell you, since I sport fly, but I don't miss the tail blades. Make sure you put lights on the struts and/or skids; my initial setup didn't have those and I had orientation issues.

[4cyclic]

make sense for the struts.

[sewerfly]

Yes struts help out alot i had them on my 500 then crashed and broke the whole landing gear so my next set up i didn't use the and i struggle sometimes without them

[sewerfly]

Almost done just need to finish blades but you can see on my 550 here the struts are all lit up

oops no pic guess if you wanna see it your gonna have to go to HF funfly.

[flyinfool]

I have a dedicated canopy complete with its own battery. The rest of the heli is on a separate battery. I do not want the possibility of a single failure to make the whole heli go dark and just a disc to look at. I have had a half go dark, no problem landing with what is left. With the full self contained canopy it makes maintenance super easy, just pull the lid with no wires to worry about.

Since I fly nitro I do not have to worry about getting the voltage down from a 6 or more cell pack.