Flying Field Flood Lights for night flying

[cbrkhan]

Hi,

I have seen some videos of night flying with the field illuminated with floodlights. I was wondering what equipment is used to get something like this done?

Google search only yields commercial options that are really expensive.

For some one who has done this,

• How big of an area did you light up?
• How many flood lights did you use?
• What was the wattage on the bulbs?
• How far apart did you place the lights?
• What were the power requirements of your lighting setups and how did you power those?

Thanks

[wbrichards28]

I would look into some rigid flood lights. they come in bars and pods and are freaking bright and light up the woods and gullys like it's daytime. My FD had a H1 with a 60" bar and you could see several hundred feet in a field with that thing on.

[Coco66]

FD? H1?

[wbrichards28]

fire dept hummer

[seanh]

Originally Posted by cbrkhan

Hi,

I have seen some videos of night flying with the field illuminated with floodlights. I was wondering what equipment is used to get something like this done?

Google search only yields commercial options that are really expensive.

For some one who has done this,

• How big of an area did you light up?
• How many flood lights did you use?
• What was the wattage on the bulbs?
• How far apart did you place the lights?
• What were the power requirements of your lighting setups and how did you power those?

Thanks

The first question is, what power do you have available? This will determine what direction you can go.

[cbrkhan]

We have 110 at the field ... I can also do a 6000 watt generator with both 110 and 220

And of course there are vehicles that can be left running .... If there is any thing that can be powered with 12v

[gstoneberg]

You might Google for texasboars hog hunting LED lights. I've personally seen a pair of their big light setups light up a 40acre field. They're 12v and insanely bright.

[seanh]

having 120v will make this a lot easier....just get some construction "flood" style lights construction/work lights

http://www.ebay.com/itm/150w-Led-Sho...IAAOSwuYVWoggR

The portable ones are nice but then someone is always handling them which leads to breakage.

[cbrkhan]

Originally Posted by gstoneberg

You might Google for texasboars hog hunting LED lights. I've personally seen a pair of their big light setups light up a 40acre field. They're 12v and insanely bright.

Care to post a link of the product that you may have seen in use..


I googled it and it returns lot of feeder lights .... not sure this is what I am looking for ....

[gstoneberg]

I'm not sure it's what you want as well. High power 12v LED lights are not usually the cheapest solution. However, in a remote location where a 12v battery is going to power the lights, it's about the best you can get. What I saw was a pair of these with white LEDs instead of red: http://www.texasboars.com/ctb/produc...products_id=29 I hunted that night with a much smaller 9watt version and was successful at 90 yards on a moonless night.

Since you have 120v available, a commercial spotlight is probably a cheaper solution. At a field without electricity, the LEDs might be the ticket.

[mike pound]

At the last 3 helifreak funflys , my local club went to the local equipment rental yard and rented 2 deiseal powered light towers, like the ones you would see along highway construction. 2 light towers would light up about 400 feet of our runway and a good 100 to 150 yards out. One light tower would probalbly work for our situation.here in nor cal it works out to be about a $100 for a one day rental per light.

[cbrkhan]

Thanks guys for all the help and advice ... Sounds like renting light towers when needed is the best option ... Buying is too expensive

I also check out LED flood lights ... They are too expensive as well ... $500 to 1000 range for 400 to 500 watts

[seanh]

you're crazy if you think renting is cheaper. What it costs to rent lights for 1 season is more than it costs to buy outright.

You'll want to think about renting a bit more closely. Say during the winter months you go out 10 times late in the evening. You'll have to coordinate with other pilots, pickup lights, take them back, setup on each of those days. Going by the 100 dollar a day figure that's 1000 dollars for limited use....1000 dollars will go a long way in buying lights for the club.

If your club will have a couple fun flies, maybe a potluck lunch/fly-in and ask for donations at a monthly club meeting, you'll get more than enough money.

If it's something that is just for YOU, still buying is better---just have to be smart about it

[k.gordon1120]

this should do the trick, every club should have one!
http://www.larsonelectronics.com/p-7...r-mounted.aspx

[RedJoE]

A normal night fly arrangement these days includes about 12 Halide lamps each outputting somewhere around 100-150K lumens each, so total lumens around 1.2-2million. This will take about 12-15K watts to light up. Forget LED, it's not as efficient as the Halide lamps.

You don't have to have this many, but if you want to fly your 700's in full mode like you normally do, then you will need this many.

[cbrkhan]

Originally Posted by RedJoE

A normal night fly arrangement these days includes about 12 Halide lamps each outputting somewhere around 100-150K lumens each, so total lumens around 1.2-2million. This will take about 12-15K watts to light up. Forget LED, it's not as efficient as the Halide lamps.

You don't have to have this many, but if you want to fly your 700's in full mode like you normally do, then you will need this many.

Thanks, this is really good information!

Why do you think LED is not as good as a halide lamp?

[RedJoE]

Originally Posted by cbrkhan

Thanks, this is really good information!

Why do you think LED is not as good as a halide lamp?

Actually I should not say it's not as good rather it's just different. On paper a HID will output more Lumens, but it's speculative how much actual light will get out of the two depending on temperature, lens, etc.

However, both systems will use roughly the same amount of wattage, and to me if the wattage is close to the same, then it's much more simple to go with HID.

this guy built the equivalent of one HID lamp using LED. You would need 12-15 of these to match your 12 HID lamps.

What do we all use LED for? Mainly to drop the wattage requirement, well that isn't going to happen because the gain with LED vs HID is nothing vs the gain we get going from Incandescent to LED.

1000W LED Flashlight - Worlds Brightest (90,000 Lumens) (5 min 31 sec)