new to nightflying! help and ideas please!!: chief's gaui x5 nightflyer project

[CHIEF-X]

hey guys im all new to the nightflying thing and wanna get a setup ready for my new gaui x5 heres what im looking for:

1. got to be able to take the nightflyer setup off and on easy (in a hour or two not all night)

2. im going to need help makeing my own diy nightflyer blades out of some gaui 520 v3's or find some for a killer price that beats building my own.

3. some good ideas on a efficient pack to power it all or figure out how to tap into the 6s 35c packs i have.

any other tips ideas thoughts or opinions are welcomed like i said im new to nightflying and appriciate any thoughts or experience from more vearsed pilots

thanks in advance i hope this turns out to be a usefull thread

[CHIEF-X]

well not turning out soo usefull. yet


what would be a better? light string or led's and if so how do i go about hooking let led's up to power?

[kavic5150]

A good way to start is with some led strings. Hobbyking has the 10mm wide variety with a copper finished pcb while hobbypartz has the 9mm strings with a white pcb.

If you are good at soldering you can simply cut led strings to length in multiples of 3. The hobbyparts variety are a bit more difficult to solder.

Then use a separate 3s pack or if you dont mind an unbalanced pack or two you can use the first or last 3 pins of a female jst-xh balance plug and use the balance lead of a 6s pack. It would be easier to use a separate 3s pack with a capacity of 350 to 500mah.

I like to use jst battery leads for making connections as the stock 2 pin connectors included with the hobbypartz led strings dont take much force to unplug.

I'm unaware of any 520mm night blades but there is a kit out there for turning any blades into night blades. I forget the product name offhand, its posted somewhere in the last two pages of night flying threads.

Also you can contact fellow HF member TimTreo. I think he makes DIY night blades for a reasonable price. https://www.helifreak.com/member.php?u=150560

If you want to tackle the job of night blades yourself, let me know. I can help with links and some useful advice.

Hope this helps.

[CHIEF-X]

wooo hooo found i think i got most of it figured out the lazy mans way

heres the gadjets

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...ED_system.html

plus two extra 50 cm (19.6in) light strings for a total of almost 10 feet of light string. i have found a effective way i dyeing the led's with clear nail polish or ca and some food coloring or rit dye any color i can make i have a 3s turnigy 800 mah pack and this pack i ordered coming with it:


http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...trSearch=zippy compact 350


and ive outsorced the diy night blades to a friend of mine who has some experience doing it. pretty much any color scheme i want

so, for a overall cost of around 50 bucks ill have my nightflying setup. now i just need some night tail blades. mayby ill make my own after i see how he make the mains


this is soooo coool

[CHIEF-X]

well decided to change it up and go with the turnigy led light strips for more light. those led strings only had 5 a piece and the new ones got 60 . i purchased orange red green and blue. this things gonna be nucular also toying with a model rocket launcher system for the heli. hehehe

[Dan E]

Here's a tip, run the led strips on 2s (7.4 volts) rather than 3s (12 volts). This will dim them a bit which can be a good thing. If they're too bright they'll overpower the blades, and at a moderate distance they tend to blur into a giant blob of light.

Experiment with it and find out if it works for you.

[CHIEF-X]

was thinking kinda the same thing thats why i went with the yellow and red because they are a dimmer led than the blue and white. green may be bright enough to blur also. and yea i gotta 2S pack also just in case i do go a little overboard.

but, i have no experience even seeing a nightflyer in person. do ya think my canopy will blur at long distances?

another thing i could do if i wanted to run white or green is power those led's off the main balance tap. find 2s power going downstream in the plug and dim those while keeping the darker red and yellow led's with the small 3s pack.

what are your opinions and suggestions as i said i haven no experience with this and would love any and all advise. and thanks alot in advance

my current thought is goin with the red and green on the tail section i think. but those colors dont flow well with the red and yellow. ill have to think about that and see what others suggest.

this will be a 10 minute swap out and nightfly heli. im buying a whole new tail section and boom for the x5 cause its a 2 screw tail boom swap out well 3 counting the boom pin screw i did on both ends plan to set the nightflyer tail up identical to the dayflyer other than the nucular leds

and the canopy is one that came damaged badly in shipping i repaired with ca automotive hardened clearcoat and nail polish but at night you will never tell! and honestly it dont look bad in the day time and it makes the nightflyer sooo quick to change out. not too many other birds could be converted no night as easy. this is gonna b cool and though it may be a while, when i do get her ready i will get a video of the night maiden. but hey i gotta get the heli flying good during the day first right

[CHIEF-X]

oh shoot never posted the canopy. here it is the reds look kinda pink in the picture but the are blood red in real life. the yellows are pretty accurate. changed my order from hobbyking to these instead so i had less screwing around to do lol and also picked up a meter of blue and a meter of green i was gonna use on the tail section. too bright on 3s???? cause this is what is laying there pluged into it.

[SamIAm]

I'm planning on setting my Furion 6 up for night flying but I think I'll use a 3S, run through a 20A brushed ESC. Then I can adjust the brightness with the dial on my 8FG. Brighter at dusk and dimmer when it gets darker. Also, if you're worried that the blue/green will be too bright, grab a couple of resistors with a low resistance to dim a bit. Then you can get a consistent brightness between the colours.

[B.Ewing]

my x5 night rig is running on 3s and it is VERY bright. i dont mind it tho my 3s packs fit perfectly on the frame where ive got them.

[Dan E]

Originally Posted by CHIEF-X

1. got to be able to take the nightflyer setup off and on easy (in a hour or two not all night)

I only have the one big heli (Align 600e pro) but night fly it. To do this I have a canopy, skids, tail boom and fin which I interchange between them. Each part has a connector on it and plugs into the next one (so the tail fin gets power from the tail boom etc).

Ideally I want a complete tail boom, with its own tailcase, torque tube, stabilizers, and blades which can get left in there all the time. This'd make swaping the night rig on very fast, like 10-20 minutes and you'd be done (10 bolts in total on the 600, maybe a few more to release the boom from the tail transfer case in the frame).