Helicopter Night Flying 101: The beginners guide

[flyinfool]

The wire uses very little amps.
It is the inverter that uses the amps.
The inverter takes the 9VDC and converts it into 110VAC for the wire.
I get 6 flights out of a 9V Alkaline battery.

[Taylor0208]

I am on a 450 Pro but I have ordered my Trex 600 LE so when Ive built and flown that im gonna turn my 450 Pro into a night flying machine !
I CANT WAIT !!!

[weezbad]

i am putting a raptor 50 together for night..my main concern is the led wire from hobby city and the fuel...? we shall see. got ms night blades, the uv glow tr blades,3 strings of align glow wire and led tape. ..dont think i'll use the glow wire.

[weezbad]

Did not use the glow wire. flew it last night.. the led's are waaaaaay brighter than the rotor blades. will drop the led's to 7.4 volts or make a set of diy night blades. However the ms blades are very easily seen...the led's are just too strong.

[Brian4301]

Thanks for the post....informative but not confusing.

[Corvallis]

will a Blade 450 lift with lighted rotors and glowwire+the assorted hardware?

also can you build it for night flying but fly it in the day?

[mu300pilot]

So I have a Trex800 and want to make it a night helio. I would like to know what colors are better for the helio, Like in front and in Back? Should I use one color for boom and another for tail fin? Should I use two colors for the front?

[Grooverc]

Good information for learning

[flyinfool]

Color choice is purely personal preference.
Just use enough contrasting colors to aid orientation.

[sewerfly]

I found that the blue on the blades are hard to keep orientation when it goes far enough away and the boom should be one color like red or green

[helimanGF]

Hi Guys! I am desperately looking for some help. My boyfriend has a TREX 500 flybarless. I am trying to "pimp" out his heli as an Xmas gift. Since it gets dark early during the winter, he hasn't been able to fly much lately, so I got the genius idea to buy him some sort of night flying equipment. Originally I was trying to find the really cool blades that do the graphics, like the Night Magic Blades by KOK or the MS Composit Night blades but I am not sure which ones are the best or even what i should look for. Plus I think they are extremely expensive?

Can anyone PRETTY PLEASE suggest any night flight kit, parts, pieces... or anything that I could get him? Anything that you guys could help me with would be greatly appreciated!! Also, please note that i have zero knowledge when it comes to helis. My heli vocab is basically- blades, rotor blades, tail boom!!

[Thunder Fighter]

These blades will work well. The chargers are out of stock but you can make up charge leads and charge from a standard charger like I did.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...F420mm%5F.html

But if that is too exensive just grab a few 1 meter LED light strips in the different colors from the same site.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...5F1mtr%5F.html

//Dennis

[helimanGF]

Thanks so much for your help!!

I have been reading all these message boards for the last 2 days. I kind of want to get him everything he needs to make them. Seems like I have more options that way.

I have gathered that I need -
1/8 copper tape

LEDs for the blade (still trying to figure out exactly which one's everyone seems to be using, I want it just like the Align blade, red/green on the bottom and red/blue on the top) maybe even a pink throw a pink in there to remind him it was from me!

battery - Looks like I need two of them? One for each blade? I'm still lost on what kind of battery i would need to run the lights on the blades, but I will keep reading! :-)

glowire for covering the canopy (new word I learned! ) and the tail boom - do you know if this is any good?
http://store.glowire.com/products/Super-Heli-Kit.html

heat shrink wrap

I think thats all??

[Thunder Fighter]

I used the ready made blades and haven't tried making them myself so can't really help there.

I use the LED's that I linked to instead of glow wire with my setup on a heli the same size as your boyfriends. The advantage is cost, you can cover the heli with about 4 packs of the LED's and a couple of plugs and they are very bright. The disadvantage is that it is harder to switch between night and day setups as they stick on. I have a boom, old canopy, landing gear and tail fin that have lights on and swap them onto the heli in about half an hour.

//Dennis.