Panel lighting

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jesse

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jesse
I'd really like to add some led lighting to my panel. The problem is that I can't figure out a decent way to do it at a reasonable price. Seems as though one should be able to.

Here is my panel:
qAwbiYL.jpg


A led light strip at the top like a lot of people do won't work since there is no lip.

I've thought about one of the following options but they're just all over-priced IMO:
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/wheleninteriorlightings.php?clickkey=4708
http://sptpanel.com/fiberlites home.htm

Any ideas? I've looked all over boat part websites and can't find anything really. The light post thing would work plenty well enough I think but $37.50 for one of them, no thanks, like four cents in components...
 
How about some spots attached to the top of the windshield frame?

Or just get a piece of aluminum and screw it to the top of the panel, wrap it with some foam and vinyl to make a glare shield and put the lights on it?
 
Look at Radiantz LED lighting. They have flexible strips and different colors that you can use. I use them on my motorcycle as an additional brake light bar. I have the duel element circuit, essentially a resistor in one of the power feeds, to have it dim like a running light. You could do that too with two switches, one for lower intensity, and flip the other for higher intensity.

fully gaurenteed, and I have had to send one strip back after a year when one little LED wasn't operating. Replaced at no cost.
 
What happened to your landing wire turnbuckle?

They make little gooseneck floodlights for audio mixing board that mount to an XLR style connector. Run about $20, might be able to get by with two for the whole panel.
 
flyingron said:
What happened to your landing wire turnbuckle?
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That picture was taken during the middle of me redoing all the flying wires, wing anchor plates, wing anchor bolts, most of the turnbuckles..etc.
 
http://www.mypilotstore.com/mypilotstore/sep/4245

Works even if the power goes out. I really like mine and would buy again.

The best part is, its portable. It makes up for the crappy lighting in all the aircraft I fly. It's always there if the lights go out, and it's hands free, or in my case, hand&hook free.
 
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Spruce sells LED lights at about $6 each that go into normal post lights. So for your plane you could probably do a total setup (including buying the post lights) for around $100-$200. That might be more than you'd want to spend, in which case some sort of motorcycle lighting like what Rob suggested might be good. You'd want to make sure it was dimmable, though.
 
There looks to be enough room there to install a partial glareshield. Install one and add some cheap LED cut-to-length strip lighting?
 
jhausch said:
There looks to be enough room there to install a partial glareshield. Install one and add some cheap LED cut-to-length strip lighting?
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That is starting to look like the way to go...I'll have to take a closer look at things next time I'm at the airport.

I figured I'd be able to find some stud mount led lights that could direct light horizontally with a little shield over them on the cheap..but just can't. Must not be many applications for such a thing. I've thought about just fabricating my own..
 
Get a sheet of plexiglass/polycarbonate (clear), do the instrument cutouts in the appropriate size, with a bevel toward the inside, paint the face black (or, perhaps, use and adhesive vinyl to do so for more durable surface, and embed clear LED lamps around the periphery (you'd have to experiment to see how many).

You ought to be able to do all that for well under 100 bucks.
 
I'm trying to remember the lights I put in my cherokee 140. They basically fit over each instrument I was lighting. They work perfectly. However, I doubt they'll meet your price expectations.
 
If you want something to mark locations and names of switches and stuff, maybe try this.

If I were looking for some nice LED lighting solution for the instruments themselves, I'd be looking at Mouser and Digikey rather than Aircraft Spruce. It shouldn't be too tough to wire up some LEDs to light them up any color you want.
 
www.mouser.com and let them search for "ledengin" and then look at the LZ1 series. Nice little 1 watt LEDS in any color you want AND come mounted on a little tiny dime-sized insulated aluminum substrate. Fab a couple of small brackets and install on your windshield rear supports pointed at the panel. You will need a dimmer and a ballast resistor.

As I recall, they like around 3 volts at half an amp apiece or so. You can cut the cost down a little by running them in series and then ballasting them to 6 volts with a single resistor. Do NOT connect them directly to 12 volts or they will be REAL bright for a REAL short time. Like less than a second.

Jim
 
weirdjim said:
Do NOT connect them directly to 12 volts or they will be REAL bright for a REAL short time. Like less than a second.
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We call those NEDs. Noise Emitting Diodes. They emit a loud SNAP noise.

Once.
 
DaleB said:
We call those NEDs. Noise Emitting Diodes. They emit a loud SNAP noise.

Once.
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Many years ago I learned that you can get EPROMS (that's one 'E' and erasing required UV light, remember those?) to emit light (briefly) by socketing them backwards.
 
gismo said:
Many years ago I learned that you can get EPROMS (that's one 'E' and erasing required UV light, remember those?) to emit light (briefly) by socketing them backwards.
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Been there, done that. A 2708, as I recall. Still have a UV eraser buried down in the workshop.
 
DaleB said:
Been there, done that. A 2708, as I recall. Still have a UV eraser buried down in the workshop.
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It's sort of a neat purple flash. I've done that too. I spent an entire weekend debugging a instrumentation controller that involved me using one machine to edit and assemble the code, moving it on floppy to the machine with the eprom burner, and then testing in in the circuit.

My boss followed me around the room having two jobs that weekend: Keep my coffee cup full and picking up the spent eproms and dropping them in the eraser.
 
Henning said:
Yep, and they were the cheapest part of my panel.
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If I was looking at lighting a $50,000 panel it'd be a no brainer. But I'm not about to drop $350 or more into panel lighting on a Flybaby I will use twice a year when I can roll my own solution for less than $20 that will do just fine.
 
jesse said:
If I was looking at lighting a $50,000 panel it'd be a no brainer. But I'm not about to drop $350 or more into panel lighting on a Flybaby I will use twice a year when I can roll my own solution for less than $20 that will do just fine.
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That was my thought and why I suggested the mic lite from Flitelite for $50 that you can take to other airplanes. If you want to try mine sometime just let me know.
 
bnt83 said:
That was my thought and why I suggested the mic lite from Flitelite for $50 that you can take to other airplanes.
Click to expand...

I have the Flitelite mic light and it's pretty good but the "Finger Lights" are wonderful. I rent crappy 172s with no panel lighting and a 1 or 2 of the finger lights (one on each hand if using 2) are enough w/o the mic light. Since they are on your finger, you can point it/them where you need the light. And they are really cheap ($10 each). One trick: when your plane is shutdown and you are someplace where you have a bit of light, pull the batteries (I toss the whole light and batteries into a tiny Zip-Lock) so that they last longer.
 
I put 3 of these lights in the Hiperbipe. I have the 2-white and 2-red LED's and a switch to change them individually. I run them from the LED controller and the whole set-up was under $200.00 (at the time).
Lights the whole panel (switches, imstruments and all) and pulls less than 2 amps total. I could have used just two but I run the red from each of the cockpit corners on the instruments and white in the center focused on the fuel sight gauges...

http://www.aircraft-spruce.com/catalog/pspages/754cockpitlights.php

http://www.aircraft-spruce.com/catalog/elpages/singlechannelpwm.php


Chris
 
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