SonexBuilders.net

Today I started the task of upgrading from halogen to LED landing lights. I'm using a pair of lights I happen to have laying around. Not the best choice as they are a couple years old, technology wise.

For those of you who have upgraded recently, what lights did you use and how do you feel about the results? Not yet sure if these cheap light's I have will work well or not. We'll see.

Hello Mr BRS! I indeed updated my landing/wig-wag lights recently. At first I had 5 watt leds, then next I tried 10 watt units. finally, after asking here on the blog, put in 36 watt units, and they work well, according to several tower reports I have gotten, and from friends on the ground durring final approaches. I am very pleased with the 36 watt units, and suggest you go with that power, at least. I had thought of higher powered ones, but wirinng may have been too small and I didnt want to redo wiring! I got them from amazon, they are JAHURD brand, led, 12v, 7inx 3.5(?) in, 36 watt, come in a "two pack". I disassembled them, took the led board and mounted it on a 1/4 thick heat sink that would fit into my wing as close to the leading edge as I could get them. they fit and run fine. Be sure to use liberally, electronic heat sink coumpound on the back of the board where it mounts to the new alumnum heat sink you fabricate. also, understand I dont use them for landing lights, per se. I built a wig-wag controller, and the leds flash on and off alternately, which is what i use to enhance 'see and be seen'. Good luck! Fly safe, and if not inappropriate, Merry Christmas!

PS: PM me and I will look for a picture if you wish!

@n502pd
Thanks Joe for your response. Had I it seen it sooner I might have done that, I did look for those lights on amazon, but to no avail.

Here is what I ended up installing - just finished up today. The lights in my previous post didn't work as they turned out to be too tall. While fusing with them I remembered a pair of lights I had purchased for my truck at Arlington fly in one year but never installed. They seem bright in the hanger even with lights on but I doubt they are as bright as your 36W lights. I have no idea what the wattage is on these. Plus they are not focused with the type of narrow reflector for a good landing light but are rather wide angled which will be good for being seen.

So I had installed a set of fresh aero lights. I bought them from somebody on the forum, and they included the fresh aero Sonex mount kit. The mount kit with the lens and everything is awesome. I really liked the lights, up until the first flight when I found they made horrible noise on the radio. So I did some troubleshooting. I found that in the hangar, I could duplicate the problem. Terminating the shields on my wire did nothing. When I ran the light on a separate battery, the noise went away. Aha! I decided it was conducted noise. So next I put some capacitance out at the lights, like 10 microfarad. It seemed to help, but back in the air the noise was back. So I went and designed a pi filter, basically a capacitor on either side of an inductor. It was still noisy. On a whim I tried my spare hovercraft headlight, it's like a 36W fog light. No noise from it. One of the tests I did was to transmit on my handheld when listening to the radio, as I found that sometimes my lights were ok in flight until somebody was talking on the radio. I notice there was noise on the handheld. On steady when the fresh aero light was on, and going brrrrt-brrrrt-brrrrt when I had the wig-wag on. So it seems I actually have radiated noise. These lights I bought on Amazon for the hovercraft were actually pretty heavy, until I took off all the extra crap. They have huge extrusions with heat sink fins and for the amount of power actually going to them (.65A at 12V) it's only 8 watts. I think the huge extrusion is for looks and weather protection. I stripped off all the crap and what was left over weighed about 0.05 lbs. The old lights were 0.576 lbs each so I'll save about one lb.

pretty much what I did. i dont have noise, so I wonder about the controller box that operated the wigwag/landing selection. yours might be solid state. I used relays and caps...no microprossor control at all, and treated both incomming and outgoing voltage points with filter caps, and my circuitry is inside a tight aluminum box. I also mounted red and green leds I can view when lights are in use, one led for left and one for right lights. . Any idea of the actual waveshape, frequency of the noise? the other thing I did was to mount the heat sink originally used, after removing the 'crap' as you have done, directly to the main spar front side, and of course used liberal ammounts of white heatsink grease, which keeps out moisture also. as I write this, I wonder if the led elements themselves are at fault?

as a total asside, the old lights I had are the same as yours in the picture. I have some spare LI batteries, so I just made some 'flood light' type flash lights out of them, for general allumuniation when working on other non avaition things(did I say that??).. made a couple of chargers for the batteries too.

I bought $30 PAR36 30 watt LEDS on Amazon. Link Below.

This is the video of them on wigwag mode during take off day time. They are fantastically bright

Take Off:

https://youtu.be/Z8DZXn5cSAw

Lights:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0968SCKYB/re ... UTF8&psc=1

I ran them through my multimeter, they draw 1.8 Amps each.

The fit in the duckworks landing light frame for Sonex

tps8903 wrote:I bought $30 PAR36 30 watt LEDS on Amazon. Link Below.

This is the video of them on wigwag mode during take off day time. They are fantastically bright

Take Off:
https://youtu.be/Z8DZXn5cSAw

Lights:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/your-account/ ... 24-2212256

I ran them through my multimeter, they draw 1.8 Amps each.

The fit in the duckworks landing light frame for Sonex

Chris, that link tries to bring me to your Amazon orders.

Bryan Cotton wrote:

tps8903 wrote:I bought $30 PAR36 30 watt LEDS on Amazon. Link Below.

This is the video of them on wigwag mode during take off day time. They are fantastically bright

Take Off:
https://youtu.be/Z8DZXn5cSAw

Lights:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/your-account/ ... 24-2212256

I ran them through my multimeter, they draw 1.8 Amps each.

The fit in the duckworks landing light frame for Sonex

Chris, that link tries to bring me to your Amazon orders.

Thanks. Fixed!

These are awesomely bright, but draw almost 1.7 amps per side. I'm going to use my 0.65a lights.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07JQ6XWTH?psc=1