Adding lights to a Balsa ARF?

[Geeto67]

Hey all,

wasn't really sure where to put this thread, but figured since the plane is balsa it probably could benefit from the knowledge of others that work regularly with wood.

earlier this year I bought an eflite clipped wing cup when it went on sale for being discontinued. It's a beautiful wood ARF with a just over 32" wingspan, and unfortunately I haven't flown it yet because halfway through the assembly process a book fell on it on my workbench and getting replacement parts has been a pain in the rear.

Anyway, I finally got everything transferred over to the new fuselage and all the electronics installed and I noticed that I still had an open channel on the receiver. I have some old small LED bulbs I scavenged out of some broken flashlights and after flying a UMX timber recently I had the brain fizzle that maybe adding landing and nav lights would make this cub look even more scale in the air (even though the original cubs didn't have lights - people have added them over time). I am thinking it would be cool to turn the lights off and on with the flaps channel that isn't in use otherwise with this model.

I use two different batteries with this plane: a 2 cell 7.4V 450mAh and a 3 cell 11.1V 450mAH. The Receiver and ESC are rated to work with both.

So here are my questions:

1) Can I just run the LED leads from the light to the receiver? I am hoping to use the aircraft battery to power the system and since the servos are powered through the receivers, why can't the lights be - right? Do I need relays or anything? The one I want to use for the landing light came from a 12V plug in flash light so it should be close for the 11.1V battery.

2) how much will this affect the battery? I know LEDs are low amp draw but I expect some flight time loss - I just don't want to lose too much.

 

[rockyboy]

1) Depend on the voltage requirements for the LED's you have. If they will work on the 5v receiver power, then you're good to go using the power and ground from the receiver.

2) Very very little. Unless you put dozens of LED's on your plane the overall draw from a whole flight will be less than blipping to full throttle for a couple seconds.

Generally speaking, there are two approaches to LED's in RC planes - either always on or switched. I frequently power my 'always on' 12v lights through the balance plug on 3s batteries. I've used a pololu voltage step down/step up regulator to bring a 2s and 4s batteries into line. I think switching LED's sounds like fun, but if it's dark I want the lights on, and if it's sunny I don't bother, so I use this kind of setup for all my lights so far.

https://www.getfpv.com/12v-step-up-...nrI13jPVTEHcthlRXn_8tjNwJL-qrbJhoCrTAQAvD_BwE

If you want to put the LED's on a switchable scenario, you need another piece of hardware in the mix to monitor the servo signal and take action when the signal changes. There are a handful of things out there to do this 'old school' like this one from HK https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-receiver-controlled-switch-1.html

The quad pilots have some really advanced LED lighting capabilities built into most modern flight controllers, and there are also some more advanced dedicated navigation controller systems out there too. Here's a good vendor that's got some fun things to look at:

https://www.motionrc.com/collections/led-lights