Night Flying

[fliteadmin]

This is one of our favorites! The pair of Josh's give a little insight for flying at night. We're getting close to winter and the days are shorter... but it wont stop us from flying!

 

[Grazer]

Hey Guys,

Do you have any wiring diagrams from simple to more complicated setups?

Grazer

 

[bmsweb]

I wasn't interested in night flying until I saw the previous episode in the car park. I have to ask the question, is it harder to fly at night? Can you still tell what the aircraft is doing etc?

BTW: Another fantastic episode

 

[Heli-Yeah!]

I have yet to install the lights on my plane, but when I put lights on my heli, it was like I was connected to the thing. Your focal point is only the aircraft, because you can't see much else. With every input I gave to the heli, I could see the response immediately, where as in the daylight I think it can takes a little longer to register what your seeing, depending on available sunlight, your angle to the sun, and the sun's angle to the earth. Lights can also help provide a better sense of orientation (at least for me they did), just stay away from to many flashing lights, as they can actually disorientate you.

 

[ananas1301]

I wasn't interested in night flying until I saw the previous episode in the car park. I have to ask the question, is it harder to fly at night? Can you still tell what the aircraft is doing etc?

BTW: Another fantastic episode

It is hard to try nightflying without any lights on your plane. I can tell to you that because I had to experience that with a broken plane afterwards (You always learn something new when you go to the field!)

So first tip is to fly only at places you´ve flown before at day times, so you know all the propotions of the field and don´t fly into a light post (which has its lights off for some reason )

Then have a plane that can fly really slowly to start with because it will get harder/or you will have to get used to knowing how your planes position is, so you can correct it and fly safe turns.

Hope thats good for a start.

 

[UndCon]

On my Quad I use a Turnigy Receiver Controlled Switch. This enables me to turn LED's on or off with a 2way switch

Here is what my Quad looks like from below:

If you connect LED's to a balance plug you don't drain all cells even (if more than 2S)
I soldered wires to the mains on the Quad so the drain is even on all cells

On my Skywalker I have 2.5meter white strips installed in wing and fuselage.

Here is a quick test during daylight (recorded with cellphone during flight)

http://www.youtube.com/mrkalaspuff#p/u/38/Q3qFEHX2hAo
//UndCon

 

[ananas1301]

On my Quad I use a Turnigy Receiver Controlled Switch. This enables me to turn LED's on or off with a 2way switch

Here is what my Quad looks like from below:

If you connect LED's to a balance plug you don't drain all cells even (if more than 2S)
I soldered wires to the mains on the Quad so the drain is even on all cells

On my Skywalker I have 2.5meter white strips installed in wing and fuselage.

Here is a quick test during daylight (recorded with cellphone during flight)

http://www.youtube.com/mrkalaspuff#p/u/38/Q3qFEHX2hAo
//UndCon

If you don´t use all cells together/or just the main for the supply you will have the cells you´re using for light power supply drifting of and that will damage your lipo much quicker!
So guys for everyone out there, be careful how you connect stuff around the battery especially with lipos!

 

[lobstermash]

I set up my Tuff Trainer with lights - a strip of 4 LEDs on each wing tip and two strips of 4 LEDs on the nose. The nose ones are white, while the others are red and green (of course). Red on the left and green on the right (easy to remember for me because it's the same as nautical ). Night flying is really easy as long as you don't fly fast, or try to do any crazy aerobatics. To stop myself from being tempted I usually put a really slow prop on and fly dual rates. The plane gets away from you really quickly if you lose concentration for a second.

 

[ananas1301]

I set up my Tuff Trainer with lights - a strip of 4 LEDs on each wing tip and two strips of 4 LEDs on the nose. The nose ones are white, while the others are red and green (of course). Red on the left and green on the right (easy to remember for me because it's the same as nautical ). Night flying is really easy as long as you don't fly fast, or try to do any crazy aerobatics. To stop myself from being tempted I usually put a really slow prop on and fly dual rates. The plane gets away from you really quickly if you lose concentration for a second.

Yeah so you should be using rather a slow flying plane than an EDF jet

Btw: I would use red right and green left because here in germany on all country waters (like little lakes and rivers) it is that way but as soon as you go out to the open sea the colours switch and red is left and green is right (nautical as you said)

Do you do sailing or so?

 

[lobstermash]

That's crazy, why would they have them different?!?

I used to be a marine biologist. I'm in the public service nowdays, working on fisheries related stuff in landlocked Canberra, but the nautical stuff still comes natural.

You could still use an EDF jet, but it'd want to be a slow-ish one...

I am curious about whether you could light up an EPP plane with LEDs poked into the foam. It hold the light fairly well and would give it a glowing effect. Anyone tried this?

 

[ananas1301]

Yep I didn´t really try it out the way you did, but I did it in a quite similar way.
I glued the LED strip to the inside of each wingtip to it had the effect of shining through depron.

Click me gently

 

[bmsweb]

I did a very quick FPV flight last night as the sun had set. (We had friends over who wanted to see the bixler fly). The big surprise was just how well the FPV camera worked in very low light. I still wasn't game enough to push my luck, so I ended up landing. When flying outside the park if the spotter took their eyes off the model, they couldn't spot it again.

In any case I'm thinking with lights on the model there is no reason why you can't fly FPV so long as you know your surroundings. I'm thinking of combining both FPV with lights on the model . . can't wait to try this.

 

[berryr1]

sound like a good idea as then the sptter can see it witha quick glace's. just make shore there are none of those UFO freeks out there think it aliens comeing to eat there brains.

If you lot won't to take it a little bit further you could use zinc sulphide and wood gule mixed and then apply to certon parts of the plane. The zinc sulphide glows but it will need a charge from a source of light before it will glow in the dark surgest a big LED torch. It will give you about 5 minutes of glow before it starts to lose its effect but this is depended on the light source and exposure time.

 

[colorex]

sound like a good idea as then the sptter can see it witha quick glace's. just make shore there are none of those UFO freeks out there think it aliens comeing to eat there brains.

If you lot won't to take it a little bit further you could use zinc sulphide and wood gule mixed and then apply to certon parts of the plane. The zinc sulphide glows but it will need a charge from a source of light before it will glow in the dark surgest a big LED torch. It will give you about 5 minutes of glow before it starts to lose its effect but this is depended on the light source and exposure time.

I've seen HobbyKing have glow-in-the-dark plastic.

 

[Tritium]

http://www.glowinc.com has the brightest and longest glowing pigments and products around.
Use some of their paint then illuminate it with a blue led for the best effect.

Thurmond

 

[KKArioKA]

this look nice and simple

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewitem.asp?idproduct=20965&aff=583764

 

[Tritium]

That is good stuff. I have some made for aircraft emergency exit markings from Glorope.com (they don't have it anymore though) that is so bright that you can read for an hour or more from a charged up 1 square foot piece.

Thurmond

 

[BrownEyedFool]

What is that saucer that appears in the video?

 

[ChopperChopper]

Time for another show on Night Flying?

This is one of our favorites!

[That was in 2010!]

Now it's 2016 and there are a few foamie planes now being offered with internal LEDs such as HobbyKing Flybeam, E-flite Brave (=Pawnee) and Night Visionaire, and also Flitework's Shiny all-wood ARF night flyer.

I thought this might make an interesting idea for a revisited show - comparing internal versus external LED - which is easier to see or flies better? Is a whole plane glowing better or worse? Switched off external LEDS all over your plane don't look so good in the daylight!

Love to know - sounds fun, looks like a trend is starting with the ARFs getting released nowadays. Thanks for the show.:applause: