The brown paper

RAV3N_FPV

Member
Hey everyone, this might be a dumb question but I needed to ask, since all of the speed build kits have brown paper all over the foam, wouldn't the LED's look bad trying to penetrate the brown or do you remove the paper? I know some paper is needed for enforcement and stuff but help me out, how did you all handle this? Thanks!!
 

Grifflyer

WWII fanatic
Hey everyone, this might be a dumb question but I needed to ask, since all of the speed build kits have brown paper all over the foam, wouldn't the LED's look bad trying to penetrate the brown or do you remove the paper? I know some paper is needed for enforcement and stuff but help me out, how did you all handle this? Thanks!!

First of no questions are dumb questions, and if you want to put LED's "under" the brown foam you'll barely be able to see them (I know from experience) so what you could do is either mount them on the outside of the plane. This works fine if your doing something like landing lights, but it doesn't illuminate your whole plane if you want to do night flying. So the solution is to build your plane out of the white foam board from Dollar Tree, if you bought a speed build kit you can actually use the pre-cut pieces as stencils.
 

jaredstrees

Well-known member
not a fan of that brown foamboard either. I wish they would offer the kits in either flavor. Do what Griff said and make one out of white foamboard. LEDS inside those look great!
 

dgrigor02

Member
When I first heard the dollar tree foam had changed, I stock piled a whole bunch of it for this exact reason. Around me the soccer fields and parks are always busy during the summer until dusk. So I either have to get up early when there is dew ( brown comes in handy for that ) but in evenings I have to illuminate with Leds because thats the only time people are not playing soccer/softball.

I have cut out brown foam to recess LEDs then cover with colored packing tape. Works okay but like others have said won't illuminate the whole inside of the plane.
 

RickyG

Member
I just built a Night Mini Arrow using the brown foamboard. I peeled the paper on the inside and mounted 45 white LEDs on each spar. (24 facing the front and 21 facing the back) then I put 12 red and green LEDs on each wing tip (114 LEDs total). I have no trouble seeing it at all! The foam diffuses it pretty well I think!

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Ricky