Very affordable Night Flyer with LED's from dollarstore

jomber05

Junior Member
Hello Flyers,

I came across an affordable and easy setup for night flying, specifically meant for planes that have a hollow airfoil, such as many of the FliteTest airfoils, and/or my own designs.

I found that right now at the dollar store (I think it was family dollar) they had patriotic foam lights that are about 2 feet long or so, and comes in colors of red and blue. On the bottom of the light stick, there is a power pod with a power switch and battery compartment holding 3 small batteries. I bought 6, brought them home and ripped out the power pod and string of 3 LED lights, cut a small rectangle in the top of my wing, fished the led lights through into the middle of the airfoil, and hot glued the power pod into place.

This isn't the brightest setup as there were only 3 lights in each wing, but enough to fly at night, and you could always add more.

Advantages are:

1) comes with the power switch
2) operates on its own battery rather than your flight battery,
3) these are super light weight
4) easy to install
5) no soldering required.

I also found a "candle" LED at the dollar store that has a "flickering" effect that would probably look pretty cool in the exhaust outlet of an EDF jet... but this one really wasn't very bright.

To see videos of this in action via my scratch built "PowerGlider", please consider visiting my website at www.CreativeRCutah.wix.com/CreativeRCutah. This is not to take anything away from flitetest, as their designs are great and I have purchased their laser cut kits as well.

Also, please search me out on youtube and/or facebook. If you like this tip, please consider "liking" and "subscribing" on facebook and youtube. If I can get the plans ready via PDF by father's day, I am thinking about providing the PowerGlider plans at no cost for all fathers who like or subscribe. Happy flying!
 

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