Night Flying

With winter upon us, the nights drawing in and clocks due to change at the end of the month it's a time of year that makes for short picking when it comes to getting outside to fly.  Or it would be if you haven't yet discovered "Night Flying"!!!

Night flying is nothing new and we've not invented the next big craze...we're just a little more organised than normal and a few of have already got their wings kitted out with the cheap and easy to use LED strip lighting that's becoming more readily available.  My own lights came from GiantCod.co.uk and at less than £4 per meter they're a bargain.  GiantCod have a selection of LED strips, I've got the basic waterproof, but others have the high density ones which cost a little more....it's all down to person preference and application.  For smaller planes or doing more intricate designs the high density strips with more LEDs would be better.  On top of that, GiantCod have a great reputation...certainly among those at our field...of getting your stuff to you quick.  A far cry from the increasingly overpriced postage being charged by a popular supllier in Hong Kong who'll take 2 weeks to get your order out the door...and the inevitable two weeks on top of that for it to get to you.

Setting up lights on your plane is easy.  Choose a model your comfortable with flying and lends itself to being kitted out with light strips.  Stick to something big enough to be seen (wouldn't go too much smaller than 3 foot wingspan), preferably of foam construction and pusher prop configuration (keeps things safe).

Anyone who's done any kind of RC Electrical work will have no problem connecting the lights up and the majority of the lights available will happily run on 2S or 3S Lipo without any grumbles.  LED's draw very little power so you can safely connect them in to your flight battery without impacting highly on flight duration and voltage range is sufficient for them to continue operating long after your ESC has reached it's cut off so you can see to land or find the plane if decides to land unexpectedly in the middle of a dark field.

There's plenty of gadgets out there to make lights flash, you can get colour changing LED's and with a little tinkering you could hook up a brushed ESC and have your lights brighten and dim along with your throttle....just be sure to programme it so that zero throttle does not mean zero lights!!!

As with all things RC related....common sense is key.  It's great fun, but be sensible and don't push it beyond what is safe and sensible.

Being keen to get the Night Flyers up and running nobody has taken any build pics yet.  However we've more lights due any day and I'll add some basic images here so everyone can see how easy it is to do.