16 May 2018

Fun Stuff: First night flight.

Here are the posts pertaining to my AveoMaxx Hercules 30 landing lights lights.
The Hercules 30 lights in my aircraft.
 

The bird's first night flight was today.  It was an experience to mind that I had only one engine, one battery, one alternator and the vast dark expanse of the Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming plains below me.

I have a set of indicator lights on my panel.  The blue light indicates when pitot heat is off.  It is crazy bright in the day, but not distracting.  At night it's ridiculous.  I had to cover it with a cloth (I later bought some light dimming covers to reduce the intensity).  Below you can see how overly bright it is in flight at night.


I could finally check how luminous my pair of AveoMaxx Hercules 30 landing lights were.  Here I am at KIBM just beginning my takeoff roll.  Views are from the cameras in the canopy and tail.  When I returned to my home drome, there were 3 other folks in the pattern.  They all remarked on how bright the lights were, unprompted.  One guy said he'd need to carry a generator to run them!  So my objectives of 1) being able to see and 2) being seen were met with these lights.  Below are the Amperage draws for the pair of lights.


High Low
Taxi 5.1 2.3
Taxi+Landing 15.5 7.2



Here are my posts relating to those lights.

Here's a video from the tail cam on takeoff from KIBM.


Here's a funny picture when testing the lights at 1 AM in my garage back in late 2016.


Fun video that same night showing the lights in wig-wag mode (taxi lights on, landing lights off) and with the nav/strobes on.  The lights were all resting on the bulkheads (wing roots).


 Here they are during the day (off).

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