Dear Fellow Night Fliers and/or those interested in night flying,
I discovere
d something tonight and I’d like to take this
opportunity to pass along an important little tip as you set out to conquer the
night skies. I received my inspiration to start flying at night because of
Jefferson City Radio Control Club member, Rick Taylor, who was the first (that
I know of) to strap some miniature lamps on the nose and wing tips of his
twin-electric powered 757 airliner. I won’t soon forget the mesmerizing sight of
seeing that little twin-electric powered jet crossing the dusk sky with it’s little lights lit up, if
you didn’t know otherwise it looked so scale-like you would have thought it was
a real jet flying over at about 30,000 feet on its way to some distant location
where life must surely be more exciting than here (see picture at left). Nevertheless the peace and
serenity obtained from watching that little jetliner silently cross the night sky with
lights would be hard pressed to find in any location on the planet unless you
experience it for yourself.
In any case Rick’s setup was very simple. Three lights, although technically he had the colored lights on the “wrong” wingtips according to the world’s standards, they were right where Rick wanted them; red on the right wingtip, green on the left and a yellow light in the nose. Rick Taylor is by far one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to electronics. He can talk till you’re blue about ohms, resistors, capacitors, mAh’s, Li-Poly batteries – well you name it – you get the idea. He started explaining all he had done to get the lights and the little airliner working and I must have looked like a deer in the headlights as I stuck that idea on one of the lost shelves of my mind as something to be done… someday.
Shortly thereafter a company called GWS (Grand Wind Servo http://www.gws.com.tw ) came out with an entire line of very affordable, easy to build and easy to fly electric airplanes, mostly made out of molded foam. These little models have opened the door to R/C and electric flying to thousands of people. Each model has sold like hotcakes the minute they hit the hobby shop shelves. (Has anyone ever bought hotcakes? What the heck is a hotcake? Same thing as a pancake? If hotcakes sell so well, why aren't the streets lined with hotcake shops? Am I missing out on the marketing opportunity of a lifetime here? – Oops sorry about the derailment of my train of thought, back to the story)
Among the many models they currently offer, one of them that I fly is called a “Slow Stick” which, to date, is the largest sized model they offer with a 40 inch wingspan. It is based on a classic R/C design known as “The Ugly Stick”. While many do, I don’t consider it to be ‘ugly’ and best of all, this little electric copy of the original possesses the same great flying characteristics of its ancestor and as anyone involved with R/C flying knows; "The uglier the plane, the better it flies!"
Since I can never leave well-enough alone, especially with my R/C planes, I’m constantly thinking about how I can affordably improve performance or improve how the plane looks or what I can do to increase the "fun factor". This plane, straight out of the box, is about as much fun as anyone can have flying R/C. It is so easy to strap on a battery pack and go fly. No messing with fuel, needle valves, or 3/4 tons of flight boxes, just plug it in and go. It flies so well and predictable that it finally occurred to me that I should add some lights on it like Rick had put on his airliner.
So off to Radio Shack I go. At first I started out with the
same simple 6 volt colored lamps that Rick had on his airliner. Rick had his
set up with voltage regulators and told me all the steps he had gone through to
make it work. I like to simplify things when I can and I decided to just go
ahead and use the regulated voltage provided to the
receiver pack from the
Electronic Speed Control (ESC) which is a consistent 4.8 volts. I
could just tap into that power source for my lights. The power is supplied to
the receiver even if the ESC has cut off the power to the motor, so even if the
engine dies, I still have lights to guide the plane down to a safe landing. I wired up
all the lights in parallel and added a plug to the positive &
negative wires and when I want lights all I have to do is plug it into the
extra channel on the receiver and viola! Lights! It started out looking like
this (click on the photo to view a larger version);
As I said, at first it was very simple, just the three lights which were barely adequate because at certain angles when flying, all three lights would completely disappear from view. With an R/C plane, if you can’t see it, well, you can’t fly it! Which is also why you never should fly into a cloud no matter how temptingly low they may be, once it goes into the cloud you can’t see it anymore and you’ll find that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all – NOT that I’ve ever done that personally mind you. (Uh-hum).
It didn’t take long to figure out that I would benefit from more lights on my Slow Stick so that I could keep it in view all the time from nearly any angle, but I didn’t have any bright ideas (pun intended) on how to get more lights to the aft portion of the plane due to the fact that the fuselage is a simple square aluminum spar with little room for mounting lights.
Then one day I was in
I searched the internet and couldn’t find anything at that
time. I couldn't find them in any stores. Touche! Then sometime around the Christmas shopping season I went to the Mall to buy gifts and as luck would have it, I found lights similar to
those I had seen in the mouths of those youth. Of course they were being sold
by some smelly Pakistani guy in the middle of the Mall in a seasonal temporary
kiosk. I went up to ask him if he could give me a demonstration of the lights,
because I wanted to make sure they were what I was looking for. At first he
really didn’t want to show me, but he conceded and sure enough these were the
same type of super bright strobe lights I had seen earlier in
So I asked the guy for the selling price of the lights. He said, “$9.95!” I nearly choked on my cola flavored Icee drink after he said that! The darn airplane only cost $33.00, so I wasn’t about to spend 1/3 of the cost of the plane on a single little flashing light. I was sure I could get them at a lower cost elsewhere.
No such luck.
He seemed to be the only guy in town or on the internet that had them. The next time I went by his store, the Christmas season was starting to draw to an end and since these people never actually put a price tag on any of the products they sell, I asked him again, “Hey, how much for one of these lights?” He said, “$7.95!” Oh, I’m starting to see how this works. "Thanks anyway I'll be back later", I thought.
A couple of weeks later I returned to the Mall now that the
Christmas season had passed and he had to do away
with his inventory and seeing
that I must have been the only person looking at these silly lights because the
same amount of them was hanging there throughout this entire time. I once again
asked, “Hey, how much?” He said, “$4.95” Okay, now we’re talking. I’ll have one
of them. Then in broken English I hear; “Ardent chew a leetle ohld forrr
someding like dis?” I gave him the “say that again and I’ll kill you look” then
I smiled and said that I didn’t plan on using them for earrings! I also wanted
to make sure that they flashed blue and red before I left the Mall. We tested
it and it was exactly what I had been looking for. At right is an enlarged picture
of what they look like;
These little lights run on two or three button-type hearing
aide batteries. As
you screw the cap down it makes contact and the lights turn on, conversely if
you unscrew the cap, they turn off. They’re bright enough that you can even see
them in daylight, but they really stand out in the dark. I used a tie-wrap and a
narrow strip of non-slip rubber to attach this little jewel facing towards the back of the
plane so that I would know that the plane was flying away from me. It really
stands out in flight against the dark sky. It now looked like this (click on the photo to view a larger
version);
It was just getting better by the minute. I went in to buy gas at some station about a month later and found that they had some of the same lights for just $2.95 so I bought the last one they had and added it to the front of the plane in the same manner. They’re so small and lightweight that most people don’t even notice them mounted on the plane. Then as luck would have it I was walking along in a parking lot and spotted one lying on the ground! It must have fell off of someone's ear lobe - or worse yet - out of someone’s belly button – YUCK!! ...where’s the rubbing alcohol?! I took it home, installed some new button batteries and it still worked! I removed a little bit of rust that had formed on it from getting wet and it has worked great ever since. So the Slow Stick now has three of these little strobes mounted along the length of the fuselage. They look really cool in the air while it is flying. They are so bright I can now fly the plane in complete darkness and see the plane from any angle.
One day the kids went to the Mall for some promotional deal to
draw people to the Mall (which obviously worked) and they gave them a bag full of little goodies,
including a bouncing ball that when bounced upon the ground, would light up with
two very bright flashing red LED’s and it would blink for about 30 seconds, then
shut itself off until it hit something again. Well as soon as they stopped
playing with the lighted ball, I figured it was free for the taking seeing that they were no
longer interested it. I then dissected it, like a frog in a Biology class, to
figure out how it worked and to see whether or not I could make it stay lit up
all the time instead of it shutting itself off every 30 seconds. I also wanted to
figure out a way to mount it on the plane. Well I couldn’t figure out a way to
keep it turned on, but I did figure out that if I mounted the ‘impact sensor
spring’ that made it turn on close enough to the propeller that the wind blast from the
prop would turn the light on. It will then run for about 30 seconds, shut-off
until the next time I throttled up then it would light up the night sky again. The
plane at this point looks like this;
Several months have passed since I started to enjoy the benefits of late evening / night flying. During the winter months I was able to get out and fly it in the snow because I had purchased a snow ski landing gear for it. Now imagine night flying in the snow. So far I’ve only done that once because it is usually too cold to enjoy, but when one considers the calm peaceful beauty of a still cold winter night it was too much to resist, at least once.
After months of doing all of this, the fact is, the plane is now starting to show some wear. The green wingtip light was starting to look white and it finally broke off completely. We found that it is much more difficult to fly with just one wingtip light. In fact, after that experience I had decided to stop flying it again in complete darkness until I had repaired the missing light. So off to Radio Shack once more, but this time I had the bright idea (yes, another pun and finally here comes the tip you been waiting for so patiently) of replacing the bulbs with these new super bright LEDs. LED technology has come a very long way; they are much brighter than before. They even had nice little surface mount adapters for the LEDs and even though they were quite a bit more expensive than the little colored bulbs I figured they would be more visible. Then I noticed something else in the drawer, they had the same LED’s in a “blinking” or “flashing” version. “Whoa!” I thought. “Wouldn’t that look cool?” I continued; “It will even look more like a real plane if my wingtip lights flash & blink!” So I decided to get LED strobe lights instead of the constantly lit type. While I was there, as a contingency plan, I decided to go ahead and buy a set of the original colored bulb lamps since they were so inexpensive and they come three to a pack, 1-red, 1-green and 1-yellow for under $2.oo.
A few days had passed and I finally found the opportunity to get to work on the wing and lights again, plus I was having a hard time finding a place to buy the “foam compatible” CA (Cyanocrylate or Super) Glue. Regular super glue will melt the foam the plane is made out of, so you have to buy this special type of glue. After I had assembled all of the parts I diligently started working on it well into the night. I added the super-bright green flashing LED to the right wingtip, then the red one on the left wingtip. I even added a bright blue LED (non-flashing) to the top trailing edge of the wing. Finally I wanted to replace the center yellow lamp with a new extra bright white LED, but they didn’t offer the white one in the correct voltage I needed. Nevertheless my friend, Chris Byrd (also well versed in electronics and internet usage), looked up an Ohms calculator on the internet and he determined that I would need a 25-Ohm resistor to knock down the voltage to the correct rating. Of course the closest thing they offered was a 20-Ohm, or a 47-Ohm resistor. I decided to “error” on the side of caution and I chose the 47-Ohm size to make sure that I didn’t blow out a $5 LED the first time I plugged it in.
Well after about two hours I had the whole thing all wired up and very neatly mounted on the wing. I had shrink wrap plastic over the electrical connections; the wires were very neatly taped or tie-wrapped in place. It looked very professional. Once completed, I thought, “This is good.” Not being able to wait, I just had to try it out. So I plugged in the battery pack and at first I thought it wasn’t even working, then I noticed the blue LED was quite bright and upon closer inspection, I noticed the flashing LEDs on the wingtips and finally the most disappointing thing was the center white light. I guess the Ohms law is more effective than I counted on. By using that 47-Ohm resistor I had effectively cut back the voltage so much that it was barely even lit. No way to easily fix that and with the room lights turned off if didn’t look too bad and besides, I had other lights mounted down the center of the fuselage, so it didn’t seem critical.
While standing there in the darkness of the garage, the wingtip lights looked really cool and being the impatient one that I am, I decided that I would go ahead and give it a try. It was already completely dark outside and the winds were still blowing, but this little thing handles the wind pretty good, so outside I went with my transmitter. Everything looked good as I lined up for a take-off on the road outside my house. There was a parked car and a trash can along one side of my ‘runway’ and a mailbox on the other. They had also begun construction of another new home in the middle of MY flying field and it was progressing to the point that it now had the framework for the second floor and the roof trusses.
Despite these obstacles, I was undeterred as I quickly advanced the throttle to full power and climbed out with authority. Which was, at the same moment, that in horror, I realized the error of my choice. Oh sure, on the ground the ambient light from the surrounding homes would light up the plane enough that you could see it sitting there, plus the wingtip lights and other flashing strobes really looked great up close and on the ground, but friends, let me tell you, once it gets up in the complete darkness of the Missouri night sky, the ambient light that was so illuminating and helpful on the ground is now GONE!
As I mentioned before, if you lose sight of your plane, you’re no longer flying it. Well, each and every time my “really cool” flashing LEDs would turn off, I could no longer see the plane for that brief moment. So here I was trying to navigate my plane as if I were flying it inside a strobe lit disco dance floor! You know what it looks like when seeing people walk by when a strobe light is on, it’s like a scene from a weird animated cartoon.
One second I’d see it, the next I couldn’t see it. See it; don’t see it! Can you hear me now? As the terror slowly set in, I began to wonder how I was going to land this thing – in one piece – so I immediately started to set up for a landing, because I knew I might need the entire flight time the battery would offer just to get it safely down again.
I tried slowing it down, then the wind would catch it and blow it off course, so it kept ‘appearing’ where I didn’t expect it to be. It was like; I’ve got it; I don’t have it; I’ve got it; I don’t have it.
Then as soon as I think I’m under control I look closer and wonder; “Why am I seeing the blue light? Ah crap!! I’m going almost straight up!!” This leads to the now inevitable stall. It stalls, now it’s going straight down. “Ah crap!!” Full throttle, pull out, go around and try again.
Next attempt. I’ve got it; no I don’t. It’s like trying to drive when your kids are attempting to be funny as they throw their hands over your eyes while driving! NOT funny! (Kids, get ready for lecture #54 - alright back to the flight)
Okay, here she comes, ever so easy, now the wind catches it and it starts to blow towards the new construction – full throttle, back up for another try.
This time my approach is a little lower, flatter and a little slower. Coming around, I don’t want to put in too much control throw so that it doesn’t get crazy on me. I’m going very gently; “Oops, that’s too gentle!” Now I'm flying my “flying disco light platform” straight towards a parked backhoe; “Give it more right!” Swoop. Here it comes towards the new construction on the other side of the street. “More left!” Now it’s flash dancing its way towards the parked car. “Argh! More right!” Now its coming straight down the street. I’m thinking; “This is good, I might make it!” However it’s not descending. “I’m climbing!”
“Okay, time to CALM down!” shout the voices in my head as I use every ounce of supernatural eye power I possess (which isn't much) to try and see in the dark. “PUSH FORWARD!” “Ah crap! There’s that blue light again!” I’m going almost straight down. “PULL UP!!” Now I can’t see any lights, I must be going straight up again. The plane is oscillating. To stop that, I know I must give it some power. “EASY on the power!” Still the flashing lights taunt me – up; down; up; down. Now, pull up; “EASY!!!” Now I only have to watch out for the... TRASH CAN!! Right… left… up… down… up… down; BOUNCE! It hits the ground and bounces back up in the air about 2 feet high. “Stick forward!” is the last command I hear yelled at me from the flight control center in my brain, so I ease the stick forward, and it hits the ground again, then rolls to a stop against the curb.
Once again it is nicely lit by the ambient light from the surrounding houses and to my amazement and delight, I can see that no damage was done to the plane; “Whew!”
I picked the plane up like a bad dog by the back of its neck and hauled it straight back to the garage where I proceeded to undo the pretty installation job, cut off the tie-wraps, then I had to cut off the shrink wrap from around the wingtip LEDs and it took almost another hour to solder in the original little, inexpensive, red and green lamps that were on the plane in the first place. Okay you can stop laughing now!
I did, however, leave the cool looking flashing LEDs too. Once finished, I again headed back outside to face the darkness for another night flight, but this time it was smooth sailing. With the wingtip lights in nearly constant vision it was almost as easy as flying in daylight. It was still getting kicked around in the wind, but it didn’t matter, I could now see it all the time, so it wasn’t “popping up” or "appearing" where I least expected it to be and I was able to make a very soft, smooth landing no where near the new construction, or the backhoe, or the car and trash can.
So, if you decide to add lights to your R/C airplane for night flying, make sure that you have constantly lit lights on your wingtips or your night flying experience might be a big disappointment.
After these events took place, I have since found a source of the blinking magnetic body lights in specific colors like; green/green, red/red, red/white/blue, blue/blue and white/white (which are very bright) and now my Slow Stick carries up the original colored lamps and as many as eight of the flashing body lights. I use the red/red and green/green to light up the white underside of the wing panels and it really shows up well. I have also been able to reposition the constantly lit blue LED so that it is pointing straight out the back and when you line up your vision with it, it is so bright that it is almost blinding! Someday when I feel really ambitious I'll remove the 47-ohm resistor and replace it with the 20-ohm size and my white LED should shine brightly too. More pictures to follow when I can somehow get a good one of it crossing the night sky.
Well, these are not exactly "good" pictures of the
plane crossing the night sky, but they do show the latest (August 2003) configuration of
lights on the Slow 
Stick
with the new colored strobes mentioned above and the original lamps reinstalled.
I changed out the resistor to a 20-ohm size on the white LED, but found that the light output
still wasn't what I expected, so I removed the resistor altogether. Man! Did it
look great! It was exactly what I wanted and it lasted all of about 20 seconds
before it burnt out! So,
out the door with the bad and bring back the original little yellow lamp. This is a
photo of the plane sitting on the ground with all the lights turned on; you
can see how it lights the ground. You have to look rather closely at the second
photo. What you are seeing is a photo I took while trying to fly the plane and
get a shot of it as it flew around the light of a full moon. You can see the
flight path lit up by the blinking blue strobes as I pull the plane up into a
stall in a time-exposure photo.
It must be working fairly well because one night last week while flying it over my neighborhood, I am convinced that someone called the Sheriff's Department to report my little plane. They must have thought it was either a real airplane about to crash, or some sort of a U.F.O. In the quiet peace of the night, way off in the distance, I could hear a car traveling at a very high speed. I could tell that the car was headed in my direction and getting closer, so I stepped off the road onto a nearby driveway. At first I thought it was some irresponsible teenagers out joy riding, but then I noticed it was a Deputy Sheriff coming around the corner like a bat out of hell. With the pedal to the floor, he drove that hopped-up Crown Vic at full speed to the empty field in the general area where I was flying. He slammed on his brakes. He sat there for a minute; he must have been sitting there, watching the little plane; once satisfied that this "object" wasn't a Code Orange Terrorist threat or an airliner about to crash, he then turned around and came back towards me at a very slow speed, now I was even more nervous than when I heard the car speeding towards me in the beginning. Since I was still trying to pilot my little Slow Stick, I quickly glanced over at him with a "cat-who-ate-the-bird" kind-of-a-grin as he continued to drive slowly past me. He smiled; waved, then drove off at a normal speed without stopping. Whew! :-)
I wish you calm winds, clear blue (day) or starry black (night) skies, and soft landings,
I
can hardly believe how popular the night flying is becoming in our area, as well
as the popularity of the GWS
Slow Stick, which seems to be the (almost) perfect platform for night flying.
Two more of my good Flying Friends, Chris Byrd of Jefferson City and Daniel
Smith of Eldon have both added lights to their GWS Slow Sticks. Chris and I have
similar lighting systems on our planes and it is a lot of fun to fly them
together, that is until I get them confused and end up "flying" the
wrong airplane thinking that I'm looking at mine, when I'm actually looking at
his. Seeing both of them flying together sure does slow down the traffic that
passes the flying field as people try to figure out what they're looking
at.
Talk
about attention getting! Daniel's GWS Slow Stick is lit up with not three tiny
lamps, but TWELVE large
Christmas lights! It is so bright, I'd almost bet that the Electric Company sends him a
bill every time he flies! He even carries around a large tin can full of
replacement bulbs in case any of them burn out. His wife, Mandy, is probably
going to wonder why their Christmas tree just doesn't look the same this year!
Daniel's lighting system uses a separate battery pack, one for the flight
system, one for the lighting system. When we last went out to night fly
together, his light system battery ran down to the point that they were blacked
out, but with the light of a full moon, he continued to fly without problems! If
you have a broadband (high-speed) internet connection you could click on this
URL http://www.eldonmo.com/rc/rc.htm
to visit Daniel's website and there you can download and view a digital video on his GWS
Slow Stick flying at night (be ready to put on your sunglasses though!) :-)
We recently heard from a fellow night-flyer named, Kevin Bierley, of Atlanta, Georgia, who sent us a link to sample photos of the work he has done with his Slow Stick to make it a night-flyer as well using a neat lighting system called EL wire which is available from http://www.glowire.com. Also be sure to Click here to view his airplane. He also says that he added a park 370 brushless for the added weight. It will still almost 3D-type flying! Also he found that the wing for the ParkZone Slo-Vee is a perfect fit for the GWS Slow Stick and he thinks that it flies a lot better. He also started in electric flight just over 2 years ago with the Firebird XL and actually had about 30 LED's in the wings and fuselage. He says that it looked and flew awesome but you can imagine the amount of work getting it all to work correctly. You can also visit curtek.com for very nice inexpensive receiver powered LED lighting systems. Thanks for the information Kevin!