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Led lighting, and LED replacement bulbs now on CS-STAN issue 4

The good thing about the LED’s is that although they cost more to buy they last a lot longer. Or the aviation ones do. Not so sure about the ones used at home.
But they do use less power.

France

After much rule reading and discussion one of our customers turned up with two LED lights that he wanted use to replace the incandescent lights.
After a brief scan of the regulations we found this to be acceptable and fitted them.

The only problem being these very inexpensive lights had been intended for use on a tractor and provided light suitable for travelling at about 20 MPH.

While certification means almost nothing in these products (except a much higher price) one thing I would suspect on the cheap ones is RF interference. All LED lamps contain a switch-mode power supply and this has the potential to wipe out all the aviation frequency bands In practice what happens is that you find, a year later, that a specific frequency doesn’t work or has a lot of noise on it.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I installed a WAT pro PAR36 it was expensive very happy with it . It has an heating element in the front in case of icing. I leave it on now for a local VFR flight.

EBST

Peter wrote:

For visibility (to others), plus the LED versions draw so little power they can be left on all the time one is flying.

This I my primary reason for wanting to install them. I would prefer the “wig wag/pulse” light system for extra “visibility”, but it seems only AeroLEDs supply these with build-in feature and from what I understand requires an extra cable and a 3 point light switch. Not having looked further into it, I’d imagine that CS-STAN for this cable and switch installation is not going to work for an EASA part-CAO certified airplane (under CS-STAN), and would therefor require a pricier installation process – even if it’s all rather simple. That being said – AeroLEDs actually seems to have and EASA STC for their system – as opposed to almost anybody else!
I stick with the cost friendly day VFR only AeroLites for my purpose.

Last Edited by Yeager at 29 Apr 21:44
Socata Rally MS.893E
Portugal

You need the interconnection cable anyway unless you are happy with the strobes looking weird (out of sync) after a few mins. In some planes this wire is a pig to run through; in the TB20 there was one spare already – this thread already has the details here. I suspect a lot of planes which had the old strobes will have a spare wire they can use for the sync.

Personally I would not go for the alternating mode strobes; I doubt it adds to visibility. Best visibility is with the old style flash tube strobes but we are all trying to get away from those, aren’t we? Unless the old strobes were wired correctly (which is rare in GA) they caused interference, and the lamps normally used (Whelen) were frankly crap build quality and suffered from water ingress. The Whelen strobe inverters were built well; see the avionics internals thread for photos.

Threads merged because the discussion became identical to previous.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@Peter

All noted. Had a look at the thread – some good stuff in there. Thanks.

Socata Rally MS.893E
Portugal

I’m not convinced that LED landing lights draw less current. That might be the case in consumer applications. But look at the specs of aviation lights. I replaced a 50 W halogen bulb (that was already an improvement over the former 100 W one) with around 40 W LED. So practically the same current. But it is damn bright! 🤓

Germany

Mine (see further back, pics and all) draw 1.5A each against 4A of the old ones.

A “40W LED” is a marketing term, used with all LED lights, meaning it is equivalent in light output to a 40W incandescent.

LEDs have a definite other advantage in the TB20: they do not degrade the plastic moulding around them. But in the TB20 they prevent the cockpit lamps coming on because they don’t draw enough current to energise the current sensing relay. A simple mod if you are into electronics (a reed switch with some copper wire wound around it) and Socata developed a mod kit many years later for some huge price. Here.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@Peter in this case it is Not marketing speech. 4.5 Amps at 14 Volts translates even to 63 Watts.

These are the specs:

https://www.aveoengineering.com/hercules-jp-14v/

100.000 cd is of course a number that should be taken with care. But these lamps are incredibly bright. I would have liked to have a taxi light, because the spot is very well defined, but the Comanche has no such mount. But as the landing lights are in the wingtips it’s ok.

Last Edited by UdoR at 01 May 06:32
Germany
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