New Landing light, 4,500 Lumens BRIGHT!

Hey Jerry I found it,It wasn't the 1600 lumen round. If you need just one LED landing light combo taxi I found it at Rigid Indusries. It has 12 LEDs and rated at four thousand five hundred lumens !!!!!!!!! This model E2-4" Driving, draws 3.26 amps so I can still use my 16awg wire, (45watts ). Has very nice light pattern. My observation is centralized spot beam of 4 LEDs and then 4 LEDs each side of spot for horizontal light pattern. It does a fantastic job! Best light I seen come along. Used the Ductworth landing light cut out but had to make my own mounting bracket between the last two wing ribs in my RV9A.Finally something worth getting for safety reasons. I have one rectangular auto headlamp on the right wing.when it blows it goes! Hope it helps.
Ron

Link

Ron,

Very cool, is this the one?

http://www.rigidindustries.com/led-lighting/17361

Raw lumens (LED datasheet lumens) or beam lumens (taking into account thermal effects and optics losses)?

The AeroLEDs Aerosun has 12 LEDs and draws 3 Amps for 36 Watts of power. If I use the raw lumens from the LED datasheet, I can claim 3250 raw lumens. That doesn't necessarily mean that is what you wind up with in the beam.

You might want to inquire how they came up with their lumen number. The best way to measure lumens from a light is with an integrating sphere that captures the light emitted from the light and measures the total lumen output.

great topic, more info?

all these new LED's sound great, but what's the deal with turning all this energy into light?
Burying this in your wing, where's the cooling airflow coming from?
sounds like there would be some heat from the transformers or what have you, if not the lights themselves?

The enemy of LED's is heat. LED's produce a lot of it at the junction. This heat has to be dissipated through a proper heat sink.
Most LED drivers do not produce a lot of heat, however, as any electronic component, they need to be kept within tolerance.

The key to LED's efficiency is they are a very tiny point source. When they are coupled with a properly designed optic, you can put the light where you want it to do the work you want it too.

This is why lumen output in commercial lighting is defined as "delivered lumens", the amount of light actually getting out of the optic. The optic in our airplane would not just be the "lamp" itself, but all of the components of the system including the lens in the wing.

For this application, what is important is center beam lumens and the lumens delivered within the beam that is actually working for us as we try to find the runway.

Avoid products that only list lumen output of the LED's.

Yet my Trustfire flash light modified for landing light provides a lot of light for the same amount of Amp draw. They claim 11000LM and I don?t know how inaccurate that claim is but it is far brighter than my Xanon lights and far cheaper than most if not all other landing lights. So far so good, zero RF noise and have been functioning flawlessly for the last year that they have been installed.

JonJay said:

The enemy of LED's is heat. [SNIP] Avoid products that only list lumen output of the LED's.

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For what it's worth, Rigid products are very popular in the offroad world, where they're expected to work for hours on end after being caked with mud. I don't think the lack of airflow from being inside a wing is going to bother them all that much.

As for the light output, they list raw lumens, lux at 10 meters, distance (in meters) at 1 lux, and peak candela (all measured via the ANSI/NEMA FL Standard). Finding the beam angles is a bit more difficult... After a bit of digging, I've found that for the E2 series the "hyperspot" is a 5? cone, the spot is 10?, and the driving is 45? wide and 15? tall.

The big question in my mind isn't their reliability or ability to generate massive amounts of light... What I'm wondering about is how much noise will they feed back into the radios? They're very well made, but that's no guarantee of being electrically quiet.

Well let's go to the heat thingie. The whole back 1 1/2" are fins for the heat sink. I was pleasantly surprised at what little heat was produce from about 2" in front of the lens for about 1 minute on my hand. I mounted the unit so as the lens of the light was about 2 1/2" aft of the wing lens. If I didn't have a scoop for my fuel injection I wouldn't have hesitated to mount this light housing in the front of my cowl.
As far as lumens and candelas go they vary on one of the charts in their website.Why,,?,, well that maybe as one of the fellas mentioned it maybe the reflectors around each lamp. Last night I compared my bright lights on my 98 astro van to this single E2-4 driving lamp and found it to have a comparable horizontal plane but the center spot of& the E2 really reached out!!! Now on a compassion level I bought the pair of (spot ) DUALLIES listed on their website. YES they were bright at 1500 lumens and the SPOT was out there but lacked ( in my opinion ) the lateral lighting. I called the company tech line to learn more about the their website chart with the graphic display of the models of hybrid light beams. It was so clear what I needed was a driving light.I didn't tell him it was a airplane I was putting it in he thought I had a off road vehicle. He wanted to know how fast I was driving in the desert at night. My was maybe 55 mph. He answered with some recommendations. So I sent my DUALLIES back and got ONE E 2-4. It also comes with a wiring harness and a round rocker switch. I won't be using the wire or switch. I did have pay a little more cash but surely got a lot of value. I found also on the site they sell lighting for emergency vehicles and that swayed me toward their company. In my shipping box came a notice of limited lifetime warranty so that was another item that impressed me. Just looking at the website it has item # 17361. I say this because there were so many pages I wasn't sure I would get back to that page. Now that Father's Day is coming you might need a light like this for your riding mower��

Geoff that's the one!

Bavafa said:

Yet my Trustfire flash light modified for landing light provides a lot of light for the same amount of Amp draw. They claim 11000LM and I don?t know how inaccurate that claim is but it is far brighter than my Xanon lights and far cheaper than most if not all other landing lights. So far so good, zero RF noise and have been functioning flawlessly for the last year that they have been installed.

Click to expand...

I looked at the units mentioned in this thread and they sure are pricey! Like you, I'm still impressed with my Trustfire 11000's. I run them day and night and over the last year (and 100+ hours) they have not let me down. The fact that they can retail a light that performs like this for $50 bucks leads me to believe there is a huge markup for the aviation (or vehicular) applications.

General question, both for the Trustfire as well as the "other" lights like the Baja Squadrons and Whelen Dually and E2 lights...

How well do they hold up when being wig-wagged?

At the moment my lighting plan is evolving to include a Whelen E2 in the engine cowl and a pair of Whelen Dually's in the wingtips. The wingtip lights will be wig-wagged using the Perihelion Designs solid state wig wag controller. The light in the engine cowl will not be wig-wagged.

My thinking is the wingtip lights will be used in wig-wag mode for daylight recognition. I think I would buy them in spot light configuration for "down the runway" pencil-beam illumination, while the E2 light, purchased as a driving light, would provide additional "down the runway" lighting as well as a more diffused lighting for taxi.

I want to make sure that, after spending over $500 on lights, they don't go "poof" after a few hours of being wig-wagged in daylight flight.

I will speak only to the Trustfires, as that is my only direct experience. This light has 5 functions built in, so there is no need for an external wig wag control. I run the "strobe" function during the day and switch to "high" for landing at night.

The specs for the Trustfires indicate they will take up to 22 VDC and I run mine directly off ships power with no issue. That said, there are several different vendors of the same Trustfire model and I know of one that will smoke the board in seconds at ships power. There is an inexpensive work around for this, but you do loose the built in multi functionality. Perhaps the member that has found the fix will chime in.

Bit of a thread jack, but have LED's achieved the same light output as HID's?

I know LED's are efficient, but I'm willing to spend a few extra electrons and put up with a little radio nose to get LIGHT...

Short answer = YES
Longer answer is that results vary, but the lights being discussed here are very good, certainly equal to HIDs without having the added challenges of an external ballast to mount as is sometimes the case with HIDs, and of course the LEDs also don't have the same troubles with vibration shortening their lifespan as the HID's do (typically only a challenge in engine cowl mounts where engine vibration can shorten the HID lifespan considerably).

I have a pair of Trustfire lights, not the 11,000 lumen units but smaller ones. One was DOA and the other squeels like a banshee when running ship's power but is quiet below 6Vdc. This makes me somewhat leary to spend about $100 on a pair of Trustfires when I can spend about $150 on a pair of Whelen Dually lights and get perhaps a little less light but a lot better support from the vendor, and hopefully better reliability.

Kyle Boatright said:

Bit of a thread jack, but have LED's achieved the same light output as HID's?

I know LED's are efficient, but I'm willing to spend a few extra electrons and put up with a little radio nose to get LIGHT...

Click to expand...

Shorter answer: NO, not of comparative size.
See this comparison today. HID is WAY brighter and LEDs cause radio noise too.
http://www.avweb.com/videos/Video-HIDs-and-LEDs-Compared-224142-1.html

Ummm... Interesting - both a "yes" and a "no" response. Perhaps some qualification of the responses is in order?

I'd suggest the Aviation Consumer test done by Paul Bertorelli is aimed at the "certified" market; as such it doesn't benefit from some of the flexibility we have available to us in the "experimental" world.

As an example of the differences between the Certificated vs the Experimental worlds, the non-certificated LED lights, particularly those intended for off-road usage, come in a variety of beam configurations including "spot", "driving" and "flood". Their certificated rivals typically have only two flavors, "landing" and "taxi". The Whelen E2 that started this thread seems to be a compromise of both "spot" and "flood" beam characteristics.

The HID lights make a very hot center beam like the 4509's but without much "spread". The non-aviation LEDs can provide both a hot center beam and spread, depending on the style chosen.

BTW, there are more than a few owners of the LoPresti Boom Beam HID lights that have removed them because the mechanical portion of their electrical connectors have proven unreliable in service.

The LED lights win hands-down in "lumens per watt" - LEDs will draw less power per unit of light output.

I don't think many will dispute that, on an equal light basis, LED's are heavier than their incandescent counterparts, thanks to the need for the LED's to have heat sinks.

In the long run, the LED's likely will prove to have the highest reliability. Or at least I hope that is the case because they certainly seem to have the highest cost...

With all that having been said, LEDs likely give the homebuilder the capability of installing at least as much brightness as incandescent lights, with better tailoring of beam pattern. In the case of our aircraft, having three installation locations for lights will, I believe, yield a very full field of view as well as a very good "down the runway" beam projection.

I've replaced too many 4509's to ever want any kind of hot filament light bulb in our aircraft... The only time a 4509 works is when you don't need it!

Toobuilder said:

I looked at the units mentioned in this thread and they sure are pricey! Like you, I'm still impressed with my Trustfire 11000's. I run them day and night and over the last year (and 100+ hours) they have not let me down. The fact that they can retail a light that performs like this for $50 bucks leads me to believe there is a huge markup for the aviation (or vehicular) applications.

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Looking at the Trustfire online, I can't tell how you'd mount it - how to adapt it to say, a Duckworks kit.

Can you illuminate me? ;-)

Kyle - the search feature is your friend as there are several good threads on this topic. Some have mounted the lights via an aluminum plate sandwiched between the lamp body and the screw-on front bezel, while others have used Adel clamps to attach to a shortened version of the battery compartment of the lamp.

Just as a point of clarification with respect to comparisons of lights, I found this link to be very "enlightening" in terms of showing real-world performance of the Baja Designs Squadron lights. Photos here show a motorbike with a pair of these LED lights installed. I think I'd need to wear sunglasses to ride with that much light...

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=745429&page=18

Kyle Boatright said:

Bit of a thread jack, but have LED's achieved the same light output as HID's?...

Click to expand...

LEDs are rapidly evolving, so there is still some area of debate if LEDs have reached parity today...

...but tomorrow is a different story! There are some super LEDs on the horizon that are going to be a game changer.

However, how much more light do we really need? Yes, more is better, but I'm getting unsolicited comments from the tower today... And that is in broad daylight!

Don't let the fact that LEDs are still evolving stop you - they are great now.

I am working with the 13,000 trustfires, I have taken them apart and playing with the volts and amps, the pulse with modulation in the converter will make noise on my hand held, I have tested the lights with in and out volts with the stock converter chip, the three batterys are around 11 Volts, i disconected the stock ship and wired a 100 watt adjustable buck converter, using 18 volt dewat battery, running the volts up to 12 the amps are 3 amps and the light output is amazing compaired to 11 volt 2 amp. going to play with some 2 ohm 25 watt resistors and see if i can get the right resistor to run these without a buck converter and not burn up the resistor and get my 12 volts from a 14.5 v sourse.

Toobuilder said:

Don't let the fact that LEDs are still evolving stop you - they are great now.

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Absolutely. I make a living of it.

Over 50% of our commercial lighting sales last year where LED. I expect it to be 60 or 70% this year. The primary application for HID, parking lots, outdoor building lighting, etc... have almost disappeared in favor of LED.

We are consistently seeing products in excess of 100 lumens/watt (delivered) that still meet L70 (70% of initial light output) at 50k hours and more....

One limiting factor is glare control, which is more of a concern in commercial applications. For Aircraft applications, I would like to see the manufactures photometry in the "fixture" (installed in the wing) rather than in free air... and not a cheesy photo comparison, real photometry.

The integrated LED/Driver products are my least favorite. I prefer remote drivers which allow you to get the electronics away from the heat of the LED.
Today, electronics failures are the limiting factor in reliability, not the LED. But little is talked about that. LED current is monitored and if heat starts to run away, the electronics will protect LED by reducing power to it. However, if the electronics gets cooked, your done.....

Here is an example of the guts of a commercial product we use in auditoriums. 6000 lumens and weighs 13#. The scale next to it is 6". It uses a remote driver. I don't think anyone wants to stuff that in a wing. Just as a point of comparison. That heat sink is massive, for a reason.

bret - please DO share your progress here (with photo documentation, please, so we can see how you applied your modifications!). I've been pricing out both a Whelen and an Baja Designs solution for my lighting needs and I burn through $700 pretty fast. A cheaper solution would be great.

BTW, as with some of the other "Trustfire" discussion threads on here, it may be that several different iterations of the "13,000lm" light are available. Knowing which one you started with would be hugely helpful. Maybe a separate thread would be a good idea to document your project?

Good luck - I hope you find success!

Bret - here is the data sheet for the Cree XM-L LED. I suspect someone else is packaging it into the form factor.
Does this look like the correct LED?

http://www.cree.com/led-components-and-modules/products/xlamp/discrete-directional/xlamp-xml

You can use the data sheet and specifications in your research.

What they are doing is what is called "overdriving" the LED. It is intended to operate at 750ma or less. If you can keep it cool, you can overdrive it, but life will suffer if you can't..

Basically, the Trusfire stuff is all smoke and mirrors in my opinion.

reading on some of these geek flashlight fourms, they rate these flashlights at full potiental of the cree LED, no way are they running these flashlights at that power, they would melt. I have regulated mine up to 15 volts and 6 amps but the heat sink starts to go past 130 F in 1 or 2 min. I think (heat wise)12V and three amps will work with this 13,000 trustfire. just need to find a resistor that will work, trying to get away from the PWM noise thing......

bret said:

reading on some of these geek flashlight fourms, they rate these flashlights at full potiental of the cree LED, no way are they running these flashlights at that power, they would melt. I have regulated mine up to 15 volts and 6 amps but the heat sink starts to go past 130 F in 1 or 2 min. I think (heat wise)12V and three amps will work with this 13,000 trustfire. just need to find a resistor that will work, trying to get away from the PWM noise thing......

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Not sure where you are tapping into the circuit, but remember you have 12 LED's in the array. Cree doesn't even list lumen output below 1000ma drive current, per LED. I suspect you will get a small fraction of the rated lumens they state once you get the heat under control.

I took out the cheap driver and am using this adjustable 100 watt driver, live readout of amp and voltage, just trying to get an idea of what is going to work, and back to the 13,000 TF, I thing they are running a paralell seiries array. But at 12 V I am turning my back yard acre and my neibors into daylight, not sientific but, about 4 times brighter than if you just put in the three batteries. also using 3 watt stars for position, and LED strobe. work in progress, fun stuff.

bret said:

I took out the cheap driver and am using this adjustable 100 watt driver, live readout of amp and voltage, just trying to get an idea of what is going to work, and back to the 13,000 TF, I thing they are running a paralell seiries array. But at 12 V I am turning my back yard acre and my neibors into daylight, not sientific but, about 4 times brighter than if you just put in the three batteries. also using 3 watt stars for position, and LED strobe. work in progress, fun stuff.

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Very fun. Your biggest challenge is the engineering it takes to keep the junction temperatures within the LED's tolerance. That takes some serious thermal engineering brains.
I suspect, when you are done, you will conclude that there is no cheap way to get around the challenges. That is why the viable products out there are not cheap.
All that said, I think what you are doing is valuable and informative to the group and in the true spirit of experimental aviation. Keep us posted.

JonJay said:

Very fun. Your biggest challenge is the engineering it takes to keep the junction temperatures within the LED's tolerance. That takes some serious thermal engineering brains.
I suspect, when you are done, you will conclude that there is no cheap way to get around the challenges. That is why the viable products out there are not cheap.
All that said, I think what you are doing is valuable and informative to the group and in the true spirit of experimental aviation. Keep us posted.

Click to expand...

I got that Rigid E2-4 4500 lumen installed in my left wing using half of the Ductworth landing light kit, the half I made up as I went. At this point wanted to check for heat all around the E 2-4. I left the light on for 10 minutes. Temperature in my hangar 54 degrees far. With the front plastic style lens installed and the E2-4 light lens 2 1/2" aft and using a therma temp gun I register 74.6 as the high test on the front plastic lens. Now thru the Lightning holes on the end rib (next to wing tip) I registered on the side casing of the E 2-4 a temperature at 114 .3 degrees and that was the location on the LED lamps structure,moving the thermal temperature gun back along the side (3 1/2") into the heat sink it disapated to 83,6 degrees at the trailing edge of the heat sink fins. I was pretty in impressed with those figures last night. Now I have to tell you I am glad I installed the light between the second and last rib on the wing access to make my bracket. To tell you I am glad I installed the light between the second and last rib on the wing for access to make my bracket measurements. I used 3/4" Angle for a forward and aft brackets. I Did NOT use the side steel brackets from rigid. They weighted 5.8 oz and I felt I couldn't guarantee stability using just one forward 3/4" angle. The E2-4 can be mpunted by side brackets or using the 3 holes in the bottom of the housing. ( 1/4"- bolts course thread). I used the three holes. My front angle bracket I riveted on a 4" X 4" .050" plate. These plate over hangs the aft bracket.the aft bracket is where I installed two AN 3 nut plates. This is my up/down adjustment. I drilled two holes 3" apart on the aft edge of the 4" X 4" plate, installed AN 3 bolt,then put a spring on the AN 3 bolt and threaded the AN3 bolt into the nut plates on the aft bracket. Spring tension was stout. You make the call. On a previous note those supplied Side brackets at 5.8 oz ,,, my angles and plate weighted in at 7.4 oz. I felt the trade off between the the two assemblies was a more secure mounting. Hope it helps. This week I'll roll the plane out and readjust the light beam. It's just below center here in my hangar. Hope my story is understood.
Ron in Oregon RV9a

Ron - The light from the LED array does not project heat. What you are measuring on the front wing lens is the heat generated by the fixture itself, not the light.
As you can imagine, sitting on the ramp with 100 deg. temps, I wouldn't turn those on. However, that may not be an issue for a landing light application.
Still, inside the wing, there is little ventilation. As you can see by the design of the housing, it is intended to have airflow around it to maximize the LED's life.

Not all is not lost. These units, as with most driver electronics, will idle back the power to keep the LED's junction temperature somewhat under control. Obviously, the light output idles down with it.
As a side note, I would be curious to see how the PWM effects your radio when it is cutting its power back. Perhaps it won't.
You could expose the unit to a heat gun with and test your radio and see what happens.

What do these things weigh?

Jon I'll check the weight this afternoon. You bring to the table info I learned from so thanks. New thing to a bunch of us as well as a thanks to the others who added info on LED lighting.
Ron

JonJay said:

Bret - here is the data sheet for the Cree XM-L LED. I suspect someone else is packaging it into the form factor.
Does this look like the correct LED?

http://www.cree.com/led-components-and-modules/products/xlamp/discrete-directional/xlamp-xml

You can use the data sheet and specifications in your research.

What they are doing is what is called "overdriving" the LED. It is intended to operate at 750ma or less. If you can keep it cool, you can overdrive it, but life will suffer if you can't..

Basically, the Trusfire stuff is all smoke and mirrors in my opinion.

Click to expand...

I measured volts in and out of the original driver, I adjust 11 VDC in with my power sourse and measured 11 V DC out to the leds, this wont even come on till around 7-8 volts, amps really start going up after 12 volts aloung with the heat, but like i said above, these leds realy start coming to life (BRIGHT) above the 11 Volts that the batterys are sapose to give. this thing will make you see spots for a long time if you accidently look at it....... smoke and mirrors yes, but these cree leds are the bomb! if you can cool them, even thought about running a 1/4 cooling tube to the heat sink...at 200 mph of course, or a copper slug to mate up to the back side of the array, seen that on the flashlight geek fourms.

Sounds like your having fun!

Keep in mind, Cree just makes the LED. Somebody has to take it and do something with it. This is where things go wrong.
Clustering LED's onto a circuit board puts them all next to each other, one adding heat to the other. Not necessarily a problem if all was considered in the thermal design of the circuit board and how it transfers heat to the heat sink. If the circuit board or heat sink interface are not designed properly, well....

The first commercially successful high output LED arrays that don't require a heat sink the size and weight of a suitcase are COB (chip on board). Instead of a single LED die made to surface mount to a circuit board, multiple LED dies are manufactured on the same substrate, similar to how they make computer chips. Heat conductive materials back the substrate allowing much more controlled heat sink interface. This technology breakthrough allowed manufactures of fixtures to reliably make a high output product.

Most commercial products carry warranties between five and ten years. They can't afford to make false claims or bad product. Very few overdrive their LED's.
If you look at Cree's chart for the LED your playing with, they show 100% light output at 750ma. Run it at that and you might not be so impressed. Run it at 3A, you will be impressed, but not for very long unless you are designing a liquid nitrogen cooling system to go with it.

By the way, Cree doesn't police their OEM's. They will sell to anybody and if you want to misstate, lie, or otherwise twist the facts, Cree doesn't seem to care.

More than anyone wants to know I am sure.....

Hi Jon. Well the Rigid industries LED. E2-4 driving that I installed in the RV9a left wing weighed in at 32.6 oz. no brackets or bolts.

Ron in Oregon