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LED advice

woodmanrog

woodmanrog

Well Known Member
I am going to replace my wingtip strobe/nav's with led's and am having trouble deciding between Aero led's or Whelen Orion's. Both look like great products and the pricing is close. I presently have Whelens and am looking for the easiest replacement. Thanks in advance for your comments.
 
The easiest would be to replace your incandescent nav lamps with LED lamps, leaving the strobe and fixture. Lots of saved amps with this. You thought about that?
 
Low Pass said:
The easiest would be to replace your incandescent nav lamps with LED lamps, leaving the strobe and fixture. Lots of saved amps with this. You thought about that?
Click to expand...

That's what I tried. When I first fired up my Whelen nav/strobes, the wingtip lenses started to melt from the heat of the incandescent nav lights! So, when some LED bulbs came out several years ago as direct plug-n-play replacements, I snatched them up from Aircraft Spruce.

They plugged right in, as advertised, and were sufficiently bright. Unfortunately, the first time I turned them on with the radio on, I heard nothing but static on the radio. Nothing else in the plane causes radio static.

I put the incandescent bulbs back in and just don't fly at night. :D

This year at Oshkosh, I stopped by the Whelen booth to see if they had a fix for me. Unfortunately, it meant having to buy whole new strobe/nav fixtures with the LEDs built in, but they guaranteed that I wouldn't hear any radio static.

I pulled the wingtips, mounted the fixtures, plugged in the wires and everything works just fine now. No static on the radio, and no heat from the nav lights. It just cost me more money than I wanted to spend to fix a problem that wasn't really a problem for me. I still don't fly at night.

 
If you don't fly at night, what you really want are wig-wag lights. The LEDs do a great job of providing enchanced visibility for other pilots and controllers who are looking at your plane from the front, even in full sunlight. Head-on closure rates are the highest, so that is where wig-wag lights really make a difference and provide for better see-and-avoid safety.
 
Which Whelen model are you looking to replace? They typically have LED equivalents that you can install in the same footprint.
 
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