Mine's Brighter Than Yours. Test results

Lights are one of the few things in our aircraft where it?s not all about you, It?s about everyone else. Your choice of lights is all about the other aircraft?s ability to see you. We all hear how ?my lights are brighter than yours? with this new LED technology in aircraft. Well how bright are they? Can you be seen? Do your lights meet the night time standard? Are you providing the best light for others to see you? Time for some real world data. Read the full article here. Summary data below. Stay tuned for more test data on other LED lighting products coming soon.

Interesting info. I (and I'm sure many others) would be delighted to see similar testing conducted on the landing light products, wherein the test would provide a single baseline of engineering units (candles, candela, effective candlepower, whatever) so that consumers might have a single point of reference rather than having to do all the conversion math themselves to try to produce an apples-to-apples comparison.

TSO'd

What I'd like to know is how the Aveo lights got TSO'd with output levels that aren't even close to the requirements at any angle?

I'd like to know the source of the graph.. I bet its Whelen.

Just a LITTLE research

aerhed said:

I'd like to know the source of the graph.. I bet its Whelen.

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This from Mike's article:

"Whelen hired a reputable 3rd party to perform these tests. Intertek Labs of Sterling NJ was chosen for their experience, expertise, reputation, and equipment."

Carry on!
Mark

Bravo!!

Reading the linked document indicates that some effort was invested in making this a legal, and independent, test with an outside laboratory.

This data comparison is very much appreciated and the completion of landing etc lighting is eagerly awaited!

Maybe a contributor to a "kit magazine" can educate us on test methods in a future publication so we can all be smarter. (ok, maybe just me)

Dan Langhout said:

What I'd like to know is how the Aveo lights got TSO'd with output levels that aren't even close to the requirements at any angle?

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There are many, many laughable TSO'ed products in the certified world. A TSO stamp of approval from the FAA just means it clears a paper trail hurdle. They generally can't verify the TSO data; its up to the TSO applicant to prove that you did.

More data?

As stated in the report, the requirement for 400 effective candlepower is only for 0 - 5* (degrees) vertically. After 5* (degrees) the requirement drops off to 240 and after 10* it is down to 80, after 20* we are down to 40 and after 30* we are down only 20 effective candlepower required.

I appreciate the lab did a full test for the horizontal angles, however when the lab ran the tests being reported did they also do the tests for the vertical angle requirement? And if so, is this data available?

Not to get too far off of the subject, but the FAA standards are not very relevant for LED. The standards where developed for incandescent sources, buried behind a colored glass lens, not a point source like an LED. You could design an LED product that only produced light at the specific angles shown in the standard. This could leave huge gaps between those angles. Carry this out a few hundred if not a few thousand feet and the blank spots could be huge....
The graph simply connects the dots between data points. This is somewhat misleading. If the tests where done through the full range, not just the angles called out, you would see the spikes and deviations. There may very well be "holes" in the distribution as one manufacturer focuses on the specific angles to meet the FAA requirements while another might provide a product that provides more even distribution.

I would like to see how each of the products perform with a rotating mirror or spherical type Gonio-photometer, not just at the FAA's angles. This would be more meaningful.

This is not a dig on Whelen or Mike or anybody else. The FAA standard is outdated and simply not relevant anymore in my opinion.

Rework the tests across the full 120 deg. range and develop a graph that compares this between manufacturers and you then will have the full picture for LED.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I installed the Orion 650s I got from Mike on our -6 last week. These things are ridiculously bright!

Being extremely happy with the quality and brightness of these lights, as well as the outstanding customer service, I flew to Mike's place yesterday to pick up a pair of the Whelen PAR 36 landing lights with the associated kit.

http://teamaerodynamix.com/shop/avi...ing-light-kit-for-par36-led-lights-with-light

I was extremely apprehensive about cutting into our beautifully painted leading edge and expressed my concerns to Mike. Since the kit he designed is relatively new, he offered me the use of his shop and tools while I was there to supervise the process. This allowed him to see how a "lighting challenged" guy like me made out by following his detailed step-by-step instructions that come with the kit and to see if there were any changes that needed to be made to the procedures for kits going out in the future. A win win situation for us both (No, I'm not advertising free shop use at Mike's with a purchase of Whelen products, I just got to be the lucky guinea pig for the day).

Aside from a couple of places where the wording was confusing (now edited and changed), the instructions really are excellent. The pictures and checklist style procedures made a very intimidating task, very manageable for a person with less than average skills. I highly recommend this kit.

Flying home in the afternoon, I turned all the lights on. 5 miles out from the airport I made a position call on unicom. Two airplanes in the pattern each spotted me instantly. One commented on the brightness of the lights and another holding short of the runway asked me if I stole my landing lights from Boeing.

Kahuna

What's the replacement for THESE whelens that most of us probably have



What happens with the strobe ballast? Does the wiring change?

The beauty of the Whelen LEDs are that you remove all the strobe packs and run the wire directly from the switch to the new "strobe." I figure I ripped out about 4lbs of weight going with the Orion's.

bkthomps said:

Kahuna

What's the replacement for THESE whelens that most of us probably have

What happens with the strobe ballast? Does the wiring change?

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Brian,
Yes the Whelen OR650's are direct replacements for those.




And a complete "how to convert from Xeon strobes to Whelen LED wiring" document is available here in our documents section under useful articles. I hope you find it useful.

I wonder how light output of the "old" strobes would compare to the new LED's?

Same question

Walt said:

I wonder how light output of the "old" strobes would compare to the new LED's?

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Flew LA to Osh last year in a group of three. The trailing aircraft could see the lead plane's strobe (traditional) but NOT the closer middle plane's LED strobes.

As the open statement in this thread said, it's all about being seen. Perhaps some groups flying into Osh this year can give us some real world idea as to how 'visible' the latest crop of LED strobes really are?

Back in late 2012, we had to respond to a complaint made by a 3rd party (you can guess who) that our lights didn't meet the TSO. We underwent an audit by engineering representatives from both the Denver and Boston ACO's. We successfully passed the audit.

Here is the strobe data that was measured on units off the line using calibrated equipment in accordance with the standard:


As you can see, it meets the TSO standard (as did other points that were measured in the vertical axis).

We are in the process of bumping up our strobe performance and introducing a new flash pattern. Here is data for the new version:


Whelen and their proxies can make all the claims that they want, but we have been audited by the FAA, and we passed. We are also not sitting still and are continuing to improve our products, with the experimental market seeing the new stuff first.

Dean Wilkinson
CTO, AeroLEDs LLC