There are two goals in mounting strobes or a beacon on a plane. ?1) compliance, and 2) visibility. ?Personally, I care a lot more about #2 than #1. ?However, if you are never going to fly at night, compliance may be your only goal. ?Daytime hours, strobes are one of the most useless things on a plane. ?They do about as much good as holding your bic lighter out there during daylight hours. ?At twilight, strobes (or LED flashers) become highly effective to draw the eye to the plane. ?Most guys that fly daytime VFR only, will still be out there at Twilight, which is when planes are difficult to see and Strobes/lights really come into their own. ?Since I do fly during twilight hours, and sometimes at night, I chose to go with a standard Whelen Aircraft Light and strobe package for high visibility. ?As Larry pointed out, it wasn't cheap, but I wanted high visibility. ?One may note that the actual aircraft tip lights may accept an 1156 12 V bulb, an actual aircraft lamp is a bit higher intensity with a reflector built in inside the bulb.
I do like the tailights integrated with the strobe and tip light as it draws your eye directly to the lights for easy visual tracking. ?I use a single alternating flash between the tips. ?I tried a quad flash power supply, but the uneven high power draw was causing problems for my old 20 amp DC generator. ?I used the quad flash power supply in my SuperCub instead and went back to my alternating single flash power supply in the KR. Bare in mind that my KR has been flying for 17 years now and I bought the strobe package 19 years ago. ?LED lighting didn't exist 17 years ago. ?If it did, that's what I would have bought. ?The only reason I went with the strobe type lighting on my SuperCub project is that the quad flash strobe power supply just fell into my lap for nothing. Jeff Scott Los Alamos, NM > ----- Original Message ----- > From: flesner at frontier.com > Sent: 04/13/14 07:58 AM > To: kr2s at mtnguy.com, KRnet > Subject: Re: KR> strobes > > At 08:30 AM 4/13/2014, you wrote: > >The leds can be seen 180 degrees if surface mounted. > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > I think you need 360 degree coverage plus some vertical angle. You > may have to mount several of them to get the required coverage and > for your safety in order to be seen. After all, that's what it's all > about, don't run over me. > > Larry Flesner
