Steve Bennett used to sell a kit that required some solder work and following some instructions that required some trial and error but I managed to put them together. I bought 2 kits for the strobes that were already installed on the wingtips but had never been hooked up. I bought another kit and bought a strobe bulb somewhere and built a "beacon". It's really a strobe, but with those kits Steve sold you could adjust the flash interval so, slowing down the flash makes it look like a beacon. It's mounted on the bottom of the fuselage. You don't have to mount it on the fin in case you'd rather make installation a lot easier and just mount it on the bottom. Or the turtledeck. I forgot my research on this but the regs say you can mount the beacon on either top or bottom.
One of those kits went bad so I bought a replacement, for a total of four. The three that are working continue to work well. I think Steve charged thirty or forty dollars for the kit but honestly can't remember. If this LED unit can be had for $50 or so, including the bulbs, I'd say that is a deal. I couldn't find a price on the Spruce site. I have really lousy luck with Spruce's website. Not only could I not find a price, I can't find anything a lot of the time when searching their site. The search function doesn't find things even though you know they carry it and even though you have an exact description. Type in "Slick 4316 magneto harness" and you get the magneto, not the harness. No link to the harness on the Slick magneto page. I never did find the harness the second time. I ended up buying a real Unison harness. The one Spruce sells is an aftermarket jobbie - and probably works as good or better than Unison's. It's so much trouble to get to my magneto though that I just stuck with the correct part. I got so annoyed with Spruce's website I sent them a note and they came back with the explanation that "the search function isn't an exact science." "Slick 4316 magneto harness" seems pretty exact. Maybe it's too exact. I gave up. I just wanted to see how much more I paid buying Unison (Champion these days). I've even used Spruce's part number on occasions and had it not be able to find it's own part, using it's own part number. I think Spruce wants us to call their phone sales staff for some reason. LATER: I just tried again. Same thing. I saw their dropdown choices below the search box had "Slick Magneto Wires" so I thought, "Ah Ha! So _that's_ how you get there!" Nope. "Slick Magneto Wires" takes you to a page with Garmin GX3 system components. I give up again. Back to strobes . . . I've been expecting another failure with my strobe kits so have bought some back-up beacons and strobe flashers on eBay. They're still sitting on my shelf in the hangar since the kits from Great Plains continue to fire. You can find some interesting strobes/flasher things on eBay. Cheap. I bought a very bright 12 volt brand new red rotating beacon for only a few dollars. Yes, it's for a forklift . . . but as Socrates said, "All beacons are fair in the dark." Those LED strobes, if Google is right and these things are just under $50, that's good to know about since I'm sure they use less electricity than normal strobes. LED's are taking over the world. Mike KSEE Laser147 at Juno.com ____________________________________________________________ Affordable Wireless Plans Set up is easy. Get online in minutes. Starting at only $14.95 per month! www.netzero.net?refcd=nzmem0216
