Making 450 night rig, how many drivers and batteries do i need for 3 colors?

[justin keaton]

hey freaks im making my 450 a night bird and was wondering how many drivers do inned to buy for 3 colors canopy boom and tail fin,. i want it as light as possiable. and also i dont know anything about night set ups so what kind of battery is great and how many do i need?also anyone got any night bird pics to go buy on stinging them up and can you go from one color to another by cutting both ends and wiring them together some way? any advice will help!o

[piwko4]

one should be fine.. There was a post in here where someone spliced the align driver to run 3 wires. Also run it on the 11.1v to get a brighter light.

[emag remrofni]

For the battery I used an old 3s Thunder Power 480 that lasted for about 6 hours.

If you want to do three colors your will have to run two regulators, or splice it off of one but IMO is too complicated.

[flyinfool]

For splicing the Glowires http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=52342

It is not about how many colors you have but the total length of wire per driver.
As the wire gets longer it also gets dimmer over the whole length of the wire.
I do not know how much wire the Align driver can light.

Rather than carry the extra weight of another 3S battery on a heli as small as the 450, I would just run the lights off of the main 3S battery. It will only reduce your flight time by a few seconds.
The extra weight of a second battery may reduce your flight time by more than the current draw of the lights would.

[invertsick]

i run my setup as follows:

1M of cold light on the canopy
1M ofcold light on the boom and the fin
1M of cold light on the skids
1M of cold light on the boom supports.

So total 4 lights, to run 4 lights you need 2 drivers with one 2S 800 mah battery like the one used in LAMA coaxial helis.

To connect the lipo to 2 drivers you need to use a Y harness.

This is a perfect combination, will try to post some pics If I can.

serge