switchable lights

[musicmann78]

hey guys, i just bough navigation lights for my blade 400. right now im just powering them through the batt plug on my receiver. is there a way i can make them switchable on/off through my transmitter? i see that the f.mode switch is also labeled "gear" for retracable landing gear, is there someway for me to use this switch to switch my lights instead of landing gear? thanks for helping a newbie out! - anthony

[Mon_t]

ummmm no the gear channel only works in plane mode, otherwise it's idle-up
I wouldn't use the battery plug as you risk browning out the rx (I would think anyway).
and we all know what happens when the the rx browns out and needs to reboot.
I would just run a tap from the esc battery plug and put a small toggle switch on it.
also you don't say the voltage the lights/leds are rated for?

[musicmann78]

thanks for the tip. not sure what voltage the lights are rated at, but they are designed to plug into a spare receiver channel. are they safe to power with the batt plug? maybe i should just run a small separate battery for the lights, i have a scale fuselage so theres plenty of room to wire stuff.

[Mon_t]

are they LEDs? if so you should be fine running them off the flight pack.
LEDs use very little power, when compared to normal lights.

[widower]

If you are still using the dx6i, the gear channel is used for your gyro to switch between rate and heading hold mode. You could use that channel for your nav lights and just manually adjust the g110 gyro to heading hold. The flap/gyro switch on the tx would control the lights.

You can use the batt plug as long as you are only using the power and grnd pins. You don't want to touch the signal pin on the batt plug because that would cause the rx to go into learning mode.