MCPX - 23 LED NIGHT SETUP

[FASTER]

I have tried other setups and was never very satisfied.
My first custom attempts - good but not good enough

Perfect Regulators - decent but very short blade battery flight time.
and to keep flying you have no options - recharge

20 mah lipos just didn't cut it, and difficult to charge even at .05 amps.
It would very quickly jump to 4.2 volts and would end up with 3.85 - 4.05 volts - even charging in parallel for a mah buffer.

Fuselage lighting - insufficient for good orientation

My setup
70 mah lipo = 1,000 % better - took a normal .05 amp charge
perfectly = 20 - 30 minutes

3 - 805 leds per blade - 2 green top / 1 blue bottom
Powered by 70 mah lipo - top of rotor mast
Honest 15 - 20 minutes blade battery flight time - 30 seconds to replace.
12 white - 805 leds on boom - 6 per side
1 pink 3mm led for tail light
4 white 805 leds - nose to light up a custom made white foam canopy
It really shows up well backlit - whole canopy glows

System adds 3.0 grams with battery vs daytime setup

It's been a lot of designing and building - great night flying little heli
If interested let me know - I put some pictures up

[Coco66]

Of course, !

[FASTER]

I will get you some pictures soon.
Be back in town Monday

[FASTER]

Sorry for the delay - it's a busy time of year for me.

I made a few changes to my night setup for the MCPX BL.
Had to figure out a few details
I wanted more light for the canopy
10 white 1206 leds in the front to backlight the canopy
10 white 1206 leds on the sides - 5 per side
Holy @#$% - It shows up amazingly well - without being overly bright because it's diffused through the white foam canopy
Replaced the single pink led in the tail with a set of 3 red 805 leds
They face left, right and rear for better overall visibility.
Total LED's = 41
32 white / 4 green / 3 red / 2 blue
It's been a fun project

I promise pictures are coming

[FASTER]

Just a few pictures of the night setup
The most important thing to me is getting the lighting just right so you get balanced visibility between the various components.

Outstanding visibility - The backlit fuselage / full boom setup really helps transitioning from day flying - giving similar visual cues.

In flight, the lighting is just about perfect for me.
No one thing is overly bright and washing the rest of the heli out.

I also threw some pics of my heavily modified day version MCPX BL
It is a rocket ship !
Lynx EOX 8200 kv 1101 main motor - XP 10a - BLheli
4000 kv tail - CP 7a - BLheli
Full fuselage canopy
130X gear modified
450 mah - 65 c batteries

[myxiplx]

Very nice. A LiPo on the head is definitely the way to do night flying on a small model, but you went for way more LEDs than I did on the body and it looks great.

[FASTER]

Thx - it was a lot of fun figuring it all out.
There's a lot to designing a full night system, for my feeble brain anyway.
Biggest hurdle was finding the right lipo for the blades and designing it to be robust and lightweight.