Formation Lighting made easy
12-29-2013, 06:32 PM
#1
Formation Lighting made easy
For a long time Ive been looking at scale jets and notice nobody has been taking the time to make the formation light strips work. Everyone does the nav and strobes.
When I used to build models for special effects we used to use a product called light sheet back in the early to mid 90's. Its a micro electroluminescent sheet which is basically a fluorescent light tube in sheet form. This material is very thin and light weight. It can be cut out into shapes with holes and it can bend around curved surfaces.
This particular product is powered by 3V and has a small step up transformer that puts out 135V.
Here are a couple photos and a source for small kits including the micro power unit. The company is called Miller Engineering and they focus mainly on the model train market.
The sheet you see here has several connectors. The idea is you keep any one of them and cut your design out of the sheet. You can make several parts from one sheet as well. They also sell sheets up to 4x6in.
My only concern is any RF noise this power unit makes and how that would interact and work with a 2.4 radio system. I'll be testing this out because eventually when I build my big SM F-4 I want the formation lights to work.
When I used to build models for special effects we used to use a product called light sheet back in the early to mid 90's. Its a micro electroluminescent sheet which is basically a fluorescent light tube in sheet form. This material is very thin and light weight. It can be cut out into shapes with holes and it can bend around curved surfaces.
This particular product is powered by 3V and has a small step up transformer that puts out 135V.
Here are a couple photos and a source for small kits including the micro power unit. The company is called Miller Engineering and they focus mainly on the model train market.
The sheet you see here has several connectors. The idea is you keep any one of them and cut your design out of the sheet. You can make several parts from one sheet as well. They also sell sheets up to 4x6in.
My only concern is any RF noise this power unit makes and how that would interact and work with a 2.4 radio system. I'll be testing this out because eventually when I build my big SM F-4 I want the formation lights to work.
12-30-2013, 01:39 PM
#3
This same thing has been used on night fly helies for a long time. The difference is that most of the helies used it in the form of wire instead of sheet. But it still needs the same power converter to generate the 120VAC to make it light up.
These systems never caused any radio issues on either 72mhz or 2.4.
With all of the EL products the frequency on the inverter is directly related to the brightness of the EL material, the higher the frequency the brighter it is. If you can find an inverter that is at 4,000Hz or higher you will stand a chance of seeing the glow in the daylight.
You can read up a lot of info on how this works and choose from many inverters at www.glowire.com.
These systems never caused any radio issues on either 72mhz or 2.4.
With all of the EL products the frequency on the inverter is directly related to the brightness of the EL material, the higher the frequency the brighter it is. If you can find an inverter that is at 4,000Hz or higher you will stand a chance of seeing the glow in the daylight.
You can read up a lot of info on how this works and choose from many inverters at www.glowire.com.
12-31-2013, 08:01 PM
#6
Yeah, cool in deed. You can backlight an instrument panel for sure. Thats what I had this one set aside for originally, the cockpit on my SiST FW 190A8.
When I first used light sheet we were told it was like what was used to illuminate the Shuttle's instruments or something to that effect.
When I first used light sheet we were told it was like what was used to illuminate the Shuttle's instruments or something to that effect.
