FlyLEDs

There's a kit you can buy for nav and tail lights.  These things used to be a big source of wallet pain for experimental builders because aircraft lights in general are really expensive.  Now you buy the FlyLED kit for about $325, spend some time soldering and you end up with something better than what used to cost $1000+.

The kit contents:



First you soldier on the 9 white LEDs.  Those are the big ones in the middle, the lens looks yellow.  The instructions do a pretty nice job of explaining how to soldier.  It took me just a little bit to figure out, then I think I did pretty OK.  Second you put the color LEDs on.  6 around the perimeter of each board.  Boards with green dots get green LEDs, red/red.

This is the completed wingtip lights.  Took me probably 3-4 hours at my very slow pace.  I tested them out with 9.5v, man they are BRIGHT!




One of the green LEDs in my shipment was busted.  It functions, but the glass (or whatever) dome was broken.  Going to ask Paul at FlyLEDs what my options are.
UPDATE. Paul sent me a couple replacements from Australia.  His excellent reputation is well deserved.




Then you start the controller board.  Luckily the big components are already soldiered for you in the latest version of the kit.  Thats a huge plus.  The bad part is the remaining components are TINY.





Here's the controller board with resisters all done.




Here it is all done and working.  There are 4 dip switches that configure how you want the nav lights to flash.  Notice my hillbilly 9.5v battery.  Red is left wing, green is right wing, yellow for tail light.  Pretty cool!