LED's

[Y2KGTP]

Anyone put LED's on their Heli? I was thinking a blue one for inside the canopy, and a red on the end of the Tail (I have a V-tail on the way for my Blade CX2)

I figure it might make tracking easier when flying at dusk....

[z-man280]

yup, check with rockinbil...he's done about everything you can to a cx

[Y2KGTP]

yup, check with rockinbil...he's done about everything you can to a cx


Cx or CX2.....CX I assume....

[LLHeli]

Check out here - some pictures of the heli with LED lights (http://www.china-magic3.com/category.php?cat=13)

[rocknbil]

^ ^ Gotta love spammers. :(

There is very little difference between the original CX and CX2.

LOL . . . thanks Z. :D

It's pretty easy to set up LED's on *any* heli. You can buy a kit, but I find the wires too thin and fragile. Start with a handful of LED's from Radio Shack, get the combo kit with different colors. A handful of inline resistors from 50K ohms to 1000K ohms. Find an old telephone or ethernet wire, anything with multiple single-strand wires inside; strip off the outer casing. Get one male and one female JST plug.

A standard setup is red to port (left) and green to starboard (right) with bright whites pointing DOWN at the nose and tail, and a small red at the tip of the top fin on the tail. The bright whites serve as uber-cool spotlights for grazing along above the grass. :D Whatever you do, don't put whites pointing straight out in front or behind the heli - at night it will blind you and if you don't crash, it's annoying.

Next, spend some time digging around this site (http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz) to figure out how much resistance you'll need for the front and rear harness. It will also tell you how to figure the draw of the LED's from their color and size, and how to determine which pole of an LED is positive and which is negative (important.)

I put the front (red, white, green) in series on a 150K resistor, rear (red, white) on a 180K resistor. Your voltage of course is 7.4 volts, the 2S lipo pack.

Solder the front led's in a circuit with the resistors in series. That is

(wire) --- LED ---- LED ---- LED --- resistor ---- (wire)

Before putting the plugs on, cut a tiny hole in the top rear of the tail fin and work the wires down through the fuse, repeat this process for the rear spotlight. Once the wires are through the rear fuse, twise the ends so you have a series (not parallel) circuit also:

(wire) ---- rear red LED ---- rear white LED ---- resistor --- (wire)

Now you have two wires from the front, two from the rear, twist and solder them into the two wires of the female JST.

You will notice my front wires have what looks like a "fattie" section on them - I've rigged a lightweight plug here made out of tube-type automotive plugs and a heavily soldered wire end. This is so I can remove the front and rear canopy independently so they can be unplugged easily. For now, just leave the front wires long enough to work with unless you want to tackle this.

Carefully strip little sections off the wires going to the 4-in-1, about halfway between the battery plug and the 4-in-1. Solder the wires of one of the male JST to the wires, and insulate it carefully - if you're good at disassembling JST's, this is best done by removing the plastic and sliding on shrink wrap tubing, it makes for a neat splice as you can see below.

Now cut the holes for the LED's in the nose with a hobby knife or dremel them in (dremel works for me, nice and round.) Use a low-temp hot melt glue gun to glue the LED's in place from the inside. The one down in the nose is a bear to get to. :D Glue the rear ones in place too, you will find it easier to just work the glue in from the outside and clean up excess as it cools.

Test it all out with a voltmeter for shorts (don't want a lipo or LED to go poof) plug it in and fly. The power drain is minimal and nearly insignificant.