PIREP: NavStrobe Sextant 30w LED Nav kit

[Unit74]

I bought this kit after pricing out the Wheelen LEDs and realizing that's a grip of change for some new lights.

What's in the box:

Left and right lamps, tail, two rubber gaskets, dielectric grease packet and new oversized lens'. All bulbs are BA15 style bases. Rated power is 67 watts for all three bulbs. I don't know what the fillament bulbs draw, but I'd be willing to bet 67w is in the range of one standard bulbs draw.

The bulbs are extremely easy to replace on the plane. A Philips head screwdriver was all I needed.

The bulbs have two modes, stead for night ops and flashing for day. They do not sync, but the flash is enough to get traffics attention. I had traffic call me out on approach today at two miles which is unusual when I had the flash going.

A real step up from fillament bulbs and the brightness is hard to tell in the pics. They are much brighter in person.

The bulbs are TSO-C30c. The price was $295 plus freight with three other small items came to $10 USPS.

If you are interested in a higher state of visual recognition during the day or night, I reccomend this kit. It's cheaper than one Wheelen LED and is adequate for those on a budget.

 

[Unit74]

Before phots with standard incandescent bulbs

 

[Unit74]

Best angle for brightness used

 

[Unit74]

New LEDs installed

 

[Unit74]

Wow....

 

[Unit74]

I tried to,get the tail, but the photos looked like the tail was off. Ineffective in my book.

New tail:

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Nicely done. Much brighter!

 

[Steve Job]

Just a heads up, we've had these installed for over a year now, and I agree they are much brighter. But we've experienced an issue transitioning between the steady and strobe modes. Occasionally if you turn on the strobe mode, then try to go back to the steady state mode, one or more of the lights don't come on at all. This is a real concern if the unilluminated bulb happens to be on the tail, since (at least on our plane), it's impossible to confirm that it's lit during flight. I brought this up to seller, and he said the only way to mitigate this was to leave all the lights off for (I think) 30 seconds in order to reset the electronics.

Also, there is some debate regarding the legality of these lights, but our A&P signed off on them, and the proper entries have been made in our logs.

 

[Unit74]

I had an issue where the tail would flash and the outboards solid. Def an issue for nigh ops. I got ahold of the manufacture and was told toggling more than one time can confuse the circuit and thus, out of sequence. I was testing them out, on and off more than a few times and induced the issue twice.

The fix was leave them off for an hour to rest them.

If that becomes an issue, I'll just keep them steady all the time and avoid the problem. A good op check while preflight should ensure you are GTG though at night. Just leave em on while lighting the fires.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Can you report any RF noise on your radios? Turn the squelch all the way down so you hear the static. Then see if you get any change in noise when you turn the lights on. With both steady and flashing modes.

A lot of these LED replacement light bulbs have a noise problem due to being made by a 5yr old in China for 3 cents each. Not every brand has the issue though. Some are good, are bad. Curious your findings with these.

I'm not sure I like the idea of my lightbulbs getting confused.... But as long as the operator understands that if you're using the flash mode, turn them off for a minute before turning them back on. I'd be fine with it. Not everyone would be.

 

[Unit74]

Tried it. No noise. Only noise I have is from my strobe beacon.

 

[Terry L in KY]

I had to do a double-take. That could have been my plane in my hangar. Except for the colors of the stripes, the wing and the way it sits in the t-hangar looks like like mine......until the tail shot.....I don't have insulated doors....damn it...

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Tried it. No noise. Only noise I have is from my strobe beacon.

Cool. Some people have a heart attack about a device that puts out a tiny bit of RFI (although some do put out an obscene amount too). But seem to think nothing of a 40yr old strobe power supply that screams louder than a banshee, audible on TX and RX. "Cessna wee-weeee wee-weeee-- on a 3 mile left-- wee-weeee wee-weeee not in sight-- wee-wee weeee"

 

[Arrow115]

Can you report any RF noise on your radios? Turn the squelch all the way down so you hear the static. Then see if you get any change in noise when you turn the lights on. With both steady and flashing modes.

A lot of these LED replacement light bulbs have a noise problem due to being made by a 5yr old in China for 3 cents each. Not every brand has the issue though. Some are good, are bad. Curious your findings with these.

I'm not sure I like the idea of my lightbulbs getting confused.... But as long as the operator understands that if you're using the flash mode, turn them off for a minute before turning them back on. I'd be fine with it. Not everyone would be.

The tail light caused alot of static on my com radio. My mechanic thinks it may be a grounding issue. I currently have a regular bulb in the tail with no RF issues. The wing tip lights have not caused any issues and are a big improvement.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

There is probably something up with the socket on that tail light. These things all produce RFI. The design of the light coupled with the design of the socket are what shield and drain that RFI to ground. If the socket is falling apart, or the ground to the socket is crap, it wouldn't surprise me if some RFI is escaping.

How bad was the RFI?

 

[Arrow115]

At the time I thought someone had a stuck mike. After hearing it on two different frequencies, I realized it had to be me. I was able to communicate but it was pretty distracting. Not something I would want to have to listen to over a long trip. After landing, I did some trouble shooting to try to isolate what was causing the interference. Turning on and off the lights did the trick. Later, we narrowed it down to the tail light. Our guess was socket issues/bad ground as well. The regular bulb works fine till I get a chance to get in there and replace the socket and make sure the ground is good.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Now that is a lot of RFI. This is the primary reason you don't see Whelen Engineering releasing an LED replacement bulb. They're not going to accept that kind of noise simply because of a slightly out of whack socket. I've chatted with one of their aviation guys about this very topic. He said they've been trying to make a replacement bulb like this but the RFI is a major problem.

 

[bnt83]

Now that is a lot of RFI. This is the primary reason you don't see Whelen Engineering releasing an LED replacement bulb. They're not going to accept that kind of noise simply because of a slightly out of whack socket. I've chatted with one of their aviation guys about this very topic. He said they've been trying to make a replacement bulb like this but the RFI is a major problem.

I wanted to know why the Whelen LEDs weren't just a PMA replacement for the old installations and they simply said the FAA wouldn't do it. Even tho new bulbs may meet the TSO requirements for colors there is no evidence that when installed the systems meets the requirements for

§23.1385 Position light system installation.

(a) General. Each part of each position light system must meet the applicable requirements of this section and each system as a whole must meet the requirements of §§23.1387 through 23.1397.

§23.1387 Position light system dihedral angles.

§23.1389 Position light distribution and intensities.

§23.1391 Minimum intensities in the horizontal plane of position lights.

§23.1393 Minimum intensities in any vertical plane of position lights.

§23.1395 Maximum intensities in overlapping beams of position lights.


So how can you verify your alteration meets these requirements? In my opinion the only easy way is by duplicating an LED install that is OEM on a newer year airplane.

The CARs are pretty much the same.

Experimental? That's a different story.

When I checked into Whelens a while ago, I wanted something that said whelen assemblies part XXXXX are FAA approved to replace Cessna Part numbers XXXXX as in a PMA or

an STC that listed all regulation pertaining to nav light installation,

Neither document existed.

 

[Steve Job]

We've not noticed any RFI here, but interestingly the manufacturer has modified the strobe frequency in rev 2 of this product to help mitigate the RFI problem that others have seen. The original bulbs flashed at a much faster rate than the newer ones, except for the tail light, which still flashes at the faster rate.

At one time I thought we were getting RFI interference from the bulbs, and tried the newer bulbs (which made no difference), then later discovered the problem was with a noisy 2.4 amp usb cigarette adapter. One of the new bulbs stopped working, so at Osh '14 we switched back to the original fast strobe bulbs, which are more to our liking.