My LED Machine Gun Adventure
Ron and all, just when I thought I might be researching something that nobody else is really doing yet, I run into this group of like-minded individuals, and I am very happy that I did. I had to wait a day or two to get my forum account set up before I could reply. My LED adventure began with the flashing stop signs I started seeing at various intersections around town. Further research lead me to the understanding that these were most likely 3 watt high powered LEDs. Initially I was not really concerned about in-flight visibility as I was with close up on-the-ground visibility, but this thread has changed my "attitude" about that.
My next progression down this path occurred during a visit to a local Radio Shack, when I stumbled across a little Velleman minikit MK102 that has 2 flashing LEDs. It uses a pair of manually adjustable potentiometers to change the rate of either of the two LEDs, and after I soldered it all together it worked great. At that point I figured I would just need to upsize the components to handle higher powered LEDs and duplicate the same module as many times as necessary for my application. While it seem that most of you are working with the WW I gun applications, I am trying to come up with a WW II application with multiple guns firing at slightly different rates.
I then also became interested in adding some sound to the mix, and my current plan was to use a CB PA speaker (or 2) with a looped sound file on a USB stick, with the sound and light modules all wired into the trigger on the joystick. I had not even thought about the possibility of designing something that would actually synch the sound to the flash rate of the guns. Ron you have now opened my eyes to that solution so thank you for that. My current mounting plan was to attach one or two speakers to the bottom of my forward baggage compartment, with a mock grill on the outer skin that would emulate the same rectangular series of holes found on the sides of P-51 Mustang.
I currently have a test bed of a variety of different LEDs coming from Super Brite LEDs, as well as strobe controller unit that really captured my attention when I watched the video. The digital controller has 10 modes, and I am really only interested in one of them that gives a machine gun-like affect. It has a 2 amp max capacity and I was going to try to run it with 4 LEDs. Ron I really appreciate the test videos with the 5 watt light, and you now have me thinking more about in-flight visibility. I will now have to assess the ability to fit lights that are bright enough but may be a challenge to fit into an in-wing gun port installation for my application. All really great stuff on this thread. Looking forward to the sound tests!