LED Nav Strobe lights

I am in the process of recovering wings of an antique experimental plane with no electrical system. I want to install the low current drain LED nav and strobe lights and have been searching for a kit but so far according to Aircraft Spruce I have to buy each item individually. I am concerned that if the correct type and size of wire is not used I will have interference in my GPS and Comm radios? The documents available online do not identify specific wire for a specific light. Any ideas of a kit or complete instructions would be helpful. So far manufacturers I have tried to contact have not returned E mails or voice mails? Maybe some of the companies are not in business any more ? Any info would be appreciated. Thank you

Hi, Mike;

If you use a central mounted strobe power supply, then you'll need shielded wire out to each strobe unit. I'm assuming you're talking LED nav/position lights and a traditional strobe tube, although there are LED units available for those as well.

One solution I used for my Sonex was to obtain a QuickStrobe power supply

http://www.strobe.com/component/opti...facturer_id,0/

and place one in each wing. That way, the power supplies were far enough away from any comm/GPS antenna to not be a radiating factor. With both power supplies wired together at the power switch, they pulse in synch. However, the QuickStrobe is not programmable - you're stuck with 4 quick pulses, a pause, then another 4 pulses. I have these powering all-in-one nav/pos/strobe units using LEDs for the color/white spectrum and a traditional strobe tube. I used 18 ga unshielded wire and have no interference. The Sonex allowed space to mount the power supply right on the wingtip rib with about an 8" wire leading to the strobe tube. The radiating issue comes from the power-supply-to-strobe-wire, not the power supply 12V feed.

Any of the new LED style don't need special wire and cause no noise when mounted on the wing. AND no big strobe box. I just installed a Whelen set last year and they work great, no noise and just a standard twisted pair worked. I tried to get Whelen to spec a wire and they had none. I did use shielded wire just in case and grounded on just one end. No noise and they are bright. And cost less then the foreign brands.

Both of the planes I built have the older style Whelan tip strobes with a central power supply. I used shielded wire for them and don't have any noise issues (one of the planes is 18 years old now). LED units don't have a noise issue, so as far as I know shielding for them is just extra weight. With the older style strobe power supplies, the noise is usually based in power supply issues, typically slow switching of the oscillator driving the op amp that charges the capacitor(s) will cause the whoop whoop sound you sometimes hear in your headset (or sometimes is so bad you can hear it from outside the plane). Since the LEDs don't have an oscillator or large capacitor to charge, you don't get that noise. The other noise you get from the old style strobes is a click when the strobe fires. That is high voltage (low amperage) switching. Good shielding on the wiring will solve this issue. Again, since LEDs are low voltage and low amperage, you don't have the high voltage switching noise being generated or momentary high amperage draws to affect the electric system, so really don't need the shielding or filters.

Bottom line, LED lights and LED strobe replacements don't generate the noise you have to guard against with the old style flash tube type strobes. Momentary draw for the LED strobes I've been able to find are 3W, or roughly .24 Amps while they are on. In other words, there's just about no draw there so they should run quietly and shouldn't be much of a drain on a relatively small battery.

-Cub Builder

I thank all of you for your input. I did order a pair of LED nav/strobe lights and also ordered shielded wire. I am anxious to see how they work out.