Mentioned this project at EAA Chapter 26 last Thursday, and one of the members put me on to a local electronics store that carries a bunch of high-intensity LEDs. Bought a 5W unit that runs on 12V. They had a 10W unit, but it needed 30VDC and I figured you didn't want to pack 20 AA cells. :-)Originally Posted by Matthew Long
Got some other goodies with which I hope to gimmick up a flasher. Perhaps by next weekend I'll be able to post a video showing the daylight visibility over a distance.
A local Boredom Fighter builder named Bill Sayre has been monitoring this conversation, and sent me some pictures of his dummy Vickers guns.
One advantage of the Vickers is that the barrel is at the bottom of the cooling shroud, which gives you a big, flat surface at the business end for mounting your flashing light. Bill has flashlight reflectors mounted in his. He's also got small LEDs mounted on the sides of the shrouds as an indicator that the guns are firing (as if the sight of flaming Huns wasn't obvious enough.... :-).
This is a neat way to get a broad light-emitting surface without wrecking the appearance of the gun. Obviously, you could make little covers for the reflectors on those times when the groundlings are going to be close to inspect the airplane. Just remember to whip them off if you're going to go fling some photons at the local Cessnas.
Bill also sent me the schematic he used for the flasher circuit. It appears to mess with the control input of a standard voltage regulator chip. This works on Bill's incandescent bulbs, but I don't know if it'll work on a high-intensity LED. In the immortal words of Commander Montgomery Scott, "I'll let ye know."
Ron Wanttaja
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