1950s Tail light colour and style

[Bob Cotsford]

I'm putting together a Black Horse P56 Provost, the one with the prop at the front, and BH saw fit to put nav light mouldings on the wingtips. Well, it would be rude not to. An 8mm drill through the moulding, the tip and the tip rib allows a servo extension lead to be fed through and an 8mm high intensity LED plugs in quite nicely. I soldered a 220ohm resistor into the positive wires of the extensions and hot glued the plugs to the LEDs and the LEDS into the nav light mouldings so that's the wings sorted. Red on the left, green on the right, easy.

Now I'd like to put a light in the tailcone, the Provost only appears to get the three nav lights from the pictures I can find, but what style is the tail light? Would it be strobe/flashing or constant? Second hand units look to be a fixed white bulb. Not that it really matters but once you start it's hard to let it go, even on a rather basic ARTF.

[Former Member]

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[Bob Cotsford]

Thanks Steve, that's good as I have white LEDs but not flashing ones. I did wonder as there doesn't appear to be a strobe fitted anywhere, I guess the RAF didn't feel the need. I was amazed that Google couldn't help.

I'm pretty sure I knew this sort of thing once upon a time but I seem to be suffering from Homer Simpson syndrome these days

Edited By Bob Cotsford on 04/02/2017 15:51:10

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Keiran Arnold]

Found this picture the light is on the sternpost just below the elevator

[Bob Cotsford]

That's the one Keiran. On this model the tailcone is a glass moulding so popping a high intensity LED in is easy enough. The landing lights in the oleo covers may be a bit awkward as there's not much room and nowhere to run the wiring into the wing easily.

A clubmate put high intensity LEDs in a Black Widow, it was surprising how well they showed up, even on a sunny day.

[cymaz]

I've found this for you Bob..

[Bob Cotsford]

Thanks Cymaz, those pics just emphasize how far a stand-off scale model this is - 50 yards +? It's certainly a model someone with a flair for detail like Danny could really immerse themselves in, the engine and cowl alone could keep you busy for a winter or two. The BH offering is very scant on details with many of the liberties taken to streamline production I suppose. In the air it will look the part, but I don't think it's up to their usual standards for their £300+ model range.

[Ady Hayward]

Hi, I'm putting my tin hat on at this point for as I recall the RAF aircraft of the 50's era had nav lights that were fixed colour and the pilot can select continuous or flashing. In the flashing mode they flashed at about 1Hz (1 per second).

[Bob Cotsford]

Now don't complicate things Ady. If that's true then this pilot will have forgotten where the switch is, trust me on that!

[Dave Bran]

Re: brightness, I bought a MD600 scale Heli from a friend who was giving up. It had only the landing light, made by another club member with four LEDs, and I added the rest with nav, white strobe, and flashing red beacons in the right places, ones that looked like they rotated by fading in and out with a bright flash in the middle, quite effective. Own battery, not from the flight battery (or the Rx one!)

The first time flown was a bright sunny day and to my pleasure the lights were all really visible with the one exception of the top beacon which had a red lens moulded in the body and at that stage I had put a red LED inside it (now corrected).

Then I turned to nose in hover quite close (to safety line), and nearly crashed the thing as the nose searchlight was REALLY dazzling even in bright sunlight! I have not changed it as it is fun to hear onlookers go "blimey" when I hover nose in but I now carefully offset slightly!!