Kit Aircraft Modifications

When it comes to Van’s aircraft lighting there is a number of choices that you have to make before closing out the wings. I have touched on the very cool wing tip position lighting from Jeff Bordelon but you have to make a decision on the landing and taxi lighting as well.

There are two schools of thought here. You can either put them in the wing tip with the position lights or you can install them in the leading edge of the wing. The wing tip lights are small compared to the leading edge lighting and they tuck neatly into the wing tip lens. This is about all I think that they have going for them.

I have purchased the HID lighting kit from Duckworks Aviation. Don and Janet Wentz developed the lighting kits for Van’s aircraft and have done a wonderful job of lighting our path forward.

Over the past couple of days on the list I follow there has been a number of questions regarding the Duckworks HID landing lights and how they compare to the lower power lighting in the wing tips. I have gathered that there is a lower power draw for the HID system and much higher performance. One posting indicated that the pilot had no problem landing at his home strip at night with only reflectors along the edge of the runway. Wouldn’t that be something to try!

I think that if you can get over the jitters of cutting a big hole in one or both of your wings, this is the system you should install. It is rugged with no filaments to break every few hours and miserly with the electrical power. I am putting two of them in my RV-10. I expect that I will be using the landing lights fairly frequently. We own some property on a small island in Lake Erie and I would hate to leave without roasting at least a couple of marshmallows.

Dave

This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Purchase Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.