Night Flying

The helicopters were finally topped off with MS Composit carbon night flying blades - Two LED's are located within each of the Carbon Fibre blades with two small sections of the carbon weave replaced with white glass fibre to allow the light to propagate ensuring that the pilot has the best possible LED visibility whatever position the helicopter is in. Each blade features an integral charging / switch socket. The socket accepts the 12vdc charger and the on/off switch and charges both blades simultaneously, once charged, the night blades will provide approximately 1.5 hrs flight time.

Martin and Darren have both been experimenting on how to make up their own night flying blades. They are constructed from wooden blades which have had small cut outs in both the upper and lower surfaces and also in the tips to fit small ultra bright LED lights. They are all connected together using very fine single strand wire taken from telephone line which has been pressed into very small cuts made along the balsa trailing part of the blades. Darren has opted to use a 3 Volt CR2032 battery and holder on each blade in the same fashion as the SAB night flying blades whilst Martin has gone for two rechargeable 1.5V batteries which are set into the root and have a charging plug and require a jumper pin for turning on and off in the same fashion as the MS Composit blades. After the batteries and LED's were wired the blades were re-covered using black Fablon adhesive film and checked for balance.

Glo-rope was sourced at IKEA for £3.99 per length, each length is around 1m and runs on two rechargeable AA batteries. It is available in white, pink, orange, yellow and green. Initial experiments showed that the batteries suffered from vibration in the spring loaded boxes so these were removed and a separate AA battery harness made for each glo-rope section.

Glo-sticks were used on each skid to aid in orientation.

Initial tests have proved extremely promising and a substantial saving has been made compared to using original carbon blades and glo-rope.

Here are the items you need to make up your own night flying set up: 2 x 3 Volt CR2030 batteries - £1.99 each from Maplin Electronics. 2 x CR2030 battery holders - £0.29 each from Maplin Electronics. 2 x  WL33 3mm Mini Green LED - £0.29 each from Maplin Electronics. 4 x WL34 3mm Mini HE Red LED - £0.12 each from Maplin Electronics. 1 x Black Fablon adhesive film - £3.98 from B&Q. 1 set of Wooden Blades. 1 length of single strand telephone wire for wiring. glo-sticks 2 glo-ropes - £3.99 each from IKEA.