Date posted: September 7, 2010
- Types of LEDS and Power Sources
- LED Characteristics and The Simple LED Circuit
- More Series LED Circuits
- Parallel LED Circuits
- LED Circuit Tools and LED Strip Kits
- Wiring Standard Bulb LEDs
- SMD LED Circuit Wiring
- LED Wiring and Current Check for Battery Power
- Placing your LED circuits on your RC Craft
- Remote Controlling your LED Circuit
- Painting With Flight
– Download Painting With Flight as PDF –
Painting With Flight! We go over a few last minute tips before your first night flight, and some open shutter photo experiments, yielding trails of light across the sky.
Last minute flight checks
Last minute flight checks
Consider flying your craft at just around the dusk point of the day before you go all out into the darkness. This way you’ll get a good idea as to what your LEDs will look like to make sure you can find your proper orientation and you have no circuit issues that may arise from taking your craft into the air.
Perform the same maneuvers you’re looking to perform at full darkness. If you’ve any loose cables or weak points in your circuit – stress test them while there’s still some light left in the sky, that way you can retrieve your plane if the lights… well… go out.
Arm yourself!
Spooky Spooky… Scary Scary!
If you decided to use a brushed ESC to light your circuits, don’t forget that your ESCarms properly. Just like an ESC that powers your motor, you’ll need to have any switches controlling your LED ESC in the off position, just as your throttle needs to be fully down to arm an ESC.
Don’t forget that if you land and swap batteries – as you’ll have to toggle your LEDswitch off again.
Photos and Videos
Pops does some video work
Manual Shutter Photos
I’ve enjoyed creating this night flyer, and it seems to be a bit of a crowd pleaser. Numerous times in an empty field in Springfield or at the Omahawks field in Omaha I’ve had people stop by wondering what exactly is that thing in the air.
On a fairly lucky beginner’s attempt at open shutter / bulb mode photography, I decided to attempt to take some light tracing photographs. I think they came out fairly well, and if nothing else I’ve something to decorate my work area with. 
I hope you’ve enjoyed the series, and although we’ll probably create some other night flying craft and utilize other techniques in the future, I feel this series gives a good all around look at numerous ways to choose, power, and apply some LED goodness to whatever you’re flying!
