Been getting a lot of questions concerning the two lamps
I illustrated as possible candidates for landing lights
on airplanes. I thought I'd elaborate for the group's
benefits. To date, I'm not aware of anyone who has installed
the 4352 an airplane. I had a Kitfox or Avid builder builder
put a pair of the little spotlights in the underside of each
wing to provide peripheral vision clues during landing and
he reported this arrangement to be satisfactory to his
needs.
Folks are still asking about heat. A few minutes ago
I conducted a very subjective experiment. Went out in
the driveway and hooked a 4352 to my van battery with
the engine idling. Again, just pointing the thing
around the neighborhood, I reaffirmed my first impression
that ONE of these lamps would suffice to land an airplane.
After three minutes, the lamp was too hot to touch for
more than a few seconds near the rear of the housing
where the connector penetrates it and on the large top and
bottom flats.
The mounting rim was quite easy to hold in the fingers.
Holding one's hand out in front would produce a too
warm to stay there after 30 seconds or so. My impression
is that a piece of lexan over this bulb is in no danger
of overheating.
If one installed a 4352 in EACH wing and used a wig-wag
circuit for collision avoidance, the heat energy from
each bulb goes down by a factor of 2 'cause it's on
half the time. Total system power is the same as for
one lamp since only one bulb is on at a time. In the
final seconds before flare, you could run both bulbs
continuously for the actual landing.
This seems like a good way to (1) have dual bulbs
so that you'll always have one if the other burns
out, (2) very effective recognition lighting, (3)
110 watts of "landing" light on a energy budget nearly
equal to one 55 watt lamp, (4) buy new lamps at
K-mart for a fraction of the cost of clasical "aircraft
quality" landing lights.
If someone will dope out the mechanical details of
mouting these in their particular project and send
me drawings/pictures. I'll publish them on our website.
Bob . . .
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(o o)
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