I wanted a good test so I unpacked my handy-dandy new adjustable temperature solder iron and plugged it in. I also purchased a gizmo that will be used while soldering to hold the wires together and cast a light on the subjects to be soldered… so I unpacked it and plugged it in too. I soldered the three wires to the rheostat and covered them with clear shrink tube to protect against shorts and provide a little support and connected the other ends to the light controller. I connected the +/- wires of the aforementioned 6 light LED to the controller and wired the +/- power supply to the controller. I used a set of the gator clipped wires from the airplane power / ground and then clipped the other ends to some spare wires that I had that were connected to the controller. With all the wires connected, I turned up and down the rheostat and watched the lights get lighter and dimmer. The manufacture was correct, with the dimmer all the way down, there is still just a very faint pulsing of the lights. It would probably take a month or longer to drain the battery but – not the sort of thing I want to worry about in the future, so I next cut the power wires and inserted a switch and was able to switch the light on and off. Test passed!
I noticed a bit of flickering in the light and traced the problem down to my new/cheap gator clip wires…they weren’t well connected on one of the ground wires so I fired up the solder iron and fixed the problem.
That concludes another year of building! WOW, I am disappointed that I only put in 187.1 hours this year…looking to almost double that number in 2020 when I pass the 2,000 hour mark.