When I started this project I wanted to have a lighting system on the aircraft, not because intend on flying in the dark, but just to make it easier to see the aircraft in the air (wing strobes etc.). This 10 Watt LED light was purchased from superbrightleds.com and consists of a single 10W LED in a white aluminum enclosure, which serves as the heat sink. It operates on both 12V and 24V electrical systems and only cost about $40. It has a 10 degree spot lense and is mounted with about a -1 degree downward angle. At night I performed some testing to see if it could illuminate an area from 100 yards and seemed to be adequate. 4 strips of contoured 0.040 aluminum were riveted to the underside of the wing skin using flush flush blind rivets. On the contoured aluminum strips are nut plates that were flush riveted (squeezed) to provide screw holes for the poltcarbonate cover. The polycarbonate cover was formed carefully by heating while stretched across the leading edge of the wing to give it the appropriate shape. This is my second attempt and also the first time I every tried to do this sort of thing with polycarbonate. I may end up making 1 more lense, but for now it's good enough. Another locking connector was installed in the right wing root. The light is about 4 feet from the wing root.
