LED landing Light

[172DDriver]

I was wondering if anyone has any sources where I can get a PAR36 LED landing/taxi light rather then paying the ridiculous 400$.

[7ECA]

Sure, $24 and you can get yourself a Halogen landing light made by GE.

Oh, you want the LED, those are $407...

[ahramin]

Certified aircraft?

[jakeandelwood]

Although they last longer those LED landing lights don't last forever like they claim, they either start to flicker or just quit working altogether. I've heard they also can cause noise issues with your radios. You can buy a lot of GE incandescent bulbs for $400.

[lownslow]

One of the light technologies, I think it was LED, doesn’t appear in night vision goggles so I guess increased risk of collision with a coast guard helicopter if you’re running drugs. Also LED lights run cool so they won’t melt off ice that forms on them.

[rigpiggy]

aircraft spruce 275

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/pages/el ... plus36.php,

yes you can buy a lot of bulbs for that price, however paying 115/hr to put them in doesn't take long to pay it back

[co-joe]

I flew a beech with an LED taxi light STC and it was so bright, it out shone the landing lights! Funny though I think that was the plane that had the LED post lights on the airspeed indicator and the Beech rheostat dimmer didn't work on it at all. It was so bright you just about needed to be Corey Hart to fly it.

[PilotDAR]

There's a lot more to this than just swapping out incandescent for LED bulbs. There are replacement sized bulbs, but they must be installed with caution.

Yes, "cheap" LED bulbs used as direct replacements can cause radio interference. That would technically be an installation fail, so the AME would not sign for it, though he wasn't going to anyway without an STC. The company who got the STC for the LED bulb did the testing, and proved that their bulb did not interfere with the radios.

The LED bulbs come in different beam angles, so you need to know what you need. The beams are good, and for my experience, illuminate more than the old bulb did, though "more" maybe further, rather than wider, so aiming the LED landing light becomes more important.

LED nav lights are also great, though again, to get the STC'd ones, you're paying for the quality. Cheap ones may interfere with radios, and have been reported to change colour away from the require red or green after long service. Not overly critical, but not compliant either.

LED lights cannot be dimmed by old rheostat dimmers, a whole new circuit is needed. Incandescent bulbs dim by varying the voltage, LED panel lights are dimmed by flashing them on and off really quickly (full power/no power). Too fast to perceive. Full bring, on all the time, dimmed more off than on.

All that said, if you need to reduce your electrical consumption, and have a much more reliable system, LED's are the way to go. I equipped a client's 182 amphib all LED, adding two wing tip pulse landing lights, so three landing light bulbs and one taxi (wider beam). It saved so much electricity that to test the tripping of 25 amp standby alternator, I found that everything running (all lights, all avionics) it still would not consume 25 amps. I only tripped the standby alternator by running the gear pump. But trust me, if you have to diddle around with making an LED bulb work as intended, you may spend more of your time, than just buying the correct part.

[jakeandelwood]

aircraft spruce 275

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/pages/el ... plus36.php,

yes you can buy a lot of bulbs for that price, however paying 115/hr to put them in doesn't take long to pay it back

Are there really aircraft owners out there that actually pay an AME to swap out a light bulb?