The reason I put my beacon back on, I took it off when I first got my 180 and went with the clean tail cap, is that I like night flights, and I’m also based at busy class C airport. At night when I’m taxing - I don’t run my strobe lights, it destroys the night vision of pilots in other plane near me, or next to me in the run up area. I have my position lights and my red beacon (the one in the picture I posted was a test fit, I got the red light version of that size) on the ground so I’m visible, but not destroying everyone’s night vision. The Whelen STC for the strobe lights I have has a warning section that states “turn of strobe lights in the vicinity of other aircraft or when flying through clouds, fog, or haze. Standard position lights to be on for all night operations”.
I had not noticed the STC warning before, but what made up my mind was one night at small airstrip, (Harris Ranch has nice restaurant with a small private strip, if you fly in you get 10% off, anywho great place.) There was a group of us that flew out and as we were leaving at night this jackass in his diamond D62 (beautiful plane) throws on his strobes as he starts loading up and pretty much blinded everyone in the other 4 planes. I had to wait for him to leave and about 10 minutes afterwards till my eyes readjusted. After that I decided when I did my rebuild that I didn’t want to be “that guy” but I still wanted to be visible at night. So that was my reasoning for going back to a beacon, just did the smaller version.