This unit looks good to me, as an additional light on my belly:

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/e ... ckkey=5779

I thought I read here about some regulatory flexibility on this matter. However, my search comes up empty. Anyone have any experience with this type of installation?

Thanks

“Better to be seen than sorry”, nice jingle. Who knew that white was 42% brighter than red?
On an Alaska flyers group they were mounting extra belly strobes on inspection covers, local FSDO considered that not permanent. YMMV.

I’d stay far away from Aveo...

I used to be a big fan of their stuff, but no more. The product sucks and customer service is even worse. Aircraft Spruce can suck it too, but I’ll stick with Aveo for now.

I bought that exact light, from that exact place. It arrived looking like it had been in storage for 30 years. The “lens” or resin or whatever they want to call it had yellowed. Aircraft Spruce wouldn’t help me, and I went back and forth with Aveo once I finally found someone to talk to but also got nowhere. I still have it, ugly and yellow. F-them.

Aeroflash makes some reasonably priced strobes,
they are not self-contained but instead require a separate powerpack.
Mine is their p/n 156-0017 fuselage-mount model, about $185 from Spruce.
The also make wingtip strobe units..

What about wiring in something like an AeroLED Suntail? You just need a hole in an inspection plate. A lot cheaper than the beacon you posted up as well.

Can't speak to whether it's allowable in that location per se, but at least the light is TSO'd so you've cleared that hurdle.

Ok, good to know about Aveo, thanks. I'm surprised at A/C Spruce's response.

Moving on, I see Aeroled has a small light called the Sunbeacon II. It is certified. Does anyone have this light? Bright? Noisy?

Whelen had a similar light displayed at Sun n Fun, but haven't seen anything about it since.

aqua wrote:Aeroled has a small light called the Sunbeacon II. It is certified. Does anyone have this light? Bright? Noisy?

I would highly recommend AeroLEDs. I ordered everything from spruce, and similar to Prosaria, I was sent some old stuff that the mfg replaced years ago. I called up AeroLED and complained of noise and they were like "That ain't right, your lights shouldn't do that with the shielded wiring. Lets fix this now". I sen't the old lights to Boise and I got a box with the new style lights literally the next business day.

Here is a pic of the Sunbeacon II on the vertical top. I like Karmutzen's idea of adding an inspection panel on the belly and mounting a beacon on the cover. You really cant go wrong with more light!!!

Surprised Spruce wouldn't take something back. I've returned a parts just because I didn't need the extra.

After replacing the bulb three times in six months, I replaced the rotating beacon with the Aveo XP Galactica. They make an adapter to fit it into the old cap, but I wanted it cleaner, and replaced the cap. The Aveo is 2.5", which is also the spec given for the replacement cap. After ordering three different caps from different venders (and even had the last two "measure" the mounting surface to confirm it was 2.5), but finding that they are all 2.25", (They must have shrunk during shipping), I got out the bodywork supplies and built up the sides so that the light fit & didn't hang over. A little more trouble than a guy should have to go to, but I like the look, it's a zillion times brighter than the old beacon & makes no noise. I really liked the looks & quality of the Aveo.

Hman442 wrote:After replacing the bulb three times in six months, I replaced the rotating beacon with the Aveo XP Galactica. They make an adapter to fit it into the old cap, but I wanted it cleaner, and replaced the cap. The Aveo is 2.5", which is also the spec given for the replacement cap. After ordering three different caps from different venders (and even had the last two "measure" the mounting surface to confirm it was 2.5), but finding that they are all 2.25", (They must have shrunk during shipping), I got out the bodywork supplies and built up the sides so that the light fit & didn't hang over. A little more trouble than a guy should have to go to, but I like the look, it's a zillion times brighter than the old beacon & makes no noise. I really liked the looks & quality of the Aveo.

Pics

Those smaller beacons / strobes / whatever look a lot better atop the tail than the big old Cessna "jelly jar" lights.
That is a really good location for a strobe /beacon if you're just gonna run one--
very visible from a number of angles.

My C150TD had an Aeroflash strobe on top of the vertical, with a cap that kinda faired it in, looked really good.
I wouldn't mind something similar for the C180 but I haven't ever seen one tat really appeals to me,
due to the rudder counterbalance there isn't much room on top of the fin.
Here's a photo of it (after the guy I sold the airplane to repainted it):

aqua wrote:<snip>

I thought I read here about some regulatory flexibility on this matter. However, my search comes up empty. Anyone have any experience with this type of installation?

Thanks

I do not know what the subject plane is but TSO may or may not be required for one beacon.
For additional beacons, try:
NORSEE = NOn Required Safety Enhancing Equipment http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgPolicy.nsf/0/1790b02f1833357486257f9200592110/$FILE/PS-AIR-21.8-1602.pdf
and
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/norsee/

IPat, the NORSEE ruling is what I was trying to search for, thanks.

Subject airplane is a C-180E. It has Whelen Orion LED NAV/Flashers on wingtips and tail. The fin is smooth, and the new light will go on the belly, about halfway from the wing to the tail.

Thanks everyone.

The Cessna Aeroflash is off the scale to buy another, aside from pricey bulbs and short life spans. Whelen has the 70509 as a TSO'd replacement and not too painful a price. It is just the lens and bulb, no can to speak of below the lens. The electronics are in the base bulb holder, eliminating the black box and the massive resistor. If you have strobes, then you don't need a flasher, its either or. Personally I always leave the beacon on to show I have the master on. I am a special kind of idiot and will walk away with the master on. This allows me to know I am failing in my responsibility, again. I do like the LED beacon the 206H has, very low power draw and no electronic wind up noise when it is on. I just don't get why LEDs are 4-5 times the price of an incandescent bulb unit. My newish Caravan still has the Aeroflash unit in the tail. Which on the Amphib is waaaaay the heck up there. I have to get a scissor lift or cherry picker to swap the bulb. It is a super candidate for an LED unit, but it must be TSO'd.

I am in the doubting Thomas school of thought on lights and collision avoidance. Every time I have nearly been clobbered it was somebody descending, climbing or turning from their blind spot into my personal space. I could have been lit up like the Las Vegas strip and it would have made no difference. As far as birds, lights have done nothing for me to keep from swatting them with the rotor blades. We had all kinds of lights on the BV-107. We still cuisinarted our way down the ship channel through the clouds of seagulls. They where not deterred in any way. I have seriously hit dozens of them. Doesn't do anything to the blades, which literally pulps them. You just have gull bits all over the windscreen.

dogpilot wrote:….Personally I always leave the beacon on to show I have the master on. I am a special kind of idiot and will walk away with the master on. This allows me to know I am failing in my responsibility, again. ....

I do this also.
A buddy tipped me off to it: "keeps you from leaving your master on".
I told him that I never left the master on, so about 3 days later, guess what I did?
Started leaving the strobe switch on after that.

dogpilot wrote: The Cessna Aeroflash is off the scale to buy another, aside from pricey bulbs and short life spans. ....

My C150TD had an Aeroflash beacon when I bought it, kept blowing the circuit breaker.
I replaced it with an Aeroflash strobe, which has the same footprint and fits the same mount.
It uses a remote powerpack which isn't quite as nice as a self-contained unit, but isn't too big a deal.
I mounted mine just aft of the baggage compartment,
although it could probably be mounted way back in the tailcone like the beacon guts did.

dogpilot wrote:The Cessna Aeroflash is off the scale to buy another, aside from pricey bulbs and short life spans. Whelen has the 70509 as a TSO'd replacement and not too painful a price. It is just the lens and bulb, no can to speak of below the lens. The electronics are in the base bulb holder, eliminating the black box and the massive resistor. If you have strobes, then you don't need a flasher, its either or. Personally I always leave the beacon on to show I have the master on. I am a special kind of idiot and will walk away with the master on. This allows me to know I am failing in my responsibility, again. I do like the LED beacon the 206H has, very low power draw and no electronic wind up noise when it is on. I just don't get why LEDs are 4-5 times the price of an incandescent bulb unit. My newish Caravan still has the Aeroflash unit in the tail. Which on the Amphib is waaaaay the heck up there. I have to get a scissor lift or cherry picker to swap the bulb. It is a super candidate for an LED unit, but it must be TSO'd.

I am in the doubting Thomas school of thought on lights and collision avoidance. Every time I have nearly been clobbered it was somebody descending, climbing or turning from their blind spot into my personal space. I could have been lit up like the Las Vegas strip and it would have made no difference. As far as birds, lights have done nothing for me to keep from swatting them with the rotor blades. We had all kinds of lights on the BV-107. We still cuisinarted our way down the ship channel through the clouds of seagulls. They where not deterred in any way. I have seriously hit dozens of them. Doesn't do anything to the blades, which literally pulps them. You just have gull bits all over the windscreen.

Not quite sure what you mean by "off the scale". If that means too expensive from Cessna, then that's probably true. But when I had wingtip strobes added 14 years ago, the Aeroflash version was the least expensive at the time, roughly half of what Whelen wanted. Of course, the Aeroflash only does the "bam--bam--bam" sort of flashing, compared to Whelen's "b-b-bam--b-b-bam--b-b-bam" flash. But they've been reliably doing their "bam--bam--bam" flashing since then.

When I needed to replace the rotating beacon because it only beaconed, didn't rotate any more, it just happened that Spruce had a sale on the Whelen all-in-one version, available in red to the front and white to the rear. I chose that, so that it would be less obtrusive to me when flying at night. Plug and play. Now I have the best of both worlds, "bam--bam--bam" from the wingtips and "b-b-bam--b-b-bam--b-b-bam" from the top of the tail. I also leave it on, so that it is effectively a master switch warning light--and I can attest that it has worked well for that purpose!

I don't know how much flashing lights really help, though. I routinely flash my landing/taxi lights (Precise Flight Pulselite) when in the vicinity of airports, and because they're HIDs, they're exceedingly bright. But I have no doubt that others aren't really looking hard enough, even if I'm flashing all the lights I have. I'll be glad when more airplanes are ADS-B Out equipped, so that I'll get even more warnings than I do now when others are nearby.

Cary

Zzz wrote:Surprised Spruce wouldn't take something back. I've returned a parts just because I didn't need the extra.

Their antics with Alaska shipping charges are ridiculous and they wouldn’t pay to return or refund what I already paid plus there was a restocking fee because it was a non stock item.