Landing Light Performance

[VickersPilot]

It’s great Dan participates, maybe we should be so lucky if Austro, Diamond and Garmin did the same. Well done & thank you Dan.

[XeVision]

It’s great Dan participates, maybe we should be so lucky if Austro, Diamond and Garmin did the same. Well done & thank you Dan.

It's my pleasure, I'm glad to provide as objectively as possible our data and observations regarding our products and the documented (their claims) performance of others.

We are on the cutting edge of (2000 to 2018) HID technology for many serious players (HID retractable searchlights for Airbus/Eurocopter, Augusta Westland and numerous other Helis.) Also Daher/Quest Kodiak. HID is still quite relevant for very long distance performance with optimized & suitably sized optical reflectors. Optics play a very large role too.

We also sell NATO HID systems to Rheinmetall Canada/Germany (military), Kongsberg, Norway (military) Leonardo, Italy (military). Also for Military - recent single sale of 80 hand held battery powered searchlights 50 meters depth water proof with about 1 mile useful illumination.

Note: we were not consulted in about 2003-2004 when Diamond selected the 35 watt HID systems and the rectangular shaped low profile bulb/reflector housing Assembly. They chose it from our website options. A 4.5 inch (Par-36) round unit would have been a far better choice if there is enough available space.

A final note: as has been noted here before, we are also technology leaders in LED distance performance as well. Offering LED single unit Par-36 useful performance exceeding 1/3 mile.

I will be taking a deeper dive this month MYSELF, into how thw LED etc. technologies can best be implemented into all DA aircraft. We have never visually seen the internal space available for what could physically be installed except for DA40's. I have only seen first hand the external view of our HID's installations for all Diamonds.

All of our future efforts NOW are LED and similar even newer coming technology advancements. HID has been FULLY matured, really nothing left to do there in terms of advancement.

[Soareyes]

What’s the DAN policy on commercial postings?

This Dan, me, welcomes it. Other type clubs have a separate forum like Marketplace (COPA), Peddler Talk (BeechTalk) or Trading Post (MooneySpace) which provide a useful and valuable benefit to their members.

[Boatguy]

What’s the DAN policy on commercial postings?

This Dan, me, welcomes it. Other type clubs have a separate forum like Marketplace (COPA), Peddler Talk (BeechTalk) or Trading Post (MooneySpace) which provide a useful and valuable benefit to their members.

A separate forum would be fine with me. What I think needs to be avoided is mixing the vendors and commercial endorsements in with the owners.

[Rich]

I still wonder about the aiming in the '62. On my DA40, the 35W XeVision lamps' vertical aiming is close to straight forward, as shown in this picture. The lateral aiming is somewhat inward and different for each of the taxi and landing lights.

[XeVision]

I still wonder about the aiming in the '62. On my DA40, the 35W XeVision lamps' vertical aiming is close to straight forward, as shown in this picture. The lateral aiming is somewhat inward and different for each of the taxi and landing lights.

IMG_0800.jpeg

That aim was determined by Diamond, the OEM original bracket our Bracket and reflector mounts to for the 40s.
For the 62, aim can only be adjusted from under the seats they have a bracket with some adjustment.

[ememic99]

Did anyone try Aeroleds?

https://aeroleds.com/product-categories/sunspot-36/

[XeVision]

They don't make anything that fits as a replacement or is STC'd for the DA62.

[XeVision]

XeVision wrote:
I wasn't blowing smoke, We have done similar tests ourselves and verified this data to be reasonably accurate.

dmloftus wrote:
Have you seen this phenomenon specifically in Diamonds with Whelen's As a pilot, I'm speaking for my specific aircraft. I've seen no degradation within the timeframe of a normal final approach and I ran the luminance tests myself in the hangar to verify that. As an engineer and an analog semiconductor senior executive that has sold hundreds of millions of units of power supplies for LED lighting,
I'm saying any system that does degrade by the amount claimed within a few minutes is a poorly designed system.
There are definitely cheap LEDs that degrade much faster than higher quality Cree, Nichia, OSRAM, etc LED's.
Designers of high-quality products use better components and design for effective heat dissipation.

XeVision wrote:
The Graph is on their own Whelen website, they claim a significant loss for their own product the G3, their newest "best" performer ( ~$300.00) Par 36 landing light. They claim a ~40% reduction of Candela after 15 minutes a bit better than 10 minutes. The Whelen rectangular newer units used on DA40 aircraft are only moderate powered LED's offering relatively low Lumens and low Candela outputs, not much to dim there. A par 36 Incandescent is brighter as a landing light, those rectangular LED's are mostly well suited power wise as taxi lights, not landing lights.

For our Very High powered round Par-36 LED (~13 watts input to each LED with 7 LED's) we can use either Cree or Nichia, for now we have chosen to use CREE and over 320,000 Candela sustained output, almost 11,000 sustained Lumens. Total power ~100 Watts.

To accomplish the sustained output we use a patented LED application PCB thermal transfer technology, a cold forged pure aluminum pin-fin heatsink and active waterproof cooling. We've had one of our units on continuously for about 3 years with only a very insignificant degradation of output.

Hopefully this clarifies some of you questions and thoughts above. I'm glad you are challenging my and Whelen's claims, the certified lab documents don't lie.

[ememic99]

They don't make anything that fits as a replacement or is STC'd for the DA62.

You’re right but it seems they have a replacement for DA42.