seattle_helo
Key Veteran
Location: Seattle, WA USA
My Posts This: Topic Forum | Thanks guys.
Jim, the "Grimes" retractable landing light is a combo of off the shelf parts and some scratch building. The actual lamp portion comes from Heli-Factory in Germany. More info here:
http://heli-factory.com/zubehoer/au...rfer/index.html
The assembly, which is very nice, is designed to be installed to the bottom of a fuse and have the lamp be flush with the pivot mechanism above. A micro servo is mounted directly to the lamp "arm" for the retract function. In my case, in order to fit it within the pod, I needed to remove the servo, cut the mount in several places and reduce the overall footprint to make it fit. I used JB Weld to keep the aluminum mount together after all of the cutting and material removal. The pod is two pieces of vacuum formed plastic. I made a plug in the correct shapes out of balsa and styrene. After getting them just right I sent the pieces to Joe Howard and he was kind enough to make some vaccum formed parts. (Hence, the steak sandwich  Thanks again Joe.) I trimmed, cut and assembled the shells and then mounted the lamp assembly inside. It was a lot of trial and error.  I added a lever to the lamp mechanics so that it could be operated via a servo mounted above the pod and then put a small micro switch inline so that the lamp would come on when fully deployed as per the fullsize. They are not up yet but I'll have some build pictures of this process on my Vario gallery page. You can get there by clicking the HOMEPAGE link below.
nick |
Had a mishap with the 500 the week before IRCHA and then I had to work in Alaska the following week. The damage was minimal but the mechs needed to come out and I had to do some adjusting and main gear maintenance. Just didn't have enough time to do it all and get on the road by the time I got back. But its fixed now and I'll be flying it again soon. I'm planning on IRCHA 2010 so hope to see you there! 
