LED lighting/radio interference

Jacko

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Joined
Jun 13, 2010
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38
Location
Milwaukee
A friend and I have both wired in LED lights on our gyro's . The radio noise is terrible. I have tried shielded wire(coaxial) to no avail. Also tried granite "chokes" with no luck. Does anyone have suggestions? Thanks, Jacko
 
Jacko;n1123295 said:
A friend and I have both wired in LED lights on our gyro's . The radio noise is terrible. I have tried shielded wire(coaxial) to no avail. Also tried granite "chokes" with no luck. Does anyone have suggestions? Thanks, Jacko

Don't use non aviation lights. They suck and create a lot of noise. Get aviation lights and you won't have this issue
 
I do not have a "wine and cheese" gyroplane. It is a home built , highly maneuverable rocket ship. We build em and fly em. If anyone else builds instead of "buying" I could use a more intelligent answer. Thanks, Jacko
 
The LEDs themselves don’t make radio noise; they’re simply diodes that light up when something in the range of 2-4 volts is applied to the terminals, depending on color.

But when running from a 12 volt battery, some means of dropping the voltage and limiting the current is required. For low power LEDs, this is typically a series resistor, -a ballast resistor.

High power LEDs can draw 1 amp or more which would waste a lot of power in a ballast resistor so often use a transistor that is switched off and on rapidly to drop the voltage; therein lies your radio noise.

The lamps could be put in a screen wire cage that would let light through but block radio noise; say a cage made from hardware cloth or perhaps chicken wire. Power would have to be fed in through RF noise filters.
 
Jacko;n1123297 said:
I do not have a "wine and cheese" gyroplane. It is a home built , highly maneuverable rocket ship. We build em and fly em. If anyone else builds instead of "buying" I could use a more intelligent answer. Thanks, Jacko

Ha. Wine and cheese gyroplane.Ok. Here is a much more intelligent answer. Your LED's are filled with cheap electronic circuitry to control voltage, inductors, resistors, capacitors etc. that feedback. Its a choice by design to make it cheaper to produce. Very little that you can do about it unless you want to go putting wrappers of mesh around lights and ferrite beads hogging long lengths of every wire. A better choice is to get something that is internally designed and made right for interference to begin with. Unless you want to open your LED's and change out all the components in the circuit with better quality shielded components. Building does not BTW mean being cheap and using junk. Quality builders in aircraft are meticulous craftsmen who take great pride in their work, fit and finish. You can find RV builds or Kit Foxes that are a work of art. Much more detail than a production shop can afford to put into it. Only in gyroplane and some ultralights this idea of being cheap in 51% is much more prevalent and leaving the fit and finish to the ghosts. I know aircraft builders that if they build AR-1 kit, can do a job so meticulous that it will make my factory Builder's Assist look mediocre. They will take 4 months to do it. It's not an aircraft builder's thing or wine and cheese thing. It's about caring about your creation thing. Pride thing. I'd suggest cutting the attitude.
 
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Look for LEDs that are FCC compliant. All LED lamps broadcast a signal and the FCC compliant lamps should have a signal in a bandwidth that is less than what your radio can pick up. Some manufacturers don't test their lamps to be FCC compliant because they only care about lumen output and color.
 
OR.... take the LED lights back off. Are you flying at night?
 
Even flashing leds are hard to see during daylight hours why even use them
Jacko normally scratch builders use aircraft quality construction materials or better,
if you are using junk stuff it will catch up with you. Best of luck.
 
Thank you everyone for your responses. The second response from fara explained the "why" that I was originally looking for; and thanks again for this response! Although these new gyroplane imports are absolutely beautiful they are very expensive and cut out the middle class working man from enjoying rotary Flight . I believe this is one of the reasons why the turnout at Mentone was not as big as it used to be years ago . The idea is not to be cheap but to be affordable for the man that is frugal . Most aircraft builders have forgotten more than I have ever learned , but I am learning and flying . The easy answer to my problem would be jack up the gyroplane and install a brand new $3 million MD 500 underneath, but I do not want to afford this. So once again thank you for all of the great responses and now I know the "why".
 
Jacko even scratch building is barely affordable anymore,to build a plans built plane is completely out of my budget.

builders are becoming a lost breed,the richer than me cash buyers are the new market.
 
Jacko;n1123386 said:
Thank you everyone for your responses. The second response from fara explained the "why" that I was originally looking for; and thanks again for this response! Although these new gyroplane imports are absolutely beautiful they are very expensive and cut out the middle class working man from enjoying rotary Flight . I believe this is one of the reasons why the turnout at Mentone was not as big as it used to be years ago . The idea is not to be cheap but to be affordable for the man that is frugal . Most aircraft builders have forgotten more than I have ever learned , but I am learning and flying . The easy answer to my problem would be jack up the gyroplane and install a brand new $3 million MD 500 underneath, but I do not want to afford this. So once again thank you for all of the great responses and now I know the "why".

Jacko. I understand your sentiment about affordability but I think there are affordable gyroplane designs out today. The problem is what is affordable is different for different people. A flying machine being equal to that of a new car? Would that be a reasonable affordable price? Most would say yes. An average new car price is $35000 in 2017. Well talk to Paul and Alex or Dominator. They are pretty close to that price point for their kit. They are trying hard to serve that market. Get with them and support their business.

But if you can afford two new average cars then forget about Alex and Paul and contact us. LOL.
 
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Any LED lighting device installed as OEM equipment on an automobile would certainly meet FCC requirements for radiated RF noise.
 
I am going to stop in at Dick Kuntzleman's shop today. I talked to him on the phone the other day & he said he is making LED strobes now. He said his don't make noise.

Here is his website......Great guy & great products........give him your support please !

http://www.kestrobes.com/

BTW....I have his strobes on both of my machines. I have a single Smart strobe on my single place. I want to add 2 more strobes with position markers....(ELSA regs )
 
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Almost anyone with a job can go out and buy a new $12,000 dollar car and get financing with zero down. Try to get financing on a gyro. My guess is the average family is hard pressed to come up with $1200 cash let alone 20K - 35K
 
Jaco's landing (recognition) lights are incredible (except for the radio noise) and very easy to see in daylight (approximately 3 miles away) and the fast and uncoordinated wig-wag gives them an other worldly appearance. You can not look away (like we used to see with out of phase rotating beacons. I expect UFO reports have been generate as you can see Jaco's brilliant lights way before you see his Air Command. I am serious, those bike lights are awesome (and reasonably cheap).
 
So I put this light on my Gyro. It is amazingly bright, clearly visible from great distance in the day and provides really good light on the runway when landing after an evening of wonderful air. It gives me much better confidence that I will be seen by neighboring aircraft at our sometimes busy airport. It also gives me great radio interference when the engine is running making the radio virtually unusable which is a not so good trade off. I've been troubleshooting it, and perhaps one of you gents with intelligent answers could help me understand.
It is a scratching static noise that does not change with engine rpm. It is just there unless a close transmission is received from the airport weather or another pilot, but returns as soon as the tx is done. It seems that I am able to transmit as well, so the problem is that this noise blows my ears out. I have put a couple of graphite chokes on the power wires, I have wrapped the entire light and radio in metal window screen to shield. I have used both a whip antenna and a properly mounted frame external antenna. I spoke to folks at RIGID Industries as I saw their SQ-R2 light sold as an aircraft landing light. Compared to my Amazon light, they are very pricy, but they claim that the boards are graphite choked and they are made in the USA. There stuff is used by military and police who need their radios. I'm going to try their "sideshooter" light to see if it makes a difference.

Connected to switch and grounded to frame:
1) engine off, lights on, NO radio interference
2) engine on, lights on, MUCHO interference
3) engine on, lights off, no interference

Connected directly to a separate battery:
3) engine off, lights on, MUCHO interference, (see #1 above for extra confusion)
4) engine on, lights on, MUCHO interference

I was a bit lost since the noise only occured with the engine on...how could it be the light???.
Then since the noise is recreated on a separate battery not having anything to do with the gyro, I'm thinking it is the light.
But why then does it not give off the noise if its connected to the machine and the engine is off!!!???
I feel that there should be a work around since it can be on and connected without noise, but what is surpressing it?

Geoff

AirCommand Tandem
Sub 2.2
 
JasonS;n1123304 said:
These LED units have been used by others with success such as myself and these do not interfere with my radio as of yet that I can find.


Metal based window screen can be used to create a faraday shield formed on the inside of the lens could help if u need to contain the errant radio signals......isolated wiring to those LED's

may be necessary also......good luck.

I bought the lights in the video. No interference, but I wouldn't trust them to be moisture resistant. NO radio interference with them, but they are no where near the brightness of the ones giving me trouble. I wonder if the lack of radio interference is due to the fact that they are significantly less powerfull?
I installed a couple of 55w halogen driving lights. Also NO radio interference as expected, but again...the daytime brightness is less than impressive compared to that led light bar.
I ordered a couple of the Rigid Industries "Sideshooters". It will be interesting to see if the high end leds will work.
 
JasonS;n1124167 said:
Here are those LED lights installed in standard Air Command wheel pants. You have three modes to chose from. Wig Wag....Strobe Wig Wag and Synchronized mode.
I get absolutely no radio interference whatsoever from any of the LED's being used. Sorry u r having a time of it. Radio noise is a pet peeve of mine. I get your frustrations.
I also used silicone in the areas I thought might be a moisture issue to seal them. Here is a look at how these lights operate and the 3 modes the controller comes with.
]

Very nice looking. So what are you using for the red and green lights? Like that too! Just to reiterate, I also had success with the light you're using, it's just not very bright comparatively. I bet the wig wag helps in daytime though.

I bought a Blazer light bar from Autozone and I've just received the Rigid Sideshooters. I post the results after I get them tried out today.
 
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