This Spring, I decided to dress up my T-28 with a lighting kit. I had experimented with the inexpensive Lumifly system you can get at Hobbycity, on other airplanes, but it was very inexpensive and didn’t look very scale.

I tripped on Electrotek RC purely by accident.  I was up in Chico visiting family and was looking for a hobby store.  It turns out that these folks are based in Chico, and specialize in electronics for RC airplanes.  They have a few core products that are designed for gasser ships that need to monitor their reciever packs/etc/etc, and they also have a complete line of lighting kits.

If you are able to do so, I highly recommend you talk to these folks on the phone the first time you order.  Bob was more than happy to talk to me about what I was working on and build me a custom lighting kit with extensions that were just the right length. 

I ordered 2 kits, one for a park flyer (the kit you see on this T-28) that is based on their ‘micro sunbrite’ line, and another kit that I have not used yet, which has much larger LED’s and was designed for a 2M sailplane.

Since I bought all this stuff last Spring, Electrotek has started a seperate line of products designed for foam parkflyers.  I think the new product is cool, but I will note that the stock location on a T-28 for the ramping beacon is at the front of the rudder where I put it, and not at the top of the rudder.

I took a video of my T-28 after installation, apologies for poor quality:

T-28 Navigation lights by Electrotek RC from Eli Caul on Vimeo.

I’m planning to add a set of landing lights in the wings someday, on a reciever controlled switch I got from Turnigy. 

Geeky, scale details like lighting just makes the sport more fun for me

- Eli