REFLECTOR: 'Mag' Lights for Taxi & Landing

[Bob Jackson]

Jon,

 

Those are the Taxi lights you saw part of below.  My partner made the Taxi
and Landing lights for our plane using sawed off and 'hogged out' casings
from Mag Lite flashlights.  Then he RTV'd 24 vdc track lights from Home
Depot behind the cover glass in the Mag Lite shell.  The backs are open for
cooling.  

 

Here's a shot of the Taxi lights, which are mounted on the nose gear.



 

Front view of two of the Landing lights on one of the main gear...



 

and the back view of the other leg's Landing lights...



 

Ron made simple sheet aluminum mounting plates for the lights that also
allow them to be aimed up or down to hit the runway properly on landing.
The Landing lights need to be aimed down quite a bit further than you would
think to light up the runway properly.  Despite attempts at the math, it
still required quite a lot of trial and error flights to get it right!  They
work very well, but the bulb life might also be questionable -- we'll see!

 

Bob Jackson

N2XF

 

  _____  

From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On
Behalf Of Bachman, Jonathan
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 11:19 AM
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: towbar

 

Is that a landing light I see there too?  Any pictures of that you can
share?

 

 

Front

Jon Bachman

575 430-9724

N956DR

 

 <mailto:jonathan.bachman at mtsi-va.com> jonathan.bachman at mtsi-va.com

From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On
Behalf Of Bob Jackson
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 10:46 PM
To: 'Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list'
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: towbar

 

Dave,

 

Our gear is retractable, so I'm not sure exactly how you might apply what we
did.  However, I can tell you that although many Velocity's don't make any
provision for it, we have found that adding a standard tow bar male 'tang'
arrangement to our nose gear leg has been an invaluable feature.  

 

Moving the plane around in a crowded hangar at home, or when you're
traveling, it has been 'priceless' for us to be able to use a standard small
Cessna type 'manually' controlled tow bar, or one of the big orange ones
(common at most FBOs) to move our plane around.

 

It might be more essential because our Velocity is so heavy, but when we
have a full load of fuel (93 gals), it is very difficult to move our plane
around -- either trying to push up small inclines, or for tight maneuvering
because with full fuel it is essentially impossible to pick up our nose to
make tight turns (unless you enjoy hernias!).

 

My aircraft partner designed (with some ME help) and had fabricated the tow
bar adapter shown below, as it is attached to the top of our nose gear fork.
This is the front view.  It is also important (as I'm sure you would
appreciate) that the extra weight of the 'tangs' is on the back side of the
fork -- for anti-shimmy reasons.