REFLECTOR: Dimmer Doubts and the Wiring Saga Continues

[Terry Miles]

Thanks, Andy.  Spelling was never my best talent either.  I will likely
not dim the warning lights for the reason you mentioned, except it they
are too brite (bright?)  I don't have my seat in place yet and those
little .030 amp LEDs can let you have it when you look at them straight
on.  Also I cannot re-set it when one triggers and I can't fix the
problem.  (Example speed brake not stowed).   That's another draw back
for LEDs--you can't remove the bulb. I don't intend to fly at night, if
it can otherwise be avoided, but it's nice to be able to knock the
brightness down a little sometimes, but always mindful you want to SEE
when one comes on.  I completely agree with you on that point.  Thanks
for the reminder.
Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On
Behalf Of Andrew Ellzey
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 10:57 AM
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Dimmer Doubts and the Wiring Saga Continues


Re-sent with spelling correction for annunciators. My auto spell check
changed it to enunciators with out asking me to confirm.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Andrew  <mailto:ajlz72756 at yahoo.com> Ellzey 
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders  <mailto:reflector at tvbf.org>
list 
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Dimmer Doubts and the Wiring Saga Continues

Terry,
 
Your statements for the dimming system are correct. Your annunciators
should have power sitting at the bulb waiting for the ground to turn it
on. Because you will be varying the voltage from your dimmer to the
annunciators, when one of you annunciators is on you will have control
of the brightness. Something that you might think about, you said that
you were going to dim your warning lights. This is not a common
practice. If it is a true warning light it is not typically dimmed. The
point is that it is there to tell you to take action and it should be
bright enough get your attention. High power circuits like your pitot
heat, landing lights or fuel pumps should break the circuit on the
positive side.  
 
Andy 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Terry Miles <mailto:terrence_miles at hotmail.com>  
To: 'Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders  <mailto:reflector at tvbf.org>
list' 
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 6:24 AM
Subject: REFLECTOR: Dimmer Doubts and the Wiring Saga Continues

Hi All,
 
I'm up to the last holes into my panel and could use some collective
wisdom.  I have held off on the dimmer controls for last, since every
time I looked at the recomended drawing it looked backwards. 
 
Up until these dimmers came into my world I had assumed I would put all
my switches in the positive side of all the circuits.  You know "power,
fuse, switch, user, gound."  In the case of warning light dimmers you
can't do that.  The dimmer has to supply the light's plus voltage.  So
the warning light always has juice to it, then the trigger condition to
turn on the warning light has to be placed into it's path to ground.  So
you have this:  Power, dimmer, warning light, trigger condition, ground.

 
Is there any convention to switching the ground side with other devices?
I mean, I could wire the fuel pump or the taxi lights that same way with
the control switch acting as the needed continuity to ground instead of
being in the plus half of the circuit.
 
Thanks for looking at this.
 
FYI:  Van's has a nice 4 pot system that is all solid state rated a 1.5
amps each. (read: no heat sinks).  It also has a feature that will tie
or untie all the lights to a master dimmer.  
 
Regards,
Terry



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