Change out wingtip lights
Good evening all,
I went to Sun N Fun last week and talked with a WAT employee. For my Cherokee the Orion 650 series wingtip lights/strobes are a direct drop in replacement. Uses same mounts/footprint etc..
The light itself has three wires, one being to time the strobes with a box and to isolate strobes from position lights and the other two for power/ground.
If you wire just the two, strobes and position lights will be on together all the time and unsynced which I’m fine with. I don’t fly in the soup and I’m not going to buy the extra box and run another wire. I just want to be more visible at night to other aviators.
Also found out what landing light I needed as well that’s a direct replacement so I can go all LED.
With all that being said, I know it’s not a major alteration and these lights are FAA/TSO and STC approved. Is that something I can just add myself and log in the book or do I need a A&P to charge me a minimum shop time to install.
Thank ya in advanced..
Comments
Last I checked, this was an allowable action by the owner. If deciding to run that 3rd wire, am suspecting that this will call for some level of A&P involvement. Natually, will defer to the better experts for any correction.
And if changing a landing, taxi, nav, or strobe light is a A&P only action, then I might know some folks that are in big trouble as lots of filament bulbs were replaced almost as frequently as oil changes without an A&P. Strobes were not replaced nearly as frequently.
I have re-aligned the wingtip lights as an owner task so that they were not cross-eyed per how the previous owner set them. When it came time to do this task, called one of my A&Ps, was given guidance on what to do / expect, and set about to do this on my own.
For the landing lights, if converting from filament, will like the upgrade, with a caveat though. Get either the Parmetheus G3 or Parmetheus Pro. The previous owner installed the earlier version LED (P36P2L) and was not that impressed as they were barely better than a halogen bulb in terms of brightness. For context, for ground operations I tried to taxi with just the taxi light, but had to go back to using the wingtip lights in addition to the taxi light. With a G3 in the taxi position and Pros in the wingtips (and the Pros no longer aimed in a cross-eyed pattern), am rather happy with the results on final approach. Do not need the wingtip lights any more for ground operations as the G3 by itself does the job very well. And seeing the runway markers from a higher altitude makes for a confident landing.
Thank you. And yes, the G3 is what I’m looking at. I’m just trying to do it correctly and if asked, don’t need to hide something. Too many loopholes/laws makes it confusing and wanting to get an honest opinion instead of a mechanic charging for no reason.