Are Your Gear Lights Flaky?

[MBDiagMan]

I am working through my new to me plane and have gotten things pretty much ship shape, with two nagging problems.  One is the gear horn coming on at too high of a power setting.  Not too worried because I figure how to adjust it and feel confident I will dial it in.  

The other is the green and red gear lights.  I almost constantly have to turn them to get them to come on.  I asked the avionics shop guy about replacing them and he said that new ones will often do the same thing.  Is this true?  Is there a particular brand available that is reliable?

I was a missile system repairman in the Army back in the dark ages and we had these Indicator lights all over the place with no problems.

I am beginning my instrument training and these nagging distractions are not good.

What say you?

[lamont337]

Replaced my green one with this, used part number printed on the old one:

 

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/ms25041.php

 

 

[Prior owner]

I’ve only had old crusty ones be intermittent. They are a simple device and should work properly. So no, they aren’t supposed to be that way. 

On a side note, are there LEDs available for these ? Perhaps these? Midget flange GE 330 LED

Edited January 14, 2019 by PilotCoyote

[carusoam]

Sounds like a spray of contact cleaner is in order...

They are on or off, with a push to test function...

Not sure if any ever get replaced.

Some are green and red...

In 65, mine was green and yellow...   red is meant to scare the passengers, so yellow was a bit passenger friendly in comparison... 

Best regards,

-a-

[MBDiagMan]

Okay, I was at the hangar this morning and took them apart.  On both of them the bulb contact was black with corrosion.  I lightly filed them and cleaned everything with contact cleaner.  They seem better but I won’t know until my cold is gone and I fly again.

[skydvrboy]

16 hours ago, PilotCoyote said:

On a side note, are there LEDs available for these ? Perhaps these? Midget flange GE 330 LED

I replaced mine with these https://www.aero-lites.com/product-page/aero-lites-aircraft-post-light-drop-in-led-replacement-for-ge-330-12-14vdc.  I'm guessing the ones you posted are identical.

One word of caution, the gear lights don't dim with your panel lights, only with the internal iris.  I found them WAY too bright and ended up putting the old incandescent lights back.  They also say they are fully dimmable, but fully dimmed (in the post lights) they are still about as bright as the original bulbs turned all the way up (with incandescent still on the circuit).  I talked to them about this at Oshkosh and they said the only way to fix that would be to install an LED specific dimmer.

[Prior owner]

16 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

I replaced mine with these https://www.aero-lites.com/product-page/aero-lites-aircraft-post-light-drop-in-led-replacement-for-ge-330-12-14vdc.  I'm guessing the ones you posted are identical.

One word of caution, the gear lights don't dim with your panel lights, only with the internal iris.  I found them WAY too bright and ended up putting the old incandescent lights back.  They also say they are fully dimmable, but fully dimmed (in the post lights) they are still about as bright as the original bulbs turned all the way up (with incandescent still on the circuit).  I talked to them about this at Oshkosh and they said the only way to fix that would be to install an LED specific dimmer.

Thanks  for that information!

[skydvrboy]

8 minutes ago, PilotCoyote said:

Thanks  for that information!

No problem.  I still love my LED's in the post lights to light up my instruments, just not in the gear indicators.  On the bright side (pun), after replacing all my post lights with LED's, I have about 10 spares for when the incandescent bulbs in the gear indicators fail!

[jaylw314]

39 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

I replaced mine with these https://www.aero-lites.com/product-page/aero-lites-aircraft-post-light-drop-in-led-replacement-for-ge-330-12-14vdc.  I'm guessing the ones you posted are identical.

One word of caution, the gear lights don't dim with your panel lights, only with the internal iris.  I found them WAY too bright and ended up putting the old incandescent lights back.  They also say they are fully dimmable, but fully dimmed (in the post lights) they are still about as bright as the original bulbs turned all the way up (with incandescent still on the circuit).  I talked to them about this at Oshkosh and they said the only way to fix that would be to install an LED specific dimmer.

Do a search here for people who've installed panel LED dimmer.  The specifics are you need a PWM dimmer, which will dim both LED's alone as well as LED's + incandescent bulbs.  The typical pots/rheostats will dim LED's poorly alone, and not at all when combined with incandescent bulbs.

[Marauder]

Do a search here for people who've installed panel LED dimmer.  The specifics are you need a PWM dimmer, which will dim both LED's alone as well as LED's + incandescent bulbs.  The typical pots/rheostats will dim LED's poorly alone, and not at all when combined with incandescent bulbs.

As well, there are dimmable LEDs and others that are not designed to be dimmed.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[jaylw314]

16 minutes ago, Marauder said:

As well, there are dimmable LEDs and others that are not designed to be dimmed.

 

 

True that, just not sure how many of them in the non-standard formats we use that are dimmable.  I'm guessing they would either have an internal resistor or an internal PWM circuit.  An internal resistor would probably only work with a specific power of incandescent along with it, so most household dimmable LED's seem to have an internal PWM circuit (I'm guessing here), since they tend to flicker when you dim them really low.

[skydvrboy]

19 minutes ago, jaylw314 said:

The typical pots/rheostats will dim LED's poorly alone, and not at all when combined with incandescent bulbs.

I don't believe this is correct. Typically an incandescent bulb is required to allow the LED's to dim properly. When I talked to the rep at Oshkosh about my situation the first question was whether I had left an incandescent bulb on the circuit.  He said that should solve the problem but if I'm still not getting them dim enough that I would need the PWM dimmer.

As a side, I have a set of lights in a chandelier at home that will only dim correctly if there is an incandescent light in the chandelier.  Take that last one out and they will not dim.  Leave it in and everything works fine.  I also have a ceiling fan that has a slight delay before the lights come on.  With one incandescent, it works fine, with all LED's it just flickers.

[Hank]

2 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

I don't believe this is correct. Typically an incandescent bulb is required to allow the LED's to dim properly. When I talked to the rep at Oshkosh about my situation the first question was whether I had left an incandescent bulb on the circuit.  He said that should solve the problem but if I'm still not getting them dim enough that I would need the PWM dimmer.

As a side, I have a set of lights in a chandelier at home that will only dim correctly if there is an incandescent light in the chandelier.  Take that last one out and they will not dim.  Leave it in and everything works fine.  I also have a ceiling fan that has a slight delay before the lights come on.  With one incandescent, it works fine, with all LED's it just flickers.

I've heard the same thing about dimming LEDs, that they need an incandescent bulb on the circuit. 

For your chandelier, replace the $4 rheostat with a $39 LED Dimmer. Then if you bought dimmable LED bulbs, they should dim nicely. It's what I had to do for the dining room . . . . .

[jaylw314]

2 minutes ago, skydvrboy said:

I don't believe this is correct. Typically an incandescent bulb is required to allow the LED's to dim properly. When I talked to the rep at Oshkosh about my situation the first question was whether I had left an incandescent bulb on the circuit.  He said that should solve the problem but if I'm still not getting them dim enough that I would need the PWM dimmer.

As a side, I have a set of lights in a chandelier at home that will only dim correctly if there is an incandescent light in the chandelier.  Take that last one out and they will not dim.  Leave it in and everything works fine.  I also have a ceiling fan that has a slight delay before the lights come on.  With one incandescent, it works fine, with all LED's it just flickers.

Like I said, I'm guessing on a lot of this  I think you're right and I have that backwards