dkkim73 Posted Tuesday at 06:03 PM Report Posted Tuesday at 06:03 PM Hi All, There are a lot of good threads on troubleshooting the Whelen strobe setups. [Public service note: After powering down, wait for it to drain down internally (mine says 20 min, but longer seems better; do as placarded) before touching it. ] A partly-corroded connector in the aft belly bay was repaired during annual, and I heard arcing the next day on my trip home. The left tip strobe was out. When I got home I swapped connectors and the problem follows the left wiring/connectors/flash tube. Mechanic suspects (and I agree) that the whole connector probably needs replaced. So far so good. But I also had a WX-500 installed, which is great, but it gets interference from the strobes. Some of this might be due to a connector or maybe some ageing grounds, but it raises the question of just going to LEDs rather than seeing if I can get the RFI down low enough. Whelen makes a drop-in replacement with the Orion 600 and 500. James gave me a quick quote already. I'm thinking to do this sooner or later; if the connector fix (required anyway to re-use those wires) gets the strobes working, then I can defer this (just came out of annual, so...) Questions: - for those with Stormscopes, how often have your strobes been a problem? (ie. what should I expect? It's a 2009 Acclaim with the generator for the wings in the avionics bay and the tail generator in the tailcone further back) - to sync or not to sync strobes if going to LEDs? Current set up is not to sync (I think for brightness). I would have to run a single wire to add sync to the tail, I think, would be easily done. - the Orion 5002V tail unit adds a white position light (in addition to the white trailing-face lights on the wingtip strobes OR6002G/R). Any thoughts on hooking up both? I would think it would improve the visualization of plane orientation. - I'm told with going to LEDs that the annunciator panel auto-dimming (which apparently relies on current draw) won't function; ie. it will always be dim. Brian mentioned a rewiring maneuver to address this. Hive mind have any thoughts on that? (how obvious is it) - does anyone bother to replace the Nav and Strobe light breaker switches with a lower current version? I would think the wiring being the same it's not so much a safety as an equipment protection issue. Thanks for any thoughts! David
dkkim73 Posted Tuesday at 08:07 PM Author Report Posted Tuesday at 08:07 PM One other question: @LANCECASPER mentioned recouping some funds by selling his Whelen discharge-type power supplies. Any tips on that? Obv. could sell here if someone needs it, otherwise eBay I might guess??
dkkim73 Posted Wednesday at 06:01 AM Author Report Posted Wednesday at 06:01 AM On the subject of GEAR DOWN light dimming:
Fritz1 Posted Wednesday at 04:45 PM Report Posted Wednesday at 04:45 PM David, the Bravo has 9 pin connectors in the wingtips, maybe Acclaim has the same, the strobe pins in both wingtip connectors were corroded and fried in my airplane, when Brian did the last annual we removed the connectors and soldered the wires together, fixed my intermittent strobe problem, strobe still shows up on the WX500, I turn the strobes off when I want to look at the WX500. -Fritz 1
dkkim73 Posted 23 hours ago Author Report Posted 23 hours ago 22 hours ago, Fritz1 said: the strobe pins in both wingtip connectors were corroded and fried in my airplane, when Brian did the last annual we removed the connectors and soldered the wires together That's a good point. If there's corrosion at one interface there might be others. Though the belly bays get more TKS fluid (esp. before the edge sealing work). Helpful to know you are still getting interference even with solid electrical connections. I would think it's a noisy system. If there's switching noise from the LED units I would think they're at least further away (though maybe not the tail).
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