With the weather outside being dreadful, (cold
and lightly snowing the entire day), decided to move forward and crimp
electrical connectors on all the lighting units. Was eager to try the recently
procured Tool Aid 18937 dies made for smaller sized open barrel connector pins
such as the .063” Molex pins AeroLEDs supplies with their LED lights. The 18937
dies did a great job on the “connector to wire crimp” and an acceptable but not
perfect crimp on the strain relief crimp on the wire’s insulation ... so those
crimps were tweaked slightly using another hand crimping tool I had.
Staying warm inside while crimping connectors onto
the landing light wires.
Close up of the wire crimp created by the 18937
dies. I used a separate hand tool to tweak the strain relief crimp.
A finished landing light connector.
Of note: Van’s plans has the builder place the
wing’s wires into the male Molex connector for the landing light in no particular
order then instructs the builder match wire for wire when placing the landing
light’s wires into the light’s female Molex connector. This method will work
just fine. That said, should the builder download the wiring schematic and
expect the pin assignments to match, good luck! Therefore, I decided to assign
the same wire/pin designations as denoted in Van’s downloadable wiring
schematic. This will make future troubleshooting far easier should that ever be
necessary. For those interested, the pin assignments for the landing light’s Molex
connectors are as follows. (Since I’m installing two lights, the right landing
light will be wired as a master and the left light as slave … a single light instillation
will not use the master or slave wires).
Molex Connector
Light wire description and color
Pin 1
Ground – Black
Pin 2
Master Output – Green (wire to
other light’s slave to sync wig wag)
Pin 3
Slave Input – Blue (N/C on master
light, slave light receives wire
from master output here for wig wag operation)
Pin 4
Wig Wag Power – Yellow (will pulse a single light instillation)
Pin 5
Landing Light Power - Red (Light steady on)
Upon opening the box for the recently purchased landing
light for the left wing, there was first a moment of shock and then aggravation
… it was not the same light as the one originally shipped in the lighting kit
purchased last summer! This newer landing light has four additional LED lights
and more extensive heat sinking on the back when compared to the original light.
Front view … landing light on the left is the original
light the one on the right is the new landing light just purchased.
Back view … original light is on the left and
one can clearly see all the
additional heat sinking on the back of the new
light on the right.
A quick visit to the AeroLEDs WEB site reveled
at one point they sold an AeroSun 1600 (my original light) and a model called
AeroSun Xtreme. Both models have the
same specifications as far as light output and current draw goes. However, the Xtreme
light has four more LED’s plus additional heat sinking and was designed for
enclosed spaces where there would be less airflow available to cool the light. The
AeroLEDs WEB site now only shows the newer 12 LED light as the current product.
They have apparently also changed the name of the light to just AeroSun and have
apparently dropped the 1600 and Xtreme designations. My newer landing light box just says AeroSun.
I’m assuming they decided to drop the older design for the more heat forgiving
newer Xtreme design.
Guess I’ll order another landing light from Van’s
and see what shows up … then return the odd light. That way both wings will
have the same style of landing light installed. I know, picky picky … but
having two different styles of landing lights installed would forever bug me.
Fortunately, both navigation/strobe lights looked
the same (except one has a red LED light and one had a green LED light inside).
These lights are also shipped with the same style Molex connectors that were used
for the landing lights so the same crimping tool was used to crimp connectors onto
all the wires.
Finished connectors on both the
navigation/strobe lights.
Much the same as the landing lights, Van’s plans
has the builder randomly connect the wing’s wires to the male Molex connector
for the nav/strobe lighting. The builder then matches those connections when
wiring up the female Molex connector with the wires from the navigation/strobe
lights. Here again, the odds of matching the main wiring schematic is slim at
best … here again I opted to follow the pin assignments on the schematic for
future clarity.
Molex Connector Light wire description and color
Pin 1
Ground – Black wire
Pin 2
Strobe Power – Yellow wire
Pin 3
Strobe Sync – Green wire
Pin 4
Navigation Light Power – Red wire