Ain’t modern technology grand? Way back twenty years ago when I built my RV-8, cockpit lighting was grain-of-wheat bulbs and rheostats. Now we have LED strip lights you can buy for about twenty bucks, and that’ll buy you twenty or thirty feet! With a roll of 12 volt LEDs on hand, I decided that since the F1 Rocket has an ultra-deep baggage compartment, why not light it up a bit?
The fuselage stringers made an excellent place to mount the light strip (using 3M Trim tape), and they’ll be wired up to a pair of magnetic switches in series that will be rigged to the back of the rear seat (the “lid” of the baggage area). When you open the seat, the lights will come on! Both switches will have to “open” in order of the lights to come on, so (sorta) fail-safe to not run the battery down—it always pays to think about failure modes.
The rest of the roll of LEDs will be used under the cockpit rails for both the front and back seats, as well as for the footwells in front—plenty of light if you need it. Those will be controlled from dimmers connected to the Garmin GAD27 which is part of the EFIS.
Yup, modern technology is convenient… and cheap! I probably would have spent as much for shipping as I did for the lights if it wasn’t for free shipping from Amazon.
Genius! I’m glad you are way ahead of me in my F1 build. I’m stealing this one! 😁