Anyone perusing the lighting aisle at the local Home Depot will have noticed that the lowly incandescent bulb is an endangered species, having been displaced by LEDs and CFLs. The burgeoning LED market has spilled over into aviation in the form of landing, taxi and recognition lights. (Thankfully, weve been spared the CFLs.)Add to this the availability of another light technology, HIDs, and owners have more choice than ever in upgrading over the ancient GE tractor bulb thats illuminated runways for decades. Never mind that this new technology costs 10 to 100 times more than an off-the-shelf GE 4509, how does it perform?Well get to that in this article, but first note that the lighting market has expanded since we last examined the topic six years ago. There are more choices in HID and LED and more approved systems. In some cases, prices appear to have decreased, a welcome exception to everything else in aviation.
Anyone perusing the lighting aisle at the local Home Depot will have noticed that the lowly incandescent bulb is an endangered species, having been displaced by LEDs and CFLs. The burgeoning LED market has spilled over into aviation in the form of landing, taxi and recognition lights. (Thankfully, we’ve been spared the CFLs.)
PREMIUM CONTENT
This article is for subscribers
Log in to continue reading, or subscribe to get unlimited access to all content.
Paul Bertorelli is Aviation Consumer’s Editor at Large. In addition to his valued contributions to Aviation Consumer, his in-depth video productions on sister publication AVweb cover a wide variety of topics that greatly contribute to safety, operation and aircraft ownership. When Paul isn’t writing or filming, he’s out flying his J3 Cub.
