After looking around and not finding any night blades that I liked or could afford, I decided to try make my own.

Well, first try don’t look like the professional made ones in day light, but they definitely outperforms them in the night!

Things I used:

High intense LED lights: I used the normal 3mm type, Red once need extra resistor to run from lipo.

Lipo:  Single Cell 100mah.  50Mah should work fine as well, 2 led’s only use 90mA,

Copper Foil: It’s copper with self adhesive back, available from stained glass people. RC Gear can supply shorter lengths if need be.

Epoxy:   For securing led’s.

Heatshrink: Securing the Lipo’s to blade.

Switch: I simply used servo connectors to make a plug on of switch

Solder and soldering iron: Normal resin core was used.

First start with cleaning the blades with some Methaled Spirets (the purple stuff) to makes sure the copper foil will stick properly.

Check which leg on the Led is longer, this normally the positive leg. Make sure the all the led’s you mount have the same leg on the same side. I used the longer leg on top just to make life simpler.

Position the led where you want them and solder them onto the copper strip. Do this for all the led’s you want. Be careful not to go over the top. 2 per blade is more than enough normally.

Make sure the soldering is hot, hold bit of thin soldering iron over the joint and quickly touch the iron on the solder, this should melt the solder onto the led lead and copper foil. Make sure you don’t keep the heat on to long or you might damage the blade. I found the solder melts within a second and creates excellent joint.

After all led soldered on, test them quickly to make sure you did not mount 1 wrong way around, led’s polarity (positive negative) need to be same otherwise they don’t burn.

On the photo’s you will notice that 1 blade i mounted the Led’s in front, the other on the back, this is to make sure there no blind spot as the blades spin. This way the circle is perfect.

After testing both blades, mix some expoxy and glue the led’s on. The surprising advantage is that the epoxy actually glows with the led and this creating even bigger circle.

Next find place for the lipo’s and “switch” and solder all the connections. Here you need to use your initiative... you can move the lipos around a bit to make sure the blades still balance.

Always make sure the lipo’s tabs are pointing the root of the blade, as well as the on/off plug opening. This will make sure the lipo don’t slide out of its cover and the plugs don’t pull out with the centrifugal force.

 After testing that the led’s all work correctly, heatshrink them in place. If they don’t burn, double check the polarity. Long wire of led to positive of battery.

Don’t use glue on the lipo’s, you might need to remove them later. My first attempt slid outwards with first test flight, so I simple moved it more to the root of the blade and made sure that it “hooked” onto the thinner part of the blade.

After all done, recheck the balance of the blades either move lipo’s around a bit, or use normal tacking tape method to rebalance them. Mine was dead on luckily first time.

Check the tracking during daylight and do the first test in daylight in case something goes wrong and they switch off ... :D

Enjoy!

Pictures of build below.

Led after expoxy and soldering.

Test fit the Lipo to make sure the enough space.

All Heatshrinked in place . Can just see the "switch".... Ugly !!

Ugly by day, beauty at night !!