L-1011 Trainer Installation: Indicator Lighting Buildout

L-1011 Trainer Buildout: Indicator Lighting

Making small incremental steps with the buildout of the Indicator Lighting systems. The indicators (switchlights and annunciators) use circuitry and power sources independent from the cockpit instrument lights or the panel light plates. As we work through the indicator lighting build out we are also re-tooling the indicator lights from 28VDC incandescent lights to 24VDC LEDs. It's amazing how much that cuts down on heat produced in the sim, especially considering the fact that the L-1011 cockpit has hundreds of lights.

Once the progressive power-up of the indicator lights has completed we will start switching to connecting the switchlight and annunciators to the Digital I/O subsystems.

L-1011 Trainer Buildout: Fuel System Indicator Lights

L-1011 - CPT Installation at the Museum - Captain's Flood Light

L-1011 Captain's Flood Light - LED Retrofit

Next in the Flood Light retrofit of the L-1011 Trainer at the National Museum of Commercial Aviation in Atlanta is the Captains Main Instrument Panel. Both the F/O's as well as the Captain's Instrument Panel flood lighting are controlled by a potentiometer located on the glare shield.

L-1011 Flood Light Dimmer Controller.

The image above shows the flood light dimmer potentiometer on the First Officer's side of the glare shield. The potentiometer controls a 12VDC PWM dimmer that directly drives the LED's for the respective flight station. The procedure trainer did not have any of the light controls previously connected to the potentiometer, however, the actually potentiometer was originally installed. The image below shows the retrofit of the potentiometer with cable connections to the PWM dimmer. 

L-1011 Flood Light Potentiometer for Dimmer

The LED strips are mounted into the original light fixtures under the glare shield with double-stick adhesive tape. The following to images show the inside of the light fixture with two strips visible and another two obstructed by louvers the protect the flood lights from spilling into the cockpit.

L-1011 Flood Light LED Retrofit - Low Intensity

L-1011 Flood Light LED Retrofit - Medium Intensity 

Mounting the LEDs actually took quite some time because we wanted to make sure that they really matched the look of the original fluorescent tubes. 

L-1011 Captain's Flood Light - LED Retrofit

Here is a short video of the PWM dimmers in action. They are very inexpensive devices but work really well with the LED strips. 

And finally a few images of the finished Capatin's and First Officer's under panel flood lighting.

L-1011 Captain's Flood Light - LED Retrofit

L-1011 Captain's Flood Light - LED Retrofit 

L-1011 - CPT Installation at the Museum - First Officer's Flood Light

L-1011 Trainer - F/O Flood Lighting

The L-1011 flood light build out continues here at the National Museum of Commercial Aviation in Atlanta. Today we continued with the LED installation into the first flood light fixture above the main instrument panel. Below you can see an image of the original flood light fixture (outlined in orange) retrofitted with the Cool White LEDs.

L-1011 Trainer - F/O Flood Lighting

The flood light is built in such a way that it only illuminates the First Officer's instrument panel and does not spill over to the Pilot's instrument panel and/or the center Instrument panel. The former two are controlled by the Pilot's flood light controller and will be installed later. The image below shows how well the light is contained to the F/O station only.

L-1011 Trainer - F/O Flood Lighting

At the normal viewing position from the first officer's seat there is also no direct light coming towards the F/O. This way the flood lights will not blind the F/O. This is done by a number of "L" shaped louvers in front of each row of lines.

L-1011 Trainer - F/O Flood Lighting

L-1011 Trainer - F/O Flood Lighting

L-1011 - CPT Installation at the Museum - SO Station Flood Light

L1011 Flight Engineer's Station Flood Light

Today we changed the first flood light fixture from fluorescent lighting to LED lighting. The flood light is above the Flight Engineer's station and is about 24" wide. The image above shows the Flight Engineer's station illuminated after the retrofit. 

For the retrofit I selected COOL WHITE LEDs because they are pretty close to the light that would have come from the fluorescent light bulbs. The LEDs below are standard SMD ultra bright LEDs mounted on an adhesive strip. 

Cool White LED Strip - 12VDC

The LED's can be cut just about every 2 inches (or every 3 LEDs). This makes them very flexibly for installations in the already existing flood light fixtures of the L-1011 simulator. Of course, the main advantage of using the LEDs are their durability and extremely low thermal output.

Cool White SMD LED Strip - 12VDC

The station flood light is controlled by a dimmer on the lower left hand side of the console. The image below shows the flood light at full intensity.

L-1011 Flight Engineer's Station - Flood Light Installation

The flood light fixture on top of the station has a metal strip that prevents light from spilling significantly further than the station itself.

 This contains the flood light and does not spill over to the pilot's stations or the main instrument panel.

L-1011 Flight Engineer's Station Upper Section - Flood Light 

L-1011 Flight Engineer's Station Lower Section - Flood Flight

The next flood lights to install will be above the Pilot's and First Officer's main instrument panels. The engine cluster flood light is combined with the Pilot's flood light and is controlled by the same dimmer. 

Avionics Bending: Incandescent Replacement - Radio Heads

The original incandescent light bulbs give the light plates and the digit drums a yellow tint. Especially on older light plates, the entire legend turns to a rather hard to read yellow. Bright White LEDs are normally calibrated for 5200K (daylight) and will help quite a bit with the faded instruments.

In the image above and the below, the radio had that has been re-worked from incandescent to LEDs is the one on the left and on the bottom respectively.


Removing all the original lighting and replacing it with LEDs is quite labor intensive ... it takes about a two days to work a single radio head ... but the results are awesome.

Avionics Bending (Video): Converting to LED Ligthing

The video post above explains an idea that I have on how to convert incandescent light bulbs on the Lockheed L-1011 switches and annunciators to LED lighting. The video shows the following seven steps:

Step 1: Light bulb extraction
Step 2: Removal of the glass bulb
Step 3: Removal of the solder terminals
Step 4: Punch side connector for the LED terminals
Step 5: Connect the LED
Step 6: Trim the LED leads
Step 7: Testing