K6CCC
Second Officer
Flight distance : 651683 ft
United States
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I do a lot of my flying at night. I am also a licensed fixed wing pilot, so am very familiar with standard aircraft lighting colors. For my Mini, the normal configuration I fly with is a red strobe on the front side of the left front leg, a green strobe on front side of the right front leg, and a white strobe on the back of the battery compartment door. This essentially duplicates the lighting arrangement for a real aircraft except that on a real aircraft those would be steady lights rather than flashing. Because of viewing angles of the strobes, those three locations work almost perfectly for 360 degree lighting. I have flown the Mini out to about 7,000 feet and the strobes were easily visible on a really dark night out in the California desert, and at home I have had the Mini out to 1,700 feet in the Los Angeles suburbs which has lots of light pollution. Again, they were still very visible (I ran out of WiFi range). Because each strobe is a different color, it is easy to tell the orientation of the Mini by looking at it. The strobes I have flash four times in very fast succession, then repeat about every 1.5 seconds, but from a distance, the four flashes appear to be one longer flash. Here is a link to the strobes I have (although I did not get mine from Amazon):
Cree strobes
I have not had any issues with the camera seeing the flashes except when close to objects or the ground. The only real issue with the strobes is that they are so bright that hand catching is hard because the strobes are blinding when that close in front of me. I do have a second set of the red and green strobes that have the strobe LED covered with several layers to partially attenuate the light level. I use those when I am shooting video of my Christmas light show and am never more than about 50 feet from the Mini, and I don't really want the bright strobes as a distraction for anyone else that is watching the light show. And before someone asks, if the Mini is only 50 feet away in front of my house, why bother with the strobes at all? The reason is that after being able to tell the orientation of the Mini by looking at it, I find that I miss that ability if I don't have the strobes mounted.
As for attachment. I have a velcro patch that stays on the battery compartment door for the white strobe. I have some 3D printed holders for the front legs that work pretty well, or I use small zip ties (I have to use the zip ties if using the attenuated set of strobes because they wont fit in the holders). I also have a pair of holders that fit the rear arms, but decided that I don't like them. They also add enough weight to trigger "payload mode".
One note is that adding the strobes does put the Mini over 250 grams, so at least to stay legal, registration is required (I did register mine) here in the USA. Also remember that there are restrictions on night flying if you are doing so under part 107 - but I am flying under the recreational rules. And yea, I know those rules are changing...
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