Anyone using the LED Beacons that are fed with conventional tower light controllers? What's reliability been like and how expensive are they to purchase? And if anyone has experienced failures, how expensive are they to repair? Any brand seem to be more reliable?
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LED Beacons
- Thread starter BobOnTheJob
- Start date
BobOnTheJob said:
I have one being controlled by a Dayton SPST relay, driven by a Dayton photocell of some variety. Is that what you call a "conventional" tower light controller?
It works fine. My Sine Systems tower light monitor had to be set for maximum sensitivity. (There are jumpers... I think I had to cut them all out. Or maybe put them all in.)
THEN... it still wasn't sensitive enough, so I had to pass the wire through the current transformer more than once. I went down to 16 gua wire for this. What the heck, it's only drawing 1.5 amps.
That site has gone about 5-6 years without a failure. It is a Class A, 6 KW.
HOWEVER: I have another site with which I am intimately acquainted that has had a lot of failures. (50 KW class B) The entire beacon has to be taken down sometimes and sent back to Dialight. Their customer service has been nothing short of horrid.
One tower GC I know of doesn't put up LEDs anymore. They are too much trouble, they say, especially for higher power installations. They sold me freaking halogen tower lights for WQNU.
Some people have had great luck Some have had terrible luck.
If you're going to try it, GET A SPARE POWER SUPPLY.
"Freaking" halogen is right. They put one on top of a 8,000 foot mountain top antenna here. Don't think it's ever made it a full year! Every spring we all get to reduce power or go off while they change the bulbs.
I have two class A FM's using led beacons. These lights came from Unimar. These have been in service since 2004 and I think all the beacons have been replaced once. Unimar gave a ten year warrenty on the lights and I have had no problems getting warrenty replacements from them. The lights have always been returned to Dialight so I think they made them for Unimar.
The flashing beacons have all been replaced once but the smaller side lights have been trouble free.
These lights use about 90% less power than regular lights but when the warrenty runs out they will be much more expensive to replace. I think the light module for my beacons is somewhere close to 1Kilobuck.
The flashing beacons have all been replaced once but the smaller side lights have been trouble free.
These lights use about 90% less power than regular lights but when the warrenty runs out they will be much more expensive to replace. I think the light module for my beacons is somewhere close to 1Kilobuck.
Too bad nobody from CCU LA has responded to this thread. The new KFI tower is supposed to be a real showcase and proving fround for LED-beacon technology. I don't know how many beacons there are altogether but the number is large and I believe there are steady red, flashing red, and flashing white (simulated Xenon) LED beacons. Maybe the site hasn't been lit for long enough to get good reliaiblity data yet, but with all of those beacons of all those types, it shouldn't be long before it produces data that means something. OK, no data about sub-zero temperatures.
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