LEDs

LED’s. Adding some lighting can make a difference to your model, even if it’s just the navigation lights; port, starboard and stern. LED’s are small, bright, cheap and can easily be incorporated into your model, but there are points to bear in mind.

LED stands for “light emitting diode” and as with any diode will only pass current one way (unlike a traditional light). The led will have two legs for connecting wires, the long one should connect to the positive and the short one to the negative sides of the battery. The diode won’t emit light, or pass current to other diodes if connected the other way round.

Soldering is the preferred way of connecting the wires but the LED is sensitive to heat so it’s advisable to use a heat sink between the LED and the soldered joint to protect it. I solder LED’s upside down and use quick bursts of power (not a lot of solder is needed) so the heat travels up, and away from the LED.

There are two ways of connecting the wires, either in “series” or “parallel”. In series only a single wire is used to string the LED’s together and in parallel two wires are used, one connecting the positive side and the other connecting each LED’s negative side. How you choose to connect them will depend on how many LED’s you have and your voltage.

LED's have two legs, one longer than the other. The longer leg should connect to the positive side of the supply and the shorter leg connects to the negative side.

Different coloured LED’s require different voltages from 2 volts to about 3.3 volts. It’s easier to supply the higher voltage to the wiring and reduce the voltage to a particular LED using a resistor. You can do the maths yourself or speak to your supplier who will help.

To maintain a stable current to the LED’s I use a 6 volt AA battery pack but then use a voltage reducer (less than a fiver) to reduce the voltage to 3.3 volts. The battery pack will last for days as LED’s use very little power!

Very thin wires can be used, which is ideal for modelling, as the LED’s draw very little current.

A wide variety of LED’s are available so it should be easy to find the right LED to suit your application.

TIP: The starboard light is always green, (the right hand side of the boat looking from the stern) the port side is always red (the left hand side of the boat looking from the stern), the stern light is always white and faces aft, a mast head is always white and can be visible from any direction. There will always be someone who will correct you at the lake side if you get it wrong!