How Oxley’s innovations are keeping the aircraft lights on
“There are few things worse when you’re landing an aircraft than your landing lights suddenly going ‘pop’,” notes FINN editor-in-chief, Alan Peaford. He talked to Oxley, a company that has…
“There are few things worse when you’re landing an aircraft than your landing lights suddenly going ‘pop’,” notes FINN editor-in-chief, Alan Peaford. He talked to Oxley, a company that has come up with a number of innovative solutions to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Martin Blakstad, CEO, Oxley, said: “Oxley’s lights are designed for very rugged environments. The LED landing lights that we’ve developed have a much longer life.”
He says that where incandescent lights usually last 50-100 hours, Oxley’s last 20,000 hours.
The lights also have integrated health monitoring so Oxley can tell in advance when the LEDs are showing signs of failure and can advise when they need changing.
How?
Blakstad explains: “The lights can interface with the aircraft’s central processing unit and we can then feed information back. Alternatively…you have an indicator that shows when a light is degrading… and the maintenance crew will know they need to change it. That will avoid the preventative maintenance which goes on at the moment, when you might be taking off a light that’s perfectly good.”
What about one of the big issues with LEDs: overheating? Oxley has software built into the lights which thermally manages the LEDs, Blakstad says.
Many of Oxley’s light innovations were developed for military and adapted for wider use.
“Oxley now has a much bigger push with the commercial aerospace market and that’s going to be priority for us going forward,” Blakstad said.
Watch the video above for more details.
