BOCA RATON, Florida — The Boca Raton Airport is the first airport in the United States to install the new FAA certified, Hali-Brite LED Rotating Beacon. Installation began March 10, 2021.
A rotating beacon is a visual navigation aid that projects a beam of light used by pilots to visually locate a lighted airport at night. For general aviation airports, like Boca Raton Airport, the beacon rotates to produce alternate clear and green flashes of light visible to pilots from the air, airport officials explain.
The new LED Rotating Beacon being installed at Boca Raton Airport is the first of its kind to be approved by the FAA for use in public airports, airport officials add.
“Upgrading the rotating beacon to LED offers numerous benefits and is in keeping with the Boca Raton Airport Authority’s goal to enhance safety and implement cost-efficient energy saving measures,” said Clara Bennett, executive director.
Compared with metal halide lamps used in traditional beacons, the LED rotating beacon offers significant energy savings, reduces light pollution, and reduces long-term maintenance, airport officials said.
Benefits include:
- Energy savings: The new L-802A(L) LED rotating beacon has a higher light output than the huge 36-inch traditional rotating beacons you see at many airports and uses a quarter of the power over traditional beacon technology. The LED beacon uses the power equivalent of about two 100 watt incandescent light bulbs.
- Light pollution: The LED technology in the beacon provides a much more “defined” light beam. The light “wash” up to the sky and down on neighborhoods is far less with the new LED beacon.
- Long-term maintenance: Traditional rotating beacons required bulb replacement. The new LED beacon typical lamp life is 12 years.
- Designed and hand built in United States of America.
The Boca Raton Airport is a general aviation airport, publicly owned by the state of Florida. The airport averages more than 70,000 operations annually.
I restored the beacon at KIDI. It was in service for 40+ years. I installed a new energy efficient drive system, new bulb, transformer and bearings. I clean the glass and performed general maintenance. The light can be seen and identified over 10 miles away. The quality of the materials and the quality of the engineering that this light has will allow this beacon to last another 40+ years.
There is no comparison!
Would love to see night footage of it operating to see the colour difference between incandescent and LED. I find green LEDs to be much closer to the white end of the spectrum.
Couple really dumb Comments made, most likely by non or low hours Pilots.
What about frost and or snow?
Even though the LEDs use much less power, they still get very warm, so I’m sure that snow will melt.
I replaced the Q4509 landing light with an 2,100 lumen LED unit. It uses 20 watts vs 120 for the incandescent one. But it still gets very warm, measure at 150 degrees F.
The big old style beacons are the only ones that can be easily seen. The newer style are small and often out done by the city lights. I’m afraid these will be worse. I stopped looking for them years ago.
It’s a good start, but why does it rotate? With today’s LEDs and optics, the beacon should be composed of both green and white LEDs 360 degrees around. It could rotate electronically or flash…no motor to wear out.
You have proposed something without complete thought on how this would be accomplished. Having enough luminescense to have equal radiance over 360 degrees would require thousands of LEDs in fixed position with complex lenses to refract the light for even coverage. The controlling electronics timing and switching to sequence the rotating effects would have to handle large electrical current. All of this would be complex and expensive. The concept is to make it simpler and cheaper.
Orienting the LEDs in one direction produces a much stronger, more coherent beam than having them arrayed in a 360-degree pattern.