By Henry Kisor
IDPA Newsletter Editor

On a hazy day not long ago I was standing on the ramp at my airport scanning the sky. Off in the distance, perhaps five miles away, an incoming airplane suddenly became visible-not because I was looking for it through the murk, but because it was trying to catch my eye.

Its landing and taxi lights were blinking on and off alternately in apparently random fashion as it entered the pattern, turned base and final, touched down and taxied in.

I was surprised. I'd never seen an airplane so visible from that distance. Like most deaf pilots, I'm always concerned about being seen by other planes in the air as well as seeing them. Something had to be on that airplane to make it blink so vividly. Clearly it wasn't the pilot flicking on and off electrical switches almost at random-that would quickly ruin them, and besides, a pilot would have had too much workload in the pattern to do that.

When the Cessna 182 shut down by the FBO, I walked over to talk to its pilot. "What's with all the blinking on and off?" I asked.

"You saw that, huh?" she replied.

"I sure did," I said. "What's it all about?"

"I use a Pulselite. That's a little black electronics box that's installed behind the panel, and boy, I can tell you it gets atten-tion. I feel much safer with it in my plane. It's not that expensive and doesn't take long to install."

She gave me the name of the manufacturer and his email address, and I sent away for information.The Pulselite indeed is a little black box, a solid-state device made of aluminum with heat sink "ears," and it's 3 inches by 4 3/4 inches by 1 1/4 inches. It weighs just 10 ounces, and is made for either 12 or 24 volt electrical systems. It fits easily into the electrical system behind a crowded instrument panel; the brochure says it takes two to four hours to install, depending on the complexity of the electrical system and the panel. A switch installed on the panel turns it on or off.

Its two channels can be wired to flash the airplane's lights in an alternating pulse, one after the other, or all at the same time. The brochure claims that the Pulselite extends aircraft lamp life "up to 20 times normal by allowing the filament to run at a lower temperature than normal while maintaining full rated candlepower-that's a big savings on maintenance costs."

The brochure also says the Pulselite is FAA approved and STC'ed for virtually all general aviation aircraft, and by the end of 1999 had been installed on nearly 8,000 aircraft around the world.

The Pulselite comes in two models for small aircraft. The Model 1210-2405-2A is rated at 125 watts maximum output per channel and can be used with either two 100 watt lamps or a single 250 watt lamp. It costs $229. The larger Model 1220-2410-2 is rated at 250 watts max output and works with either two 250 watt lamps or one 500 watt lamp. It's $495. (Other models are made for helicopters and airliners.)

For information, write Precise Flight Inc., 63120 Powell Butte Rd., Bend, OR 97701, call 1-800-547-2558, fax 541-388-1105, email preciseflight@preciseflight.com, or see the Web site at www.preciseflight.com.

I'm planning to install a Pulselite in my C150 soon. See and be seen-isn't that what it's all about? --Henry Kisor