Hi and welcome to the EasyStar build thread.

We will be using for our base an already converted easystar designed by my daughter as a Easystar cow. The plane already has flattened wings for less stability, ailerons added, increased rudder surface and a brushless conversion with about 300 watts of power.

For the night flyer we came up with some designs and then changed them a few times and came up with a rather over indulgent scheme with lots of leds. About 5m of different colours and a total of about 300 leds although I haven't counted them.  To start with we measured the areas to be covered, came up with a list of lengths and colours, cut the LED tape into the appropiate sizes and removed the silicone to the ends to make ready for soldering.

Here are the LEDS cut to length for the fuselage and the wing LED's already attached and tested.

At this point we decided to use a seperate battery supply for the LEDs and Main power and also to add an additional servo and switch harness so that we could turn the lights on and off during flight. For this we used a Hitec HS55 glued to the switch harness with an elongated servo horn and a screw pre drilled into the top of the switch.  We then added the servo to the gear switch on the transmitter and trimmed the servo so that it wouldn't be overstressed either in the on or off positions. The servo and switch harness were then superglued together and were then hot glue gunned into position.

For soldering the LEDs we use an adjustable soldering iron set at about 300 deg C. We found that a 40W soldering iron was a bit too hot and that a 25W would suit better. If you only have a 40W or bigger then you will just have to work faster and be slightly more careful.  We melted the two upper wing lights strips as these were the first we did and we had to cut back another 50mm and add some more in to make up the size difference. This is why you will see that there are 2 small strips of blue on the upper wing, but hey it might of happened for a reason (looks cool). Once soldered up make sure you do a test before fitting to the model.

The Strips are then attached to the fuz and tested again. For the wings we used 2 sets of jst leads so that it was more convenient for detaching the wings. These are then soldered up to the main fuz lead and are all attached into the switch harness.  We tested with all lights on with an Overlander sport 1300mAh 3 cell battery. After 30mins the battery still showed 20% power so we have now reduced to a 1000mAh and a 1600mAh as the flight battery.  You will also notice that we have used the glue gun to seal the soldered joints and to give a better fix to the ends of the LED strips ( This helps prevent any knocks pulling the tape off or damage to the soldered joints. We decided to leave the silicone cover on the light strips, but it can be removed to save weight on lighter models.

And here's the finished model ready for flight. For reference we have white on upper wing with the two small bits of blue as mentioned earlier, Orange (sometimes referred to as yellow) on the rear elevator, two strips of Warm white on the front nose, red to the sides of the fuz and and blue to the underside of the wing with strips of red trailing. Flying photos coming soon.

Here is the Video of it flying

Hope this was helpful !

Happy Flying