Before I start I want to give credit where credit is due for this project, this was the brain child of Pinside member GRUMPY. He mentioned in a thread that he had built a few of these for his games with the 1683 beacons and was happy enough to share with me his hand drawn schematics and talk me through a bit of the process.
As many F-14 Tomcat owners know, our beloved beacons come equipped with 28V, 1683 flasher bulbs. So if you want to run 12V 89 LED's in them for further seizure inducing action it is next to impossible. That is unless you step down the voltages. This little DIY project can make those LED desires a reality. It's a pretty simple, low cost, project that takes about 1/2 an hour to put together. How simple you ask? Simple enough for me to put it together and install it successfully on my first attempt.
Parts:
Perf Board from teh Rat Shack $2.49
*5 W/ 5Ohm resistor .75 Great Plains Electronics.
2A/200V Bridge Rectifier .60 Great Plains Electronics
18G or 22G wire for jumpers ~10 inches Check yo scrap box
2 PCB Feet Steal em from a junk board
Drill Bit to drill out input/output lines
*If you are going to run incandescent 89's instead of LED's you are going to need to beef up your resistor to 10W/10 Ohms.