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Every helicopter has three separate lights: the spotlight, the navigation lights and, from v0.4.7, the dashboard lights. All three are worked from the seat that holds the controls — the pilot seat.
Default keys: Spotlight = L, Navigation Lights = N, Dashboard Lights = I. All can be changed in the controls settings. Everyone nearby sees the spotlight and the navigation lights, not just the crew.

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Spotlight

A long-range white searchlight on the helicopter.
  • Switched with L from the pilot seat
  • Throws a wide cone forward — useful at night and for searching ground
  • The spotlight no longer lights the cockpit — the dashboard lights have their own switch
  • Needs a fitted, charged battery to switch on. With a flat battery it will not come on
  • Switching it off is never blocked, whatever state the battery is in
  • Drains the battery while it is on — see below
  • On a night landing the autopilot turns it on for the way down and off again afterwards
The standard aircraft lights, for being seen and for telling which way the aircraft is facing.
  • Switched with N from the pilot seat
  • Includes:
    • Port light — red, left side
    • Starboard light — green, right side
    • Tail light — white, at the back
    • Anti-collision beacon — red, flashing
  • Needs a fitted, charged battery to switch on
  • Switching them off is never blocked

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Dashboard Lights

Lights the instrument panel and powers the cockpit electronics — the GPS, the gauges, the radar and the chin camera — so they work with the engine off.
  • Switched with I from the pilot seat
  • Needs a fitted, charged battery to switch on; switching off is never blocked
  • At night the autopilot switches them on, and off again when it lets go, unless someone is sitting at the controls
See Cockpit, Radar & Warnings.

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Battery & Lights

With the engine off, lights drain the battery at one flat rate while any light is on — the spotlight, the navigation lights, the dashboard lights or the chin camera’s spotlight. Having several on costs exactly the same as having one — it is not added up. While the engine is running it carries the lights, and they cost the battery nothing. If the battery reaches zero, they all switch themselves off, and taking the battery out switches off the spotlight, the navigation lights and the dashboard lights. After a server restart every helicopter comes back with its lights off, so a light left on at shutdown cannot drain a parked battery. A full battery holds 500 units. At the defaults a running engine puts back 1 a second, lights on or not, so a flat battery is full again after about 8 minutes of running — flying will never flatten a battery. With the engine off the lights cost 0.25 a second, so a parked helicopter with its lights on goes flat in about 33 minutes.
These defaults changed in v0.4.7 — battery.lightDrain used to be 2.0 and battery.chargeRate 5.0, which flattened a parked helicopter in about 4 minutes. A server whose helicopter files still had the old values is moved to the new ones automatically when it updates; a value you changed yourself is kept.
To stop lights draining the battery at all, set battery.lightDrain to 0 in the helicopter’s JSON config. Change this when players keep stranding themselves by leaving the lights on. Lights will still need some charge to switch on, but will not use any while they are lit.

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The Light Icons on Screen

The spotlight, navigation-light and dashboard-light icons live on the damage panel in the top-left corner — not on the instrument cluster. They sit next to the battery icon and the six damage-zone indicators. That means H hides them too: the damage panel is a personal on/off toggle, and pressing H takes the light icons with it. Servers can remove the panel for everybody with crew.damageZonePanelEnabled = 0. See HUD & Fuel. See the Controls Reference for the light keys alongside everything else.