Groupsets

On 6/10/2020 2:54 PM, Mark J. wrote:

Yup, my rear Kirtlands went on a ?1st generation? Blackburn rack, circa
1976.Â* I wasn't fond of Eclipse's proprietary mounting system either,
but the hooks on my Kirtland panniers broke quickly, replaced under
warranty by their beefier-version hook.

I was young & strong (& foolish), and carried WAY too much stuff/weight
when touring, perhaps the cause of the broken hooks.

Mark "That which did not kill me made me stronger" J.

The panniers I've used most often are, not surprisingly, an ancient and
oddball choice: Tailwind panniers, front and rear. I think they were a
Specialized product.

They were narrow and aerodynamic, with no lateral pockets and with a
shape somewhat like a vertical airfoil. They were intended to reduce air
resistance.

And they worked! On one cross state tour, I rode with a friend whose
bike was nearly identical to mine. He weighed what I weighed, although
he was probably 6" shorter. Our loads were the same, but his goods were
packed into rectangular Cannondale panniers, while mine were in the
Tailwinds.

Every time we descended a hill, I out-coasted him by a wide margin.

One main disadvantage of those was the mounting system. They had a
series of three flat hooks that looped over their respective racks. I
then had to plug in clevis pins with detent balls and rings. Getting
those pins inserted or removed was fussy and frustrating. Also, I ended
up adding tape padding to reduce rattles.

But if I do another tour, I'll probably still choose those panniers, at
least for the front.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 6/11/2020 1:01 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 5:51:20 AM UTC-7, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Mon, 8 Jun 2020 18:32:21 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie:

Now, you don't have to wear a helmet or ride a racing-ish
bike,

Is that so? Years ago, when looking around for a regional bicycle club
my children might have been interested in, there wasn't a single one
_not_ enforcing a helmets on their members. At that time almost no
cyclist ( 1%) in Germany and Europe was wearing a helmet, we didn't
have a helmet law, still haven't (knock on wood). But these clubs could
enforce it, and did. Why? Because their federal organization said so.
Because _their_ sponsors said so. So, ok, they needn't us, we needn't
them, good riddance!

Wow, so much anger. When USCF now USAC passed a rule requiring helmets in races, I wore a helmet. In fact, I was wearing a helmet most of the time anyway. They also required signed waivers, a license and wins/places to ride in my category. The oppression was monumental -- so I quit after 25 years.

Mr. Beattie, please walk up to the chalkboard and write 100 times:
BICYCLING =/= RACING.

Like you, there are lots of people who can't understand why anyone would
object to being made to wear styrofoam headgear. Like you, those are
almost all people who have already been coaxed to wear styrofoam
headgear. But you or they do not speak for the majority of the world's
cyclists.

It's yet another case of "People should do what I choose to do and not
discuss it."


But anyway, to repeat myself, again: calling sport riders pretenders or poseurs because they don't have bags, bells, whistles, lights, dyos, etc., etc. is dopey. They're pleasure riding and don't need to be equipped to pick-up gallons of milk -- or liters in Europe.

...

Excellent. One should be happy with his or her purchases. I've never seen the need for a handlebar bag on a race bike for sport riding or training, but I don't care if you use one. I just don't want to hear that someone without a bag on his or her race bike is somehow less of a cyclist.

Hmm. "Less of a cyclist?" That implies some standard - and what is your
standard?

There's a pretty large crew of _Buycycling_ subscribers and their clones
who judge cyclists by their speed, or by their equipment, which are
pretty closely correlated - although the cause-effect chain is backwards
from what most people think.

I can't accept that standard. I've known plenty of fast riders who were
too timid in traffic to bike to work. I know high mileage people who
invariably use their car to go fetch a magazine two miles away.
Personally, I think a person like that is "less of a cyclist." They are
less competent and/or less motivated.

You might say that all that doesn't matter - that everyone has their own
standards. Fine. But that's completely incompatible with ragging on
another's choice of practical equipment.

I'll continue to roll my eyes at people out for a sport ride with a handlebar bag and a lot of stuff.

And why?

I get older every year, it seems. But at my strongest, I was the guy who
rode five or six miles to the start of a ride when everyone else arrived
by car. I not only kept up, I pulled my share of the time among some of
the strongest riders in our club. I rode back home after the ride,
realized I had almost 90 miles for the day, and decided to continue on
to make it an even century. That was done with handlebar bag, fenders
and lights.

I have my bikes set up for versatility - to carry something I buy at a
store, to ride at night when I choose, to ride in the rain, to ride with
whatever shoes I choose, etc. You're saying I should not ride it on a
"sport ride" unless I spend an hour stripping it down? Jay, that's both
intolerant and dumb.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 7:27:48 AM UTC-7, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Tue, 9 Jun 2020 07:25:53 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie
:

On Tuesday, June 9, 2020 at 1:47:01 AM UTC-7, Sepp Ruf wrote:
Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Mon, 8 Jun 2020 10:30:13 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie:

My back-up to the dyno on my commuter is a L&M Urban 800 all in one..

That part wouldn't get an admittance in Germany, and rightfully so,
because it's just a flashlight.

IMO, our rules are somewhat arbitrary and too restrictive, but this part
we got right, from the very beginning.

When exactly was that "very beginning" you refer to?

Groan. Now we're going down the StVZO rabbit hole. The
benefit of the L&M Urban series is that they have a nice
pulsing (not flashing) light that helps differentiate a
rider from surrounding light sources like other bike and car
headlights.

I'm quite happy that almost nobody uses such a stroboscope around here,
because it is illegal and rightly so.

Uh, I know the difference between a "strobe" and a pulsing light. My light probably pulses between 200-300 lumen. It doesn't flash.

Such a differentiation does cyclists no good, and a stroboscopic light
makes recognition of that light in the 3d space difficult and, depending
on the frequency of the pulses, even impossible.

Leave that kind of stuff for marking obstacles and the like. An cyclist
isn't an obstacle, it's just vehicle. Your car doesn't start to blink
like a funfair booth, when you drive it slowly, for a reason.

Flashers are quite conspicuous. They are also annoying, and that's why I don't use one. You can dislike flashers (which I do), but you can't reasonably argue that they don't catch your attention -- for better or worse. It's like being beaten in the retinas.




Having a reasonably bright round beam is also
nice for the trail/dirt segments on my commute home.

Don't confuse high beam with low beam and especially, don't confuse
brightness with missing beamforming optics.

I'm not confused. I have a LUXOS B and SPPD8 set up that I run along with the Urban all-in-one. It's really easy to compare the two. I've had lots of different lights over the years.




I can
also switch it around between bikes and throw it on my fast
bike if it is dreary and I want to use a pulsing DRL.

We each have a Ixon IQ for the race bikes, older, but quite similar to
this one.

https://www.bumm.de/de/produkte/akku.../1922qmla.html

On my current race bike, there is a mount on the front brake bracket, on
the Panasonic there is a mount on the left side of the fork, my wife has
the standard mount for the handle bar on her scot.

Different to your toy, it's a real low beam headlight which is strong
enough to lit the road in front of me _and_ it gives me visibility for
oncoming and crossing traffic. But it doesn't blind that traffic, too,
because there is a sharp border, similar to a cars low beam.

The problem is, I'm often not on roads -- even with just commuting. I'm familiar with StVZO lights (I use one during the dark season) and like one with more upward spew when riding off-road and up the goat roads to my neighborhood where heavy beam cut off lets me see pedestrian's shoes and nother more on a steep road.

But for StVZO regulation, I question whether anyone would chose StVZO because it has all sorts of odd-ball rules and regs besides beam cut-off. Beam cut off is a good idea for riding on the road with other road users.


I've occasionally used that Ixon as a flashlight, it is quite powerfull,
but usually I prefer a smaller Fenix flashlight.

On the dirt bike you made fun of, there is a dyno hub in the front
wheel, as I already mentioned, plus an automatic headlight from bumm,
with similar optics.

There are products with more power (candela/lux/whatever), because
generators and LED became more efficient in the meantime, but even this
old stuff is more than good enough for what we currenty use and need.

For what you currently use and need.


I don't need a light which wastes most of its power to light the trees,
or, worse, to blind other people. As I said, I'd like our lawmakers to
remove some of the restrictions to be applied to cycle lighting, only,
like higb beams, but agree to the notion that a biyclist has to use a
non blinding low beam in the dark, strong enough to make him or her
visible for relevant traffic.

I agree that cyclists shouldn't be blinding each other, and there is a lot of that around here. My little pulsing light is certainly non-blinding. And my LUXOS has beam cut off. But on a dirt trail or stormy night in the rain, my dyno light is pathetic. In fact, so is the Urban -- but it produces more useful light than the LUXOS, even accounting for upward spew or lighting trees as you put it.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 10:59:30 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/11/2020 1:01 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 5:51:20 AM UTC-7, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Mon, 8 Jun 2020 18:32:21 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie:

Now, you don't have to wear a helmet or ride a racing-ish
bike,

Is that so? Years ago, when looking around for a regional bicycle club
my children might have been interested in, there wasn't a single one
_not_ enforcing a helmets on their members. At that time almost no
cyclist ( 1%) in Germany and Europe was wearing a helmet, we didn't
have a helmet law, still haven't (knock on wood). But these clubs could
enforce it, and did. Why? Because their federal organization said so.
Because _their_ sponsors said so. So, ok, they needn't us, we needn't
them, good riddance!

Wow, so much anger. When USCF now USAC passed a rule requiring helmets in races, I wore a helmet. In fact, I was wearing a helmet most of the time anyway. They also required signed waivers, a license and wins/places to ride in my category. The oppression was monumental -- so I quit after 25 years.

Mr. Beattie, please walk up to the chalkboard and write 100 times:
BICYCLING =/= RACING.

Like you, there are lots of people who can't understand why anyone would
object to being made to wear styrofoam headgear. Like you, those are
almost all people who have already been coaxed to wear styrofoam
headgear. But you or they do not speak for the majority of the world's
cyclists.

It's yet another case of "People should do what I choose to do and not
discuss it."

I don't think that a club/organization rule requiring a helmet -- which is what Wolfgang was taking about -- is that oppressive. It maybe crisis inducing for others, particularly if they have really nice hair.



But anyway, to repeat myself, again: calling sport riders pretenders or poseurs because they don't have bags, bells, whistles, lights, dyos, etc., etc. is dopey. They're pleasure riding and don't need to be equipped to pick-up gallons of milk -- or liters in Europe.

...

Excellent. One should be happy with his or her purchases. I've never seen the need for a handlebar bag on a race bike for sport riding or training, but I don't care if you use one. I just don't want to hear that someone without a bag on his or her race bike is somehow less of a cyclist.

Hmm. "Less of a cyclist?" That implies some standard - and what is your
standard?

There's a pretty large crew of _Buycycling_ subscribers and their clones
who judge cyclists by their speed, or by their equipment, which are
pretty closely correlated - although the cause-effect chain is backwards
from what most people think.

I can't accept that standard. I've known plenty of fast riders who were
too timid in traffic to bike to work. I know high mileage people who
invariably use their car to go fetch a magazine two miles away.
Personally, I think a person like that is "less of a cyclist." They are
less competent and/or less motivated.

You might say that all that doesn't matter - that everyone has their own
standards. Fine. But that's completely incompatible with ragging on
another's choice of practical equipment.

I'll continue to roll my eyes at people out for a sport ride with a handlebar bag and a lot of stuff.

And why?

I get older every year, it seems. But at my strongest, I was the guy who
rode five or six miles to the start of a ride when everyone else arrived
by car. I not only kept up, I pulled my share of the time among some of
the strongest riders in our club. I rode back home after the ride,
realized I had almost 90 miles for the day, and decided to continue on
to make it an even century. That was done with handlebar bag, fenders
and lights.

I have my bikes set up for versatility - to carry something I buy at a
store, to ride at night when I choose, to ride in the rain, to ride with
whatever shoes I choose, etc. You're saying I should not ride it on a
"sport ride" unless I spend an hour stripping it down? Jay, that's both
intolerant and dumb.

You can ride whatever you want -- except maybe a recumbent or a tri-bike with aerobars (dangerous in groups). But if you showed up with a bag-strewn touring bike with dynos and mirrors and kickstands for a sport ride with me and my cohorts, I would find that odd.

I also have bikes set up for versatility, and I use them for commuting and shopping trips and not for fast group rides. I'm not trying to be versatile on fast rides. I'm trying to be fast -- to the end. I could be fast on a touring bike for the first climb. Not so much climbs 3-10.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Thursday, 11 June 2020 15:08:03 UTC-4, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 7:27:48 AM UTC-7, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Tue, 9 Jun 2020 07:25:53 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie
:

On Tuesday, June 9, 2020 at 1:47:01 AM UTC-7, Sepp Ruf wrote:
Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Mon, 8 Jun 2020 10:30:13 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie:

My back-up to the dyno on my commuter is a L&M Urban 800 all in one.

That part wouldn't get an admittance in Germany, and rightfully so,
because it's just a flashlight.

IMO, our rules are somewhat arbitrary and too restrictive, but this part
we got right, from the very beginning.

When exactly was that "very beginning" you refer to?

Groan. Now we're going down the StVZO rabbit hole. The
benefit of the L&M Urban series is that they have a nice
pulsing (not flashing) light that helps differentiate a
rider from surrounding light sources like other bike and car
headlights.

I'm quite happy that almost nobody uses such a stroboscope around here,
because it is illegal and rightly so.

Uh, I know the difference between a "strobe" and a pulsing light. My light probably pulses between 200-300 lumen. It doesn't flash.

Such a differentiation does cyclists no good, and a stroboscopic light
makes recognition of that light in the 3d space difficult and, depending
on the frequency of the pulses, even impossible.

Leave that kind of stuff for marking obstacles and the like. An cyclist
isn't an obstacle, it's just vehicle. Your car doesn't start to blink
like a funfair booth, when you drive it slowly, for a reason.

Flashers are quite conspicuous. They are also annoying, and that's why I don't use one. You can dislike flashers (which I do), but you can't reasonably argue that they don't catch your attention -- for better or worse. It's like being beaten in the retinas.




Having a reasonably bright round beam is also
nice for the trail/dirt segments on my commute home.

Don't confuse high beam with low beam and especially, don't confuse
brightness with missing beamforming optics.

I'm not confused. I have a LUXOS B and SPPD8 set up that I run along with the Urban all-in-one. It's really easy to compare the two. I've had lots of different lights over the years.




I can
also switch it around between bikes and throw it on my fast
bike if it is dreary and I want to use a pulsing DRL.

We each have a Ixon IQ for the race bikes, older, but quite similar to
this one.

https://www.bumm.de/de/produkte/akku.../1922qmla.html

On my current race bike, there is a mount on the front brake bracket, on
the Panasonic there is a mount on the left side of the fork, my wife has
the standard mount for the handle bar on her scot.

Different to your toy, it's a real low beam headlight which is strong
enough to lit the road in front of me _and_ it gives me visibility for
oncoming and crossing traffic. But it doesn't blind that traffic, too,
because there is a sharp border, similar to a cars low beam.

The problem is, I'm often not on roads -- even with just commuting. I'm familiar with StVZO lights (I use one during the dark season) and like one with more upward spew when riding off-road and up the goat roads to my neighborhood where heavy beam cut off lets me see pedestrian's shoes and nother more on a steep road.

But for StVZO regulation, I question whether anyone would chose StVZO because it has all sorts of odd-ball rules and regs besides beam cut-off. Beam cut off is a good idea for riding on the road with other road users.


I've occasionally used that Ixon as a flashlight, it is quite powerfull,
but usually I prefer a smaller Fenix flashlight.

On the dirt bike you made fun of, there is a dyno hub in the front
wheel, as I already mentioned, plus an automatic headlight from bumm,
with similar optics.

There are products with more power (candela/lux/whatever), because
generators and LED became more efficient in the meantime, but even this
old stuff is more than good enough for what we currenty use and need.

For what you currently use and need.


I don't need a light which wastes most of its power to light the trees,
or, worse, to blind other people. As I said, I'd like our lawmakers to
remove some of the restrictions to be applied to cycle lighting, only,
like higb beams, but agree to the notion that a biyclist has to use a
non blinding low beam in the dark, strong enough to make him or her
visible for relevant traffic.

I agree that cyclists shouldn't be blinding each other, and there is a lot of that around here. My little pulsing light is certainly non-blinding. And my LUXOS has beam cut off. But on a dirt trail or stormy night in the rain, my dyno light is pathetic. In fact, so is the Urban -- but it produces more useful light than the LUXOS, even accounting for upward spew or lighting trees as you put it.

-- Jay Beattie.

Every year, (except this one since it's cancelled)there's a guy at the Tour booths who sells a blindingly bright STROBE light -white forthe front and red fort he rear. Every year I tell him that strobe lights are illegal here in Ontario Canada as vehicle lights. Those lights are iirc about $100.00 CDN each. People continue to buy them and he does a good business at the various shows. Must be quite interesting riding in a group where everyone has one of those going.

Cheers

On 6/11/2020 3:08 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 7:27:48 AM UTC-7, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

Different to your toy, it's a real low beam headlight which is strong
enough to lit the road in front of me _and_ it gives me visibility for
oncoming and crossing traffic. But it doesn't blind that traffic, too,
because there is a sharp border, similar to a cars low beam.

The problem is, I'm often not on roads -- even with just commuting. I'm familiar with StVZO lights (I use one during the dark season) and like one with more upward spew when riding off-road and up the goat roads to my neighborhood where heavy beam cut off lets me see pedestrian's shoes and nother more on a steep road.

Yes, as has been stated many times, StVZO is for normal paved surface
riding. Off road has other priorities and much less chance of blinding
others.

But for StVZO regulation, I question whether anyone would chose StVZO because it has all sorts of odd-ball rules and regs besides beam cut-off. Beam cut off is a good idea for riding on the road with other road users.

It certainly is!

As I understand it (which may not be perfectly) many StVZO provisions
intend to guarantee wide compatibility between components from various
manufacturers. Sort of the opposite of a lot of bike marketing, where
company X (or company S...) hopes you never get a chance to buy
replacements from anyone but them - at least, as long as they choose to
keep making replacements.

More generally, there may be no standard in the world that is truly
perfect. Some perceived imperfections are due to poorly understood
requirements (either by standard writers or standard criticizers). Some
perceived imperfections may be attempts to guarantee a job for someone's
brother-in-law. Other imperfections are just mistakes.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thursday, 11 June 2020 16:13:49 UTC-4, jbeattie wrote:
Snipped
But if you showed up with a bag-strewn touring bike with dynos and mirrors and kickstands for a sport ride with me and my cohorts, I would find that odd.

I also have bikes set up for versatility, and I use them for commuting and shopping trips and not for fast group rides. I'm not trying to be versatile on fast rides. I'm trying to be fast -- to the end. I could be fast on a touring bike for the first climb. Not so much climbs 3-10.

-- Jay Beattie.

Hah, I did that once. I joined a club for a No-Drop ride. I thought it meant that straight handlebar bikes were welcomed too. SO I showed up with my road touring bike and panniers and handlebar bag becuae I thought it's be a great shakedown ride. After the ride I learned the 'No-Drop' means they don't leave anyone behind. LOL

It nearly killed me trying to keep up with those carbon fiber and aluminium alloy racing bicycles.

Cheers.

On 6/11/2020 4:13 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 10:59:30 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/11/2020 1:01 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 5:51:20 AM UTC-7, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Mon, 8 Jun 2020 18:32:21 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie:

Now, you don't have to wear a helmet or ride a racing-ish
bike,

Is that so? Years ago, when looking around for a regional bicycle club
my children might have been interested in, there wasn't a single one
_not_ enforcing a helmets on their members. At that time almost no
cyclist ( 1%) in Germany and Europe was wearing a helmet, we didn't
have a helmet law, still haven't (knock on wood). But these clubs could
enforce it, and did. Why? Because their federal organization said so.
Because _their_ sponsors said so. So, ok, they needn't us, we needn't
them, good riddance!

Wow, so much anger. When USCF now USAC passed a rule requiring helmets in races, I wore a helmet. In fact, I was wearing a helmet most of the time anyway. They also required signed waivers, a license and wins/places to ride in my category. The oppression was monumental -- so I quit after 25 years.

Mr. Beattie, please walk up to the chalkboard and write 100 times:
BICYCLING =/= RACING.

Like you, there are lots of people who can't understand why anyone would
object to being made to wear styrofoam headgear. Like you, those are
almost all people who have already been coaxed to wear styrofoam
headgear. But you or they do not speak for the majority of the world's
cyclists.

It's yet another case of "People should do what I choose to do and not
discuss it."

I don't think that a club/organization rule requiring a helmet -- which is what Wolfgang was taking about -- is that oppressive. It maybe crisis inducing for others, particularly if they have really nice hair.

Which is just another way of saying it wouldn't bother you if people
made rules to do what you're already doing.

Why do I suspect you'd find a mandatory handlebar bag rule objectionable?

You can ride whatever you want -- except maybe a recumbent or a tri-bike with aerobars (dangerous in groups). But if you showed up with a bag-strewn touring bike with dynos and mirrors and kickstands for a sport ride with me and my cohorts, I would find that odd.

Definition of odd: " Not matching current fashion."

There have certainly been times and places where riding enthusiasts with
bike bags would not have been seen as odd. As I recall, back in the
1950s and 1960s, the French favored handlebar bags. The British favored
saddlebags.

I suppose if Usenet existed back then, it might have ignited another
Hundred Years War!

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 6/11/2020 11:52 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/11/2020 8:51 AM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Mon, 8 Jun 2020 18:32:21 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie:

Now, you don't have to wear a helmet or ride a racing-ish
bike,

Is that so? Years ago, when looking around for a regional
bicycle club
my children might have been interested in, there wasn't a
single one
_not_ enforcing a helmets on their members. At that time
almost no
cyclist ( 1%) in Germany and Europe was wearing a
helmet, we didn't
have a helmet law, still haven't (knock on wood). But
these clubs could
enforce it, and did. Why? Because their federal
organization said so.
Because _their_ sponsors said so. So, ok, they needn't
us, we needn't
them, good riddance!

Our bike club was founded in 1973 or so. In all those years,
there's never been a requirement to wear a helmet on club
rides. Mandating helmets was proposed a few times in the
past, but easily voted down with little discussion. Almost
all members currently wear them, of course, because fashion
is weird and powerful, but there were a few who didn't. My
wife and I wore them ONLY on club rides for precisely one
reason: I didn't want to spend our rides arguing about
helmets. I didn't want to make it an issue.

Well: Two or three years ago, the new slate of officers
decided they wanted to make helmets mandatory for all club
rides. (Also, they chose to make every member signing a
brand new "hold harmless" release form for every ride,
despite having signed a release form at each membership
renewal!)

Of course I objected to this mandatory helmet rule. This led
to the most contentious meetings our club has ever had.
People were shouting at each other in meetings. And the
strongest argument from the main helmet proponent was "Every
other club does this!"

In the end, the club did not impose that new helmet rule;
people are still free to wear what they choose. But one
beneficial effect is this: My wife and I no longer bother
with the helmets even on club rides. As I said, I wore it
just because I didn't want to make it an issue.

They chose to make it an issue.


One of many reasons I rode away from organized group rides
many years ago.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 6/11/2020 3:21 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Thursday, 11 June 2020 15:08:03 UTC-4, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 7:27:48 AM UTC-7, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Tue, 9 Jun 2020 07:25:53 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie
:

On Tuesday, June 9, 2020 at 1:47:01 AM UTC-7, Sepp Ruf wrote:
Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Mon, 8 Jun 2020 10:30:13 -0700 (PDT) schrieb jbeattie:

My back-up to the dyno on my commuter is a L&M Urban 800 all in one.

That part wouldn't get an admittance in Germany, and rightfully so,
because it's just a flashlight.

IMO, our rules are somewhat arbitrary and too restrictive, but this part
we got right, from the very beginning.

When exactly was that "very beginning" you refer to?

Groan. Now we're going down the StVZO rabbit hole. The
benefit of the L&M Urban series is that they have a nice
pulsing (not flashing) light that helps differentiate a
rider from surrounding light sources like other bike and car
headlights.

I'm quite happy that almost nobody uses such a stroboscope around here,
because it is illegal and rightly so.

Uh, I know the difference between a "strobe" and a pulsing light. My light probably pulses between 200-300 lumen. It doesn't flash.

Such a differentiation does cyclists no good, and a stroboscopic light
makes recognition of that light in the 3d space difficult and, depending
on the frequency of the pulses, even impossible.

Leave that kind of stuff for marking obstacles and the like. An cyclist
isn't an obstacle, it's just vehicle. Your car doesn't start to blink
like a funfair booth, when you drive it slowly, for a reason.

Flashers are quite conspicuous. They are also annoying, and that's why I don't use one. You can dislike flashers (which I do), but you can't reasonably argue that they don't catch your attention -- for better or worse. It's like being beaten in the retinas.




Having a reasonably bright round beam is also
nice for the trail/dirt segments on my commute home.

Don't confuse high beam with low beam and especially, don't confuse
brightness with missing beamforming optics.

I'm not confused. I have a LUXOS B and SPPD8 set up that I run along with the Urban all-in-one. It's really easy to compare the two. I've had lots of different lights over the years.




I can
also switch it around between bikes and throw it on my fast
bike if it is dreary and I want to use a pulsing DRL.

We each have a Ixon IQ for the race bikes, older, but quite similar to
this one.

https://www.bumm.de/de/produkte/akku.../1922qmla.html

On my current race bike, there is a mount on the front brake bracket, on
the Panasonic there is a mount on the left side of the fork, my wife has
the standard mount for the handle bar on her scot.

Different to your toy, it's a real low beam headlight which is strong
enough to lit the road in front of me _and_ it gives me visibility for
oncoming and crossing traffic. But it doesn't blind that traffic, too,
because there is a sharp border, similar to a cars low beam.

The problem is, I'm often not on roads -- even with just commuting. I'm familiar with StVZO lights (I use one during the dark season) and like one with more upward spew when riding off-road and up the goat roads to my neighborhood where heavy beam cut off lets me see pedestrian's shoes and nother more on a steep road.

But for StVZO regulation, I question whether anyone would chose StVZO because it has all sorts of odd-ball rules and regs besides beam cut-off. Beam cut off is a good idea for riding on the road with other road users.


I've occasionally used that Ixon as a flashlight, it is quite powerfull,
but usually I prefer a smaller Fenix flashlight.

On the dirt bike you made fun of, there is a dyno hub in the front
wheel, as I already mentioned, plus an automatic headlight from bumm,
with similar optics.

There are products with more power (candela/lux/whatever), because
generators and LED became more efficient in the meantime, but even this
old stuff is more than good enough for what we currenty use and need.

For what you currently use and need.


I don't need a light which wastes most of its power to light the trees,
or, worse, to blind other people. As I said, I'd like our lawmakers to
remove some of the restrictions to be applied to cycle lighting, only,
like higb beams, but agree to the notion that a biyclist has to use a
non blinding low beam in the dark, strong enough to make him or her
visible for relevant traffic.

I agree that cyclists shouldn't be blinding each other, and there is a lot of that around here. My little pulsing light is certainly non-blinding. And my LUXOS has beam cut off. But on a dirt trail or stormy night in the rain, my dyno light is pathetic. In fact, so is the Urban -- but it produces more useful light than the LUXOS, even accounting for upward spew or lighting trees as you put it.

-- Jay Beattie.

Every year, (except this one since it's cancelled)there's a guy at the Tour booths who sells a blindingly bright STROBE light -white forthe front and red fort he rear. Every year I tell him that strobe lights are illegal here in Ontario Canada as vehicle lights. Those lights are iirc about $100.00 CDN each. People continue to buy them and he does a good business at the various shows. Must be quite interesting riding in a group where everyone has one of those going.

Cheers


meh. The cannabis and Heroin markets seem to do OK in
places where they're illegal.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971