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Lights for road riding
Hi all, Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding .. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also.. Any suggestions? Thanks David -- dgarry |
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Lights for road riding
dgarry wrote: Hi all, Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding .. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also.. When I'm riding on the road, I use two small white flashing LED lights, to be seen, rather than to see with, as I'm riding on the road where there's street lights. For riding without street lights, you want a decent luxeon LED or a halogen or HID lamp, or you can *just* get away with some of the 3 or 5 LED lamps if you ride slowly. Talk to your LBS, and have a look at what they have in stock to show you. |
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Lights for road riding
In aus.bicycle on Mon, 4 Sep 2006 13:29:12 +1000
dgarry wrote: Hi all, Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding . I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also.. I love my hub dynamo and lumotec LED light. I have the fancy German dynamo, but you can get a Shimano one for about $150, the light is around $80, and a rear is $35. Never have to worry about batteries again! And while the light is "only" 3 watts, it's a very bright and well focused 3w. Zebee |
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Lights for road riding
dgarry Wrote: Hi all, Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding .. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also.. Any suggestions? As bleve has said, lights generally fall in to two categories, the see-me lights and the I-can-see lights. Some HID lights have see-me settings which last far longer than when on the I-can-see setting. IMO it's worth having at least two lights front and two lights rear. Being seen is fundamental to safe riding on the road, it makes sense to build in some redundancy. -- EuanB |
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Lights for road riding
Bleve wrote: dgarry wrote: Hi all, Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding .. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also.. When I'm riding on the road, I use two small white flashing LED lights, to be seen, rather than to see with, as I'm riding on the road where there's street lights. For riding without street lights, you want a decent luxeon LED or a halogen or HID lamp, or you can *just* get away with some of the 3 or 5 LED lamps if you ride slowly. Talk to your LBS, and have a look at what they have in stock to show you. It's very important to be visible to other road users. I tend to wear fluoro yellow or similarly light coloured jerseys if I am riding home after dusk. Flashing red rear LED's are good, and if you have a couple they should go out of phase after a while and much more visible. Is there a word for this? - phototactic (thats movement in response to light)? Flashing front single LED's are ok to be seen, especially if again you have a couple and they are out of phase. I also place a couple of single LED's on the bike helmet so a flashing LED follows my axis-of-sight and 180 deg a red one. Side streets- err defensive riding and anticipation of crap driving. I tend to believe a solid bright light is less visible than a flashing light, but a combination works well. I have a couple of triple-LED front lights that can be set to flashing or solid, tends to work pretty well in combination with the rest. Easy switching between modes. |
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Lights for road riding
On 2006-09-04, Bleve (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea: dgarry wrote: Hi all, Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding .. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also.. When I'm riding on the road, I use two small white flashing LED lights, to be seen, rather than to see with, as I'm riding on the road where there's street lights. All depends on what you're riding through. Riding through bridge road, richmond, with all the light clutter, drunks, and careless individuals pulling out without looking, I would not consider anything less than a 15W halogen, if I was doing it every day. When I was doing it once a week (return), I still was thinking the risk of not doing so outweighed the slight invonvenience of setting up the 5W as a helmet light, and 15W on the bike. Chewed through the batteries, but the 15W only stayed on through the busy sections. Now that I only ride there occasionally, the bother outweighs the risk. For riding without street lights, you want a decent luxeon LED or a halogen or HID lamp, or you can *just* get away with some of the 3 or 5 LED lamps if you ride slowly. Talk to your LBS, and have a look at what they have in stock to show you. When I was a kid, riding from the observatory to the house on the edge of town, with no intervening street lights or traffic (at 3am), the 2.4W krypton globe worked fine everynight, as long as I took some spare batteries. I wasn't going fast -- TimC [On being overcaffeinated...] Yes, this is possible - symptons include the sun being too loud and grokking in full what Adams meant by "unpleasantly like being drunk". -- Steed in ASR |
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Lights for road riding
gumby Wrote: I tend to believe a solid bright light is less visible than a flashing light, but a combination works well. I have a couple of triple-LED front lights that can be set to flashing or solid, tends to work pretty well in combination with the rest. Easy switching between modes. While flashing may be more visible , it also is seems to scream out "slow bicycle". I have been turned in front of a number of times with clearly flashing lights. I think distance perception is harder for an oncoming vehicle. I now feel safer with both. Seems to have reduced the incidents of people turning into my path. -- sinus |
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Lights for road riding
dgarry wrote:
Hi all, Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding .. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also.. Any suggestions? I hate changing batteries, so here's what I did: http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2006/6/20/83754/2658 Basically, I've used a hub dynamo to charge a set of five 800mAh AAA NiMh batteries. The charge controller circuit board also has a flasher unit built-in, which drives six 10mm high-brightness LEDs, which are housed in trailer clearance lights where the reflectors used to be (three in each light). The headlight is your basic 4xAA handlebar-mounted krypton unit, wired up to the battery pack. A single toggle switch turns all lights on or off (I also hate pressing tiny buttons repeatedly on LED flashers). Since those pics were taken I've moved the control box to the stem, as it's more convenient. Total cost, about $75. BTH |
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Lights for road riding
In article ,
dgarry wrote: Hi all,Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding.. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also..Any suggestions?ThanksDavid-- dgarry I was in the same boat recently. The key is how much light do you need to see. Riding in Sydney inner West, I bought a front white and rear red combo set and found it to be more than adequate. It's 5 white LEDs at the front and is good enough to supplement the street lighting up to 10m and it's clear enough for others to see. The rear red has 7 LEDs and has various flash pattern. The brand is called Basta. I think it's pretty widely available. The other advantage is that it runs on just 2 AA batteries for the front white. So it's relatively light. -- |
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Lights for road riding
On 2006-09-04, Artoi (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea: In article , dgarry wrote: Hi all,Just wondering are using for a front light for night time road riding.. I'm looking for a light so that I'm see and I can see with it also..Any suggestions?ThanksDavid-- dgarry I was in the same boat recently. The key is how much light do you need to see. Riding in Sydney inner West, I bought a front white and rear red combo set and found it to be more than adequate. It's 5 white LEDs at the front and is good enough to supplement the street lighting up to 10m and it's clear enough for others to see. The rear red has 7 LEDs and has various flash pattern. The brand is called Basta. I think it's pretty widely available. The other advantage is that it runs on just 2 AA batteries for the front white. So it's relatively light. Note that any flash pattern that doesn't simply flash all LEDs on then all LEDs off, is next to useless. If you alternately switch half on, then you simply are left with a light half as bright, as from a distance, you can't pick the scanning pattern. I've seen lights that have 9 LEDs, and one of the patterns is to continually scan up and down, a single LED at a time. So it's now 9 times less bright, and from 200m, you wouldn't be able to tell that it is scanning at all -- it just appears as a constant light 9 times less bright than what it should be. -- TimC Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. |
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