LED: Combined All Round White + Tricolour?

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Ronald_M

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Is such a thing made that would comply with all the relevant regulations and standards for a vessel under 7 metres?

I'm re-organizing the electrics on my boat this winter; the plan is (a) LED masthead tricolour when sailing (b) combined LED red/green bow light + LED all round white masthead light when motoring.

Aqua Signal (eg) make a combined LED Tricolour/Anchor Light unit, but I would guess that the Anchor Light part of this would not suffice as a combined steaming/stern light.

Any pointers would be welcome.

Ron.
 
Ronald
If the Aqua Signal anchor light meets the requirements for anchoring (2 mile visibility I believe) it should meet the requirements for a combined steaming/stern light. The problem as I see it is that when inshore people look forward instead of up so the tricolor should not be used, the red/green and stern light should be. If you use the anchor light in place of steaming/stern lights when sailing inshore you will not be showing a stern light low down where everybody will look. You might look like a vessel that is much farther away than you really are. I'd probably install a stern light and a steaming light as well as the tricolor/anchor light.
 
mitiempo said:
Ronald
If you use the anchor light in place of steaming/stern lights when sailing inshore you will not be showing a stern light low down where everybody will look.
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Hardly an issue on a boat under 7 metres, in my view. The masthead will hardly be lost in the clouds, and not that much higher than the deck level lights on a big powerboat!

I always prefer, though, to have as wide a selection of nav lights to chose from, so would have both if possible.
 
If you are feeling creative and have a bit of electrical know how why not have a try at making your own?

Heres an attachment of my bicolour ( with the cover removed!) I dont know how it would stand up to the colregs but I've done some testing myself and the range is in excess of 2nm. the hardest part was making little black screens to make sure there were nice crisp cutoffs between the sectors etc. that took a little trial and error.

The result is very bright, uses 250 mA for Bi and Stern. And cost me about a fiver and a few evenings work. I built it around the chassis of an old bulb so I can make the switch back to bulbs if need be. the resistors and LEDs are in a self contained unit. The original cover fits on fine.

One thing I did do a bit differently - the stern light - the current crop of comercially available LED nav lights use the 'Ice white' LEDs for where white light is required. I tried this and the damn thing looked almost blue from 0.5 a mile astern.
Then I discovered 'warm white' LEDs. their colour spectrum looks pretty much like the good old yellowish white of a filament bulb. Much better. In fact I intend to switch my cabin lights over to these in time.

The advantages are endless. Less current. long life. voltage drop in wiring is negligable at lower currents. Plus how many 'colregs approved' nav lights have you seen where the filters have sun faded and the colour is way off. Red and green LEDs wont do that.

I can give you more of a description of how I built it if your interested...
 
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contessaman said:
If you are feeling creative and have a bit of electrical know how why not have a try at making your own?

I can give you more of a description of how I built it if your interested...
Click to expand...

Hi Contessa man........yes please to the last sentence

and...
a. do you have any close up photos of your lights?
b. where do you source your components?
c. are the led's going to have a problem with slight d.c. supply fluctuations?

ta
Scotty
 
Ronald_M said:
Is such a thing made that would comply with all the relevant regulations and standards for a vessel under 7 metres?
Click to expand...

A single all round white is all you need!

On my <7m boat I use a standard tri+white lamp with a 25W white replacing the 5W with which it came. Were I installing it now I would probably stack the NASA Supernova tri and white LED thingies instead.
 
Scotty_Twister said:
Hi Contessa man........yes please to the last sentence

and...
a. do you have any close up photos of your lights?
b. where do you source your components?
c. are the led's going to have a problem with slight d.c. supply fluctuations?

ta
Scotty
Click to expand...

Hi Scottie,

Firstly to answer your points:

a)attached is the best picture I have got at the moment. The lights were standard aquasignal type that take the 10 watt festoon bulb.

b)www.phenoptix.com

c)No. When calculating series resistor values you can take this into account. My batteries are at a max of 14.4v with the alternator running. 14.6 when my shore power is on. When you buy an LED its spec will say for example Vf 2.0 - 2.3v. If you make sure your resistor values are calculated so that the max voltage/current is not exceeded at your max battery voltage then you'll be okay. Granted they will be a tad dimmer when you are under sail, and your batts are at around 13.5 v. But in my experience they are still plenty bright. If you wanted, a simple voltage regulator chip costs about 30p and only has three wires. this will peg the output at exactly 12v regardless of input. But I have not found this necessary.

How did I build it?

It kind of evolved in my head so what I will describe is not exactly how I built that one, but what I would do if I were making another, if you see what I mean...

get some vero board or similar. you will be mounting 3x leds on a thin strip say 8mm wide x the length of your old festoon bulb. Make up this strip with the 3 LEDs in series and a resistor (soldered my resistor on back of board) such that the board will run independantly off your 12v source. arrange it so the top of board is +ve and bottom -ve supply. You will be making 4 of these. 2 red, 2 green.

I used 3mm wide angle extreme brightness LED. with what I know now I would use superflux ones -really wide angle and their 4 pin mount is easier to solder.

test each of these 4 boards to make sure they are working. If one is dimmer than other then probably a duff resistor. I had several. got those (resistors) in maplin BTW.

Heres the fiddly bit. take your festoon bulb. measure it. then smash it. All you want is the end caps.

next get some of that stiff mains household wire -the grey stuff. cut it open to get the stiff but bendable solid copper wire from inside. what you now need to do is lay all four boards LED side down in a row, slighly spaced. make sure polarites match. place a length of copper bar at 90 degress top and bottom and solder it to the board. so you are effectivly paralleling the boards up. when its all cooled carefully bend the whole lot around in an arc so the vero boards are like the ones in my pic. stick some power on it to test as its easy to cook a resistor etc.

Finally using more copper bar solder some straigt bits to make each radius into a copper D shape when viewd from above. I then soldered the old end caps of the bulb onto that. You need to make sure the angles are equal, the whole thing fits under your old light cover, and then get handy with scraps of black plastic and araldite.

It sounds fiddly but it wasnt to bad. If I hold a white sheet of paper in front of mine the colour cutoffs are really crisp.

Stern light was much the same only 2 boards of 3 leds were sufficent for arc of coverage required.

the only mistake I made was trying to use ready made up boards of 3 LEDs. waste of time as I ended up melting the tiny resistors and the LEDs werent bright enough. So all I kep from that was the circuit board. You can achieve the same with veroboard and thats what I will be doing for my tricolour.

let me know if I can help further. Happ LEDing. Oh and dont drip solder on the dining table it does not please the wife!;)
 
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What you propose is perfectly legal but I am not sure I would advise using LEDs at the moment. The green sector on my masthead Lopolight was not working when my boat was delivered 2 years ago. It sprang into life when I visited the masthead but I have little confidence that something that only worked when it was knocked will continue to do so.

The green and red bow LEDs both failed after about 18 hours use leaving me with no option but to motor out to sea showing the masthead tricolour (perhaps). Whilst we were trying to persuade the bow lights to work the boat alongside us with identical lights found one of his had failed as well. I know of several other boats with factory fitted with LEDs that have had to have replacements under warranty in the first year. I believe these were Hella fittings which originally had 3 LEDs each and a clear lens. The replacements have a single LED and a coloured lens. The whole lot have been working well for a season now but given the expense I am not sure I would recommend them until they have a longer track record of reliability.

As far as colour and brightness go they are very good. There is no problem with visibility whilst heeled. The Aquasignal tricolour a friend has fitted also seems to work well with good colour and heeling tolerance. However, the NASA tricolour does not handle heeling very well.
 
PeterR said:
What you propose is perfectly legal but I am not sure I would advise using LEDs at the moment. The green sector on my masthead Lopolight was not working when my boat was delivered 2 years ago. It sprang into life when I visited the masthead but I have little confidence that something that only worked when it was knocked will continue to do so.

The green and red bow LEDs both failed after about 18 hours use leaving me with no option but to motor out to sea showing the masthead tricolour (perhaps). Whilst we were trying to persuade the bow lights to work the boat alongside us with identical lights found one of his had failed as well. I know of several other boats with factory fitted with LEDs that have had to have replacements under warranty in the first year. I believe these were Hella fittings which originally had 3 LEDs each and a clear lens. The replacements have a single LED and a coloured lens. The whole lot have been working well for a season now but given the expense I am not sure I would recommend them until they have a longer track record of reliability.

As far as colour and brightness go they are very good. There is no problem with visibility whilst heeled. The Aquasignal tricolour a friend has fitted also seems to work well with good colour and heeling tolerance. However, the NASA tricolour does not handle heeling very well.
Click to expand...

Sounds like your Lopolight problem is more to do with the wiring than the light itself. Fitting instructions are very clear about the need to solder joints and then insulate and waterproof. The light is well designed to ensure that the connections to the outside world are as reliable as possible. Sounds like yours may not have been done correctly.

Otherwise, as Twister Ken says, there seems little point in having LEDs as nav lights if they are only to be used when the engine is running. The point about not changing colour in the sun is a valid one but this can easily be addressed by wrapping the lights in cloth during daylight. I have had the same bulbs in my navlights for many years, whereas my experience of Ultraleds LEDs has been very poor indeed, six failing in well under one season.
 
I agree with vyv that it could be wiring or connections. These issues can come up with any kind of light, not just LEDs. As reported the Aquasignal are good and have no heeling issues. I believe these are the only approved complete unit in the US. There are many companies springing up to grab a market share of LED bulbs. They're not all good. Over here Dr LED has had quite a few issues I hear about on the forums (premature failures and lousy customer service as well) but as I said everybody has nothing but good to say about the Aquasignal (except for pricing).
Brian
 
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