led navlights

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cpthook

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Thinking vaguely of replacing the masthead tricolour but staggered at the price of these units. Would anyone really pay over £500 for an led tricolour? I note that you can buy the individual LEDs themselves at a significant saving. Has anyone tried making a unit?

Dude
 
There are several sites on the web with info about construction of led lights. The main difficulty is getting the angles, because the leds aren't unidirectional. One of the more expensive ones uses a clever control system to pulse the light, so that the eye's natural persistence of vision makes it look brighter for less volts. (They are also likely to be more robust and longer-lasting) Or so they claim....
 
There are LED replacement bulbs that will fit (at least in the Aquasignal ones.

Ultraleds can supply and Dr.LED

It is important to use a led bulb made for the purpose because LEDs do not have a continuous spectrum like a normal bulb so you must use one that emits light at the correct wavelength to match the coloured sectors.

Chandlers also now stock them i think you will find. Take a look at some recent ads in the mags and their websites. Pretty certain I have seen them in Seateach's ads

HOWEVER there have been reports of very poor reliability of some of these replacements.

For the time being I'm sticking to an ordinary bulb.
 
i picked up a nasa supernova LED light for £50 inc postage from the nasa website a few weeks ago.

It promises to be visible for >2miles too.

Cant comment on performance yet as still in its box just now.....
 
You are paying for the novelty and for 'what the market will stand' pricing. LEDs are cheap, the drive electronics , even the sophisticated ones, cost pennies. The light spread or emission pattern of LED's is a whole lot easier to predict and control than incandescents. Pulsing an LED at high current is a completely acceptable form of drive but it costs next to nothing.

The problem is that the public WANTS to pay £300 for something when it's new otherwise they perceive that they are getting an inferior product.
 
Last year I bought the tricolour version of this to fit into my aqua mast-head light.

Problem was that the segments did not line up correctly. The lamp came with a replacement holder which could be mounted at different angles, but non of the those was correct.

In the end, I retained the filament lamp.

John
 
look at the nasa super nova led light circa £45 from ebay outlet or circa £50 from nasa. Sectored and bright - my masthead light wasnt working last year so deffinetly an improvement for me!
 
Good point. Also, the market is still small.

What worries me is that some manufacturers are selling white LED arrays to replace white filament lamps in tricolour or bicolour fittings. That is madness!

The most efficient LEDs are the red and green ones, to get white you lose a lot of power in luminescent elements. Then you put them behind filters in your existing fitting and wonder why the colour is odd (well it starts out with a different spectral range, so of course it ends up with a different one!) and lose most of the light because it's filtered out. You lose twice, and since you are doing it to lower your power comsumption, you are shooting yourself in the foot, twice! So if you are going to use LEDs, get a new triclour/bicolour fitting designed for them. The lopolight looks really good. I hope and expect the price to come down.
 
A great deal has been written on the topic of late, for example by the Cruising Association and Nigel Calder in Proboat. Lopolight is the only one to comply with all regulations, so its visibility at heel angle is to specification. No others are.

Fitting white LED replacements to lenses originally designed for tungsten ones is a can of worms. Not only do they not shine at heeled angles but the colours can be severely changed. I saw a blue masthead tricolour last year!

At LIBS I saw some tricolour LEDs to be fitted in white lenses. These look interesting and undoubtedly will be cheaper than Lopolight.
 
I'd rather buy a lifetime's supply of incandescent bulbs, a monkey and train the monkey to climb the stick. At least you'd have a spare monkey and change left over /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Dude
 
[ QUOTE ]
Lopolight is the only one to comply with all regulations, so its visibility at heel angle is to specification. No others are.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lopolight claim that their tricolour for example is approved by MCA, USCG, DMA, RINA and BSH

aqua signal claim approvals from MCA, USCG, RINA, BSH, IMO, GL, A16, CE

Does that mean that the Danes are the only ones who specify a visibility at heel angle or is there some other regulation concerning angle of heel that Lopolight don't openly admit to complying with?
 
As far as I can understand, Lopolight conform fully to IMO/MCA, which is surely assessed independently, so no aspects of performance could be hidden by the manufacturer.

I have just read an answer by Nigel Calder in YM, where he says 'The only ones I know of that are certified to IMO/MCA are Lopolights, but there could be others.' His Proboat article mentions no others but gives a very comprehensive description of the technology behind Lopolight. I may have been incorrect to say that Lopolight are the only one but that was the impression I gained from the Proboat article.
 
I replaced my Hella - or was it an AquaSignal? - three years ago with an Orca Green Tri Anchor, and am still fully satisfied with my choice. The lights are USCG approved since 2004, and are now in use on various governement and commercial crafts. The price is now $389.-- (that's less than £300.--)

BTW the colours are given by the leds, and the "glass" is white.

No connexion, etc. just satisfied.

Paul
 
Yes, I did. Lopo trilight with anchor. £400 and worth it.

Very visible
Built like a tank
No maintenance
If anything fails up top you can tell at the switch panel without climbing the mast
 
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