Rewiring a mast for LED's

[prv]

The reason I was going to leave the masthead is that I read somewhere LED bulbs don't work well when shining through the coloured lens of the tricolour.

Cool white LEDs don't produce the right colours through red and green filters. Certain warm white are ok (the manufacturers of mine published the colour gamut to demonstrate they were within the colregs requirements), as are special bulbs with red and green LEDs pointing in the relevant directions.

Pete

 

[Scotty_Tradewind]

Cool white LEDs don't produce the right colours through red and green filters. Certain warm white are ok (the manufacturers of mine published the colour gamut to demonstrate they were within the colregs requirements), as are special bulbs with red and green LEDs pointing in the relevant directions.

Pete

apologies.... I can't see which type you say confirmed as ok meeting colregs requirements.

S.

 

[prv]

apologies.... I can't see which type you say confirmed as ok meeting colregs requirements.

The specific type I was talking about are sadly no longer made, and the manufacturer's website with the colour information has been taken down. Nothing wrong with the lights, but the American owners of the business were hounded out of the country by the Fijian government and had to close down. However, I'd expect most decent warm white LEDs to work much the same. The bulbs with the three coloured segments should be ok too.

Pete

 

[thalassa]

I sized my wiring for incandescent but used LEDs for everything bar the steaming light. My thoughts were that someone may put a different bulb in in the future.

That would have been a wise decision in my case. I have converted all the mast lights to LED. It all looked very satisfactory, till I found out that the steaming light suppresses the VHF communications. Tricolour and deck light are OK.

 

[Scotty_Tradewind]

thalassa............would a screened cable help?

S.

 

[thalassa]

thalassa............would a screened cable help?

S.

I thinks so, but I already had rewired the mast the year before with RG58. When the mast was down this year, the replacement lamps, bought from boatlamps.co.uk, went in. But I had ordered the wrong size of festoon lamp for the steaming light. A bit impatient, I went off to a car part shop for a LED festoon lamp, and fitted that. All seemed to be fine, till during the summer 'cruise' I wanted to listen to and contact Port Control after dark. Deafening silence on all channels. All similar looking LED lamps are definitely not the same.