headlight recommend?



Jay Bollyn wrote:
> "Tom Sherman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Jay Bollyn wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> For 'illuminate pavement' headlights, see DiNotte headlights: Simply
>>> the best, brightest, and best customer service, by far.
>>>
>> Why go with such inexpensive, low powered lights?
>>
>> This is the one to have: <http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/bigbang.asp>. If
>> only the adapter for US/Canadian outlets was no additional charge.
>>
>>
> Because my life is worth more than $2,000 USD...to me.
>
> DUH!
>
$2000 USD would get you two (2) Big Bang headlights - maybe the adapter
would be no extra charge if you buy in bulk.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful
 
Nate Nagel wrote:
>
> Jay wrote:
> >
> > Chalo wrote:
> >>
> >>N8N wrote:
> >>>
> >>>I mean, the concept of having enough light
> >>>output to fry flies makes me giggle, but I honestly don't want to
> >>>inadvertantly blind oncoming motorists...
> >>
> >>Yeah, you'd have to blind them, deafen them, fog them with poison gas,
> >>and run them off the road to fully return the favors they do for us.
> >
> > I like the 'blind them' part.
> >
> > I just aim my lights 'strategically'.
>
> Um, guys? I'd be willing to bet that most people reading this group are
> both cyclists *and* motorists, depending on when you catch them...

They ride bike and drive a car, sure. I do too. I have about a dozen
bikes, a handful of trikes, a big motorcycle, a old diesel Mercedes,
and a school bus in my household.

Driving a smogger is a nasty imposition on others; riding bike isn't.
You're quibbling about the beam shape of a 13W bike light, while a
typical car packs 110W to 220W of headlight beams-- and a lot of them
are mounted high on needlessly jacked-up vehicles where even a
properly-aimed headlight can be dazzling. It's vanishingly rare to
see someone dip their high beams for me when I'm on my bike.

I use low wattage Cree LED bike lights, but I aim them at windshield
level and strobe them at full power, just to improve my chances of
being noticed _before_ being hit. If motorists find that annoying, so
what? They seem to get plenty annoyed at each other and a lot of
other things too, for reasons both real and imagined.

Chalo
 
Chalo wrote:

> They ride bike and drive a car, sure. I do too. I have about a dozen
> bikes, a handful of trikes, a big motorcycle, a old diesel Mercedes,

What, you haven't converted it to bio-diesel? I have a friend with a
bio-diesel Mercedes. Actually it has two tanks, one for bio-diesel and
one for plain vegetable oil. Once it's started and hot, you flip a lever
and run on plain vegetable oil. Prior to shutting down, you change back
to bio-diesel. They changed the "Diesel" emblem on the trunk to "Veggie."
 
On Apr 29, 9:22 pm, Chalo <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> I use low wattage Cree LED bike lights, but I aim them at windshield
> level and strobe them at full power, just to improve my chances of
> being noticed _before_ being hit. If motorists find that annoying, so
> what? They seem to get plenty annoyed at each other and a lot of
> other things too, for reasons both real and imagined.

FWIW, I absolutely hate having a cyclist with that mindset coming at
me when I'm riding my bike. It's bad on a road, especially a narrow
one. The couple times I've had it happen on a bike path, it was
terrible. I imagine it's also very annoying to pedestrians.

Folks, the fact of the matter is, you don't NEED to blind motorists to
be perfectly conspicuous. You certainly don't need to blind other
cyclists and pedestrians, either. If a light with proper optics is
aimed so it illuminates the road sufficiently, there will be plenty of
"spill" light that goes directly to the retina of anyone who needs to
see you.

Think about that again: The lumens that light your path leave your
headlamp, bounce off a dark-colored road surface, and bounce back to
your retinas. The lumens that make you conspicuous go directly from
your lamp to someone else's retinas. They don't get partially
absorbed by any road surface. They do NOT need to be as intense as
the road lighting.

Anyone can verify this by simply taking their bike, with any decent
headlight, and having a friend ride it at night while you observe.
Drive past in a car. Try different angles. Try different
backgrounds.

It's easy to get a bike headlight that's fine for conspicuity - in
fact, that makes you more conspicuous at night than you are in
daylight. It doesn't need to cost $100. It doesn't need to blind
anybody.

Don't fall into the fallacy that cycling is so dangerous that you need
extreme measures to survive. Don't join the American culture of
obnoxious, expensive overkill.

- Frank Krygowski
 
On Apr 29, 5:10 pm, Dan O <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I use only a taillight (Planet Bike "Super Flash" - awesome light,
> BTW). SWMBO insisted. Otherwise I guess I'd still be riding the old
> black Trek around like a stealthy puma. But I do like the taillight.
> I can hear cars coming waaaay back there... then I hear them suddenly
> slow down, and I can even hear inside the driver's head "What the heck
> is that?!" ... Then, just a moment or two later, I hear their head
> telling them, "Oh, it's just some guy on a bike." Then, *most* of
> them pass me quite safely and courteously.
>
> Admittedly, when it was still pitch dark outside in the morning I had
> to really strain sometimes to detect the white line and know where the
> road was in front of me, but in terms of being seen, what matters is
> what's behind. I mean, what's the oncoming gonna do? Swerve all the
> way across the road to take me out because they didn't know I was
> there? (I do acknowledge the case where one oncoming vehicle is
> passing another.)

What the "oncoming" is going to do is, jump out in front of you in
the form of a pothole. Or perhaps a gravel patch in a turn. Or a bad
drain grate, or other longitudinal slot in a road, that will grab your
front wheel and throw you down.

You need to see the road surface. And oncoming left-turning motorists
do need to see you. So do the ones waiting at stop signs as you ride
along, or the ones backing out of their driveways. It's silly to ride
at night without a headlight.

> I do intend to buy a headlight, though ...

Good.

> ...(I've got my eye on the Planet
> Bike Beamer 5) - just as soon as it floats up close enough to the top
> priorities around payday. Right now I feel like a good rain jacket
> trumps any sort of headlight. For that matter a second (backup)
> taillight might be a better investment in safety. (* I do realize
> that it may be technically illegal for me to ride in the dark with no
> headlight ;-)

And I've never heard anyone with any sense argue against that legal
requirement.

- Frank Krygowski
 
On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:03:56 -0400, Nate Nagel <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Chalo wrote:
>> N8N wrote:
>>
>>>I mean, the concept of having enough light
>>>output to fry flies makes me giggle, but I honestly don't want to
>>>inadvertantly blind oncoming motorists...
>>
>>
>> Yeah, you'd have to blind them, deafen them, fog them with poison gas,
>> and run them off the road to fully return the favors they do for us.
>>
>> Chalo
>
> From a motorist's perspective, I'm not a big fan of cyclists. I call
>the cyclists that I see from behind the wheel "suicyclists" because I
>assume from their behavior that they have a death wish. I have no
>desire to start yet another interminable RAD/rec.bicycles.whatever flame
>war,

Yes you do, you just started one.

I see enough stupid drivers while I'm driving around, much less on the
bike. There's a wide range of
stupid/careless/inattentive/untalented/ignorant and just crappy
drivers. Too wide to cover in depth.
 
[email protected] wrote:
> On Apr 29, 9:22 pm, Chalo <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>I use low wattage Cree LED bike lights, but I aim them at windshield
>>level and strobe them at full power, just to improve my chances of
>>being noticed _before_ being hit. If motorists find that annoying, so
>>what? They seem to get plenty annoyed at each other and a lot of
>>other things too, for reasons both real and imagined.
>
>
> FWIW, I absolutely hate having a cyclist with that mindset coming at
> me when I'm riding my bike. It's bad on a road, especially a narrow
> one. The couple times I've had it happen on a bike path, it was
> terrible. I imagine it's also very annoying to pedestrians.
>
> Folks, the fact of the matter is, you don't NEED to blind motorists to
> be perfectly conspicuous. You certainly don't need to blind other
> cyclists and pedestrians, either. If a light with proper optics is
> aimed so it illuminates the road sufficiently, there will be plenty of
> "spill" light that goes directly to the retina of anyone who needs to
> see you.
>
> Think about that again: The lumens that light your path leave your
> headlamp, bounce off a dark-colored road surface, and bounce back to
> your retinas. The lumens that make you conspicuous go directly from
> your lamp to someone else's retinas. They don't get partially
> absorbed by any road surface. They do NOT need to be as intense as
> the road lighting.
>
> Anyone can verify this by simply taking their bike, with any decent
> headlight, and having a friend ride it at night while you observe.
> Drive past in a car. Try different angles. Try different
> backgrounds.
>
> It's easy to get a bike headlight that's fine for conspicuity - in
> fact, that makes you more conspicuous at night than you are in
> daylight. It doesn't need to cost $100. It doesn't need to blind
> anybody.
>
> Don't fall into the fallacy that cycling is so dangerous that you need
> extreme measures to survive. Don't join the American culture of
> obnoxious, expensive overkill.
>
> - Frank Krygowski

Damn, I find myself in full agreement with Frank. And I say that
without a hint of sarcasm or snarkiness.

nate

--
replace "roosters" with "cox" to reply.
http://members.cox.net/njnagel
 
TandemFan wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:03:56 -0400, Nate Nagel <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
>>Chalo wrote:
>>
>>>N8N wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I mean, the concept of having enough light
>>>>output to fry flies makes me giggle, but I honestly don't want to
>>>>inadvertantly blind oncoming motorists...
>>>
>>>
>>>Yeah, you'd have to blind them, deafen them, fog them with poison gas,
>>>and run them off the road to fully return the favors they do for us.
>>>
>>>Chalo
>>
>>From a motorist's perspective, I'm not a big fan of cyclists. I call
>>the cyclists that I see from behind the wheel "suicyclists" because I
>>assume from their behavior that they have a death wish. I have no
>>desire to start yet another interminable RAD/rec.bicycles.whatever flame
>>war,
>
>
> Yes you do, you just started one.
>
> I see enough stupid drivers while I'm driving around, much less on the
> bike. There's a wide range of
> stupid/careless/inattentive/untalented/ignorant and just crappy
> drivers. Too wide to cover in depth.

I agree.

I also see a proportionally similar number of similar bicyclists.

There's enough stupid to go around without starting to point fingers.

nate

--
replace "roosters" with "cox" to reply.
http://members.cox.net/njnagel
 
Nate Nagel wrote:
> [...]I have no
> desire to start yet another interminable RAD/rec.bicycles.whatever flame
> war,[...]

butbutbut [1], those are FUN!

[1] Gratuitous gdanielsism.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful
 
"Tom Sherman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Nate Nagel wrote:
>> [...]I have no
>> desire to start yet another interminable RAD/rec.bicycles.whatever flame
>> war,[...]
>
> butbutbut [1], those are FUN!
>
> [1] Gratuitous gdanielsism.
>
> --
> Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
> The weather is here, wish you were beautiful>
>
Now please, Tom;

You are above such cheap tactics.

You KNOW you are throwing gas on a fire.

But you jus' don't care.

J.
 
Nate Nagel wrote:

> And you were nice enough not to correct me as when the batteries are in
> series I still only have 5.5AH but at 3V instead of 1.5. Still that
> should be good for at least 5 hours ASSuming that everyone's playing
> honest with the numbers.

Actually, with NiMH, you have about 2.4 to 2.5 volts. Where are you
buying NiMH C cells? I see 3800mAH ones for $5, and 5500mAH for $8.50
and 6000mAH for $9.
 
"SMS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Nate Nagel wrote:
>
>> And you were nice enough not to correct me as when the batteries are in
>> series I still only have 5.5AH but at 3V instead of 1.5. Still that
>> should be good for at least 5 hours ASSuming that everyone's playing
>> honest with the numbers.
>
> Actually, with NiMH, you have about 2.4 to 2.5 volts. Where are you buying
> NiMH C cells? I see 3800mAH ones for $5, and 5500mAH for $8.50 and 6000mAH
> for $9.

Where are you sourcing those batteries?

I bought the Task Force flashlight this evening. The projection of the beam
is quite impressive. I also noticed that if you unscrew and remove the
reflector it makes a very good floodlight, however in that condition do you
have any suggestions to minimize the upper part of the light to avoid
blinding oncoming vehicles?
 
Frank Krygowski wrote:
>
> Chalo wrote:
>
> > I use low wattage Cree LED bike lights, but I aim them at windshield
> > level and strobe them at full power, just to improve my chances of
> > being noticed _before_ being hit. If motorists find that annoying, so
> > what? They seem to get plenty annoyed at each other and a lot of
> > other things too, for reasons both real and imagined.
>
> FWIW, I absolutely hate having a cyclist with that mindset coming at
> me when I'm riding my bike. It's bad on a road, especially a narrow
> one. The couple times I've had it happen on a bike path, it was
> terrible. I imagine it's also very annoying to pedestrians.

I have been dazzled by bike HID lights, but even the brightest LED
lights are less intense than car headlights and streetlights. They
are not more annoying than anybody else's lights. When I cross into a
section of lakeside trail, I switch from full power strobe to low
power steady beam to go easy on dark-adjusted cyclist and ped eyes.

> Folks, the fact of the matter is, you don't NEED to blind motorists to
> be perfectly conspicuous.

You mean "obvious", and that presumes that a driver is even bothering
to look for you. Turn it up to "irritating", and a driver need not be
looking for you to notice you anyway.

My lights are powerful be-seen lights, with plenty of output but
minimal beam focusing. They are not disablingly intense, which is why
I tend to strobe them when I'm on the street. A wide field of
illumination may not stab far into the darkness, but it lights the
street in front of me adequately, offers the potential to irritate
oblivious or intoxicated drivers, and even sheds some light on
overhead hazards (which are more of a concern for me than for most
riders).

I usually get a beam like that by retrofitting a small 2AA
incandescent headlight with a voltage converter and a Cree LED. The
light becomes much brighter overall, but the stock reflector doesn't
collimate most of the Cree's forward-directed light. I get a fairly
consistent wide wash of light in the shape of the light's front
bezel. If I could make it car-headlight-bright, I would. But I'm
dishing out a modest 100 lumens or so into a broad area. There's not
much risk of blindness, unless you find the overhead marker lights on
trucks blinding.

> If a light with proper optics is
> aimed so it illuminates the road sufficiently, there will be plenty of
> "spill" light that goes directly to the retina of anyone who needs to
> see you.

Ummm, no. There are too many other light sources near and far in the
central city to depend on one small steady light to announce your
presence in time. Drivers have no consensus about how fast to drive
on city streets around here, and distances close quickly at a relative
50mph or more.

> The lumens that make you conspicuous go directly from
> your lamp to someone else's retinas. They don't get partially
> absorbed by any road surface. They do NOT need to be as intense as
> the road lighting.

You keep saying "conspicuous" when what you mean is "visible". And
merely being visible only works when someone is _trying_ to see you.
On some streets, that's plenty. On others, it would be better to be
mistaken for a police car.

> It's easy to get a bike headlight that's fine for conspicuity - in
> fact, that makes you more conspicuous at night than you are in
> daylight.

By "at night", I think you mean "in darkness". Downtown at night is
not a good place to be made conspicuous by a feeble light turned down
towards the road. The street lighting alone will do at least that
much for you.

> Don't fall into the fallacy that cycling is so dangerous that you need
> extreme measures to survive.

Three hit & runs on four peds (two fatalities) in the last week in
central Austin. Another attempt to leave the scene by a driver who
hit a pedicab and injured the passengers. And that's just the ones
reported to me by my personal friends.

Cycling is not particularly dangerous. Sharing the city with cars and
their extremely faulty guidance systems /is/ dangerous, whatever mode
you happen to be using. But this too shall pass. I have become more
certain than ever that I will live to witness the demise of the
personal car. It won't be a moment too soon.

Chalo
 
SMS wrote:
>
> Chalo wrote:
> >
> > They ride bike and drive a car, sure. I do too. I have about a dozen
> > bikes, a handful of trikes, a big motorcycle, a old diesel Mercedes,
>
> What, you haven't converted it to bio-diesel?

No conversion required for that. I ran B99 and B100 most of the time
I had that car in Seattle, but in Austin the hours at the biodiesel
station are very limited. I can (and do, sometimes) buy B20 from a
Shell station by the freeway.

> I have a friend with a
> bio-diesel Mercedes. Actually it has two tanks, one for bio-diesel and
> one for plain vegetable oil. Once it's started and hot, you flip a lever
> and run on plain vegetable oil. Prior to shutting down, you change back
> to bio-diesel. They changed the "Diesel" emblem on the trunk to "Veggie."

My wife is a musician, so she needs the trunk for other stuff. All
the SVO and WVO conversions I have seen for Mercedes sedans take most
of the trunk for the hot tank. The folks I have known who use waste
grease get their fuel for free, but feeding their car is a part-time
job without pay. Transferring, filtering, dewatering, and storing
smelly fryer grease looks better at $4.30/gal than it did at $1.70/
gallon, but it's still a time-consuming chore.

Waste veggie oil as fuel constitutes a pretty good use of resources,
but that stuff would otherwise become soap or something, not just get
thrown away. Burning virgin veggie oil means choosing to feed a car
instead of a bunch of people. And a lot of regular old diesel gets
burned in the course of raising those oil crops and processing them.
I much prefer the smell of veggie oil and biodiesel exhaust over
petroleum diesel exhaust, but they are not clear and obvious winners
with regards to environmental consequences.

Chalo
 
Carl Sundquist wrote:

>> Actually, with NiMH, you have about 2.4 to 2.5 volts. Where are you
>> buying NiMH C cells? I see 3800mAH ones for $5, and 5500mAH for $8.50
>> and 6000mAH for $9.
>
> Where are you sourcing those batteries?

Sterlingtek.com has the 3800 mAH C cells at 2 for $9.99. The other ones
I listed are all from Thomas Distributing. If you don't need maximum run
time you can use AA cells in the C sleeves, but IIRC there was some
problem with this in terms of making contact with one of the internal
contacts in the flashlight.

Also see "http://www.batteryjunction.com/cnireba.html"

> I bought the Task Force flashlight this evening. The projection of the
> beam is quite impressive. I also noticed that if you unscrew and remove
> the reflector it makes a very good floodlight, however in that condition
> do you have any suggestions to minimize the upper part of the light to
> avoid blinding oncoming vehicles?

It's the periphery of the beam, not the brighter center spot that would
be seen by vehicles. Aim the light so the center spot illuminates the
road surface, and the periphery illuminates off to the sides and out
toward traffic.

It probably wasn't intentional by the manufacturer, but the beam pattern
is very well suited to cycling. The problem with a lot of bicycle lights
is that their so weak that the limited illumination is all directed to
illuminate the road directly in front of the bicycle, and you get no
peripheral illumination. I have this problem with my Union dynamo light.
 
Carl Sundquist wrote:
>
> I bought the Task Force flashlight this evening. The projection of the beam
> is quite impressive. I also noticed that if you unscrew and remove the
> reflector it makes a very good floodlight, however in that condition do you
> have any suggestions to minimize the upper part of the light to avoid
> blinding oncoming vehicles?

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1919

It's a drop-in replacement for the Task Force light's optic, and it
casts a wide "stripe" beam a lot like a car headlight.

Chalo
 
Tom Sherman wrote:
> Jay Bollyn wrote:
>> "Tom Sherman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> Jay Bollyn wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> For 'illuminate pavement' headlights, see DiNotte headlights: Simply
>>>> the best, brightest, and best customer service, by far.
>>>>
>>> Why go with such inexpensive, low powered lights?
>>>
>>> This is the one to have:
>>> <http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/bigbang.asp>. If only the adapter
>>> for US/Canadian outlets was no additional charge.
>>>
>>>
>> Because my life is worth more than $2,000 USD...to me.
>>
>> DUH!
>>
> $2000 USD would get you two (2) Big Bang headlights - maybe the adapter
> would be no extra charge if you buy in bulk.
>

Yes, but if you had bought a Peter White bike and otherwise fitted it
out "suitably", then your $2000 headlights would still only cost 20-25%
as much as you spent on the rest of the bike.

I'd guess in P. White's mind, a $2000 light does not seem unreasonable.
After all, he can't be advising customers to hang a chintzy $50 piece of
glow-in-the-dark plastic on the bars....
~
 
(PeteCresswell) wrote:
> ...
> I'm confused by a lot of headlight discussions. It's as if the
> headlight were the most important factor in being seen. Seems
> to me like what's on the back of the bike is more important by
> far. ....

This is true--that some people argue it, and that it is (for the most
part) misguided.

If you're riding with traffic, a motor vehicle will not see your
headlight much at all until they pass you. Any cars that are oncoming
are supposed to be on the opposite side of the road anyway.

As for cars approaching on perpendicular streets, that's easy--you slow
down and let the car go first, or at least slow down enough to see what
it's going to do.

The only way to know the driver saw you would take a fantastically
bright enough light that you could see inside the car from a distance
and make eye contact--and that much light would certainly blind the driver.

But the simpler reason for letting the car go ahead is that if you and
the car BOTH try to cross the same point, the car may get some scratches
but you on a bicycle are likely to suffer much worse, and after the fact
a $1000 bicycle light won't mitigate the damage. A bigger light does not
make your bicycle a bigger vehicle, and you're safer keeping that in mind.
~
 
On Apr 30, 1:29 am, Chalo <[email protected]> wrote:
> Carl Sundquist wrote:
>
> > I bought the Task Force flashlight this evening. The projection of the beam
> > is quite impressive. I also noticed that if you unscrew and remove the
> > reflector it makes a very good floodlight, however in that condition do you
> > have any suggestions to minimize the upper part of the light to avoid
> > blinding oncoming vehicles?
>
> http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1919
>
> It's a drop-in replacement for the Task Force light's optic, and it
> casts a wide "stripe" beam a lot like a car headlight.
>
> Chalo

Hey, thanks. I took a chance on the TF flashlight and thought it was
worth the $$ but was having doubts about if I really wanted to use it
as a primary headlight. I'll get some of those on order...

I also noticed that with the collimator lens removed that the LED
itself has a ludicrously wide pattern. I wouldn't have believed that
that *was* a LED five years ago.

nate
 
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