Friday, October 26, 2007

Fast At Night

If you want to be just as fast at night as you ride during the day, it takes good lights. Zach turned me onto Night Lightning and after extensive research, I found that their lights are the biggest bang for your buck in the LED world right now. That is unless you are handy and can build your own.

Last night Zach came over to help me properly solder my battery to the light. I probably would have just twisted the wires and put some electric tape over them so it was nice to get it done properly.

After quick work of that, we headed over to try out the new light at Paris. It was dusk as we started out and I went ahead and turned the light on full blast as it has three settings currently. It can be set up with two levels of brightness or three. I set it up with three for extra playing around.

The only downside to this light is the head mounting mechanism. I think the problem is that it really isn’t a mechanism at all. It is a simple Velcro and sticky tape set up. So last night I just zip tied the base to the helmet to get a feel of where it needed to be. Somehow I got pretty close on the first try.

So you can talk about lumens and output watts and a thousand other techy things when it comes to lights but I am more into real life tests. If a light is good, I shouldn’t be slowing down at night.

After we made quick work of Mountain Creek to the top of Paris, we went down Brissy and Pippsissewaw to the lake. Going down I felt good, the light was steady and I hardly slowed down at all. We hit the techy section of Sulphur after coming back up the backside and I felt very confident.

The three LED’s throw out a great swatch of light on the ground and I am extremely pleased with this light after one go around. The battery is so light I don’t know what to do. It is about as heavy as a half full water bottle and it can be ran in the pack or in a jersey pocket easily. It is hard to see here but I took this picture at the first parking lot at Paris. The trees are about 20 yards from me.

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