[OrRando] Lighting

Marcello Napolitano marcello at napolitano.com
Tue Sep 18 22:22:27 PDT 2007


I have seen several generator lights on other riders' bikes during the 
last two years of night riding on brevets.

The headlight that I was really impressed with is the D-Lumotec, which 
(if I remember correctly) is a 2W LED light. It provides quite a lot of 
light on the road in front of you, plus enough light on the sides to let 
you see things quite well with your night vision. It also lets you see 
around bends in the road when you are going doing curvy rural roads. And 
it gets to full brightness at relatively low speeds.

The one that I found underwhelming, given what I heard about it, is the 
E6 (which is a 3W halogen). The beam is bright, but also very narrow. It 
looked to me like it was as bright as the center of the beam of the 
D-Lumotec but without any of the lateral and proximal illumination that 
the LED light provides. But the people who have it are generally pleased 
with it. Maybe the E6 provides more benefits for faster riders that a 
middle of the pack rider like me does not appreciate.

Other generator lights (such as the halogen Lumotec) are even less 
impressive, in my opinion.

One generator headlight that I have not had a chance to see in person is 
the Solidlight. It includes a 3W LED primary and a 3W LED secondary in 
the same boxy box, and the randonneurs who have it (hundreds of them in 
the UK and a handful on the East Coast) are very pleased with it. It has 
a blink mode and other features that make it quite interesting for both 
commuting and randonneuring. There was a thread on them in the past few 
days on the randon mailing list. That is the one I would get if I 
decided to invest in a generator hub. (My current setup is dual Cateye 
EL500 with fully charged NiMH batteries. I am intrigued by the Ixon that 
Andrew and some SIR riders have mentioned, but that is a different topic).

I am slightly skeptical of the reviews that I see on the Peter White web 
site, since he may have a bias towards the products that he sells, and 
(as far as I know) he does not do the same kind of nighttime riding that 
we randonneurs do. I value the opinion of other endurance riders a lot more.

Marcello



cecilanne at comcast.net wrote:
> I am at the point in my new bike build (someone else is building it, I am just paying for it) where I need to choose my lighting system - I am getting a SON hub and am trying to decide between Lumotec and E6 - any thoughts?  I read the Peter White page and came away less than illuminated (pun fully intended).
>
> Cheers, Cecil
> _______________________________________________
> OrRando mailing list
> OrRando at tire.patch.com
> http://tire.patch.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/orrando
>
>   



More information about the OrRando mailing list