[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
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