Light Show, Part Two

In an earlier post, I expressed some excitement over my new Planet Bike Super Spot, which uses the fairly new Luxeon Star LED technology. Tonight, I commuted with it, and it met my expectations. This is a fine bicycle light.

For comparison purposes, I paired it up on the handlebar of my commuter bike with the Niterider NR-50, a 7.5-watt alkaline-powered incandescent light I used very successfully last winter. (The NR-50 uses four C batteries, although I got longer run time by putting together a homebrew connection to a spring-connection lantern battery). My route takes me on fairly well lit streets as well as dark, unpaved bike trails and park roads. Almost everything about the Planet Bike light matches up with the Niterider, with the exception of the pool of light it throws. The patch of light illuminated by the Planet Bike light is not as big, which may make some people nervous in terms of their ability to pick out and avoid road hazards. I was comfortable with it, however. The Planet Bike was every bit as bright as the Niterider. It even made a visible patch of light on lit streets (a rule-of-thumb test standard applied by some fellow light geeks--whether it's a proxy for brightness or an actual safety need, I have no idea). Using four AAs, compared to the four Cs used by the Niterider, the Planet Bike light wins easily on weight. With a purported run time of 30 hours, it easily beats the Niterider, too, which has something like a two-hour run time with four Cs. (The run time with a lantern battery was far longer, but that's even additional weight compared to the four Cs.)

This is not a light you would want to use bombing down singletrack off-road trails at night. It's clearly not going to pick out hazards well enough to allow for safe riding. On the other hand, this may be the best light/technology ever for commuting or randonneur-style nighttime riding. With a pair on your handlebars, it's likely that this light will rival any 12-15 watt Niterider, Cateye, Cygo or other brand light marketed to commuters. The longer run time means more convenience, and the lighter weight means less to lug around on your frame/body. In short, this is a major leap forward in the bicycle lighting field. We have (in a figurative and probably literal sense) moved from vaccuum tubes to computer chips here.

Light Show, Part One And A Half

Last night, I mounted a Minoura Swing Grip on my DeRosa to mount the two headlights I mentioned in the post below. The purpose of the test wasn't necessarily to try the lights out in the dark, but rather to see how they rode on the Minoura mount. The Niterider, with a rather traditional, bread-and-butter screw clamp mount, was solid all day, but the Cateye, with a weird rubberized strap mount, was wiggling all over the place. I found I couldn't get it tight enough on the Minoura grip, so on rough roads, and even on not-so-rough roads, it was rotating around the bar. After I got back, I slipped a piece of inner tube under the clamp to see if that helps it hold more solidly.

By the way, the Minoura Swing Grip is by far the best "off-the-handlebars" mount I've come across. It takes up almost no room on the handlebars (in fact, I used the stem instead of the bars as an attachment point) and drops the lights down lower, where the angle can pick up road hazards better. It survived some rather rough roads today in Upper Montgomery County, MD, so I suspect it should be a solid performer.

Light Show

I'm a bit of a bike-light geek. It comes in part from commuting by bike, made possible half the year only by having good lights, and from ultra-riding/randonneuring, which I did for a number of years before becoming a full-time duathlete. Lighting has until now been a game of trade-offs: Run time, lighting power, weight, and resistance are all factors one had to consider when choosing a light system. The rechargeable commuter lights threw out a nice patch of light, but had limited run times, but the alkaline-battery powered lights were a little underpowered for many circumstances. The battery powered lights required you to change batteries often and weighed you down, but the dynamo powered lights sapped power from your pedaling, faded when you were climbing and (in the case of the sidewall driven generators) slipped in the rain.

Lately, much of the research has been in how to create LED headlights and make them stronger. The first LED headlights were crap. I rode with a 1.5W cateye that threw out a very weak bluish light and was made so cheaply the case cracked at the mount (not just once, but twice, with virtually identical cracking patterns).But the light manufacturers have been doing some good work, and I think the LED lights are getting better. As the change back to standard time has loomed over the past month, I've started playing with this Cateye model and the Niterider Ultrafazer 3.0. Neither is good enough to be a primary light source on a dark commute down a bike trail, although they might be adequate if one is riding on fully lit streets--if one is only concerned about visibility to cars and maybe picking out a road hazard or two. But what has me really excited is the Planet Bike Super Spot, a 1-watt bike using the new Luxeon Star LED technology. (I have one of these on order. I'm just waiting to put it on and try it out.) This Luxeon Star technology has the reputation of being every bit the equal of strong incandescent lights, with a far longer run time and lower battery consumption. I suspect that we will see some great strides in this direction in the near future. For the time being, though, I'm looking forward to playing with these new lights to find out what they can do.

Wow! A Newspaper Covers A Triathlete!

Besides making a decimal point error, this Washington Post article on junior world triathlon champion Stephen Duplinsky is pretty good.

(The decimal point error is that they said the tri swim is 7,500 meters. Wow, that would be a long way!)