Spotlight Question

Okay this is a dumb question for most of you I am sure! But I wanted to know opinions on what type of light or light bulb I should use.

I have an air boat and we ride at night most of the time.
I have a normal car battery in it and use a headlamp made from a Q-Beam which hooks straight up to the battery. The light components are on a hat that you wear on your head. I will post pictures tomorrow i do not have it with me at the moment...

Question 1: Does anyone recommend a headlamp that I could hook up that would be super bright?

Question 2: If not, what is the brightest bulb that I could use when hooking to a car battery?

By the way some of the lights that I see on here are insanely bright. If you guys are able to power these lights with battery packs there has to be a way for me to have an extremely bright headlamp.

Thanks to all for your help in advance...

This is probably the brightest head mountable set-up that can be run from a 12V SLA battery. You can purchase the light by itself if you want.
http://trailtech.net/SCMR16_helmet_light_kits.html

Regarding the brightest bulb at 12W it depends on the type of socket. For a bi-pin lamp, probably the 100W Osram 64623 or 100W 64623. For automotive type headlamps, probably 130W H4 bulb. These will be powered just fine by large automotive or marine type SLAs.

If you ever plan on using these bulb types on portable power, you'll want a different battery chemistry with more energy density.

Outside of these options LED head and handlebar lights built for mountain biking approach the brightness of the Trailtec HID, listed at the top, but they get rather expensive very quickly. The Lupine's are among the best.

werkinem24/7 said:

I have an air boat and we ride at night most of the time

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Welcome to CPF, werkinem24/7. That sounds a lot of fun! Do you have photos you could post?

I assume you have good fixed lights on your air boat, and a handheld spotlight as well. As Patriot says, you'll probably need the brightest light you can get, if it is to be any use.

We'll leave your thread here on that basis, but maybe it will need to be transferred to the Headlamps section later.

werkinem24/7! You're amongst the heavy lamp head's here. We'll steer you in the right direction, hopefully.
You say you are currently using a Q-Beam style lamp attached to a hat with the power cable running straight to your battery? :thinking:

Now that's some serious head lamp'age! I see why you started here first.
The Q-Beam that I know is a PAR-46 style lamp. Yours should be about 5 3/4"
diameter unless Brinkmann? has downsized to the PAR 36.

Anyways, I use this lamp in my truck's corded handheld spotlight:

http://www.replacementlightbulbs.com/lamph7680x.html

It's only 80 Watts providing about 230,000 BCP, but throws some serious light and is very affordable. It should fit right into your housing.

Somewhere in this forum we have a link to a vendor providing replacement reflectors for the smaller lighting systems. Can't find it at the moment, so I' grabbed this one. The reflector kit, which evidently comes with the 100 Watt lamp, is about halfway down the page:

http://www.wattco.net/havisshields/collinsind.htm

I like Patriot's suggestion because it's out of the box, ready to go, compact, and self contained.:thumbsup: But if you're whipping across the water at high speed and at night you may need more.
Nearly everything we do here usually involves full voltage. I don't know if your spotlight battery is isolated from your air boat's charging system, but in most situation's, these lamps do their best at 13.2 to 13.8 Volts.

I've found that some handheld spotlight manufacturer's can be cheap with their plug-in cords. I have measured as much as 1.5 Volts dropping between the plug and lamp terminals. That's enough to "yellow" a good lamp and becomes very annoying.

Can you show us a pic of your air boat too?

My old corded Q-Beam from back in the day was a 55 watt version quoted as something like 200,000 candlepower (5 million CP adjusted to today's BS specs). Surely Brinkman has a 100 watt version available today, so it seems that that would be the number to surpass.

I'd say he's probably running something in the neighborhood of a 100Ah reserve capacity car battery.

So with that in mind: GE 4522

-or GE Q4631 for smaller size and longer life

Howecollc said:

My old corded Q-Beam "from back in the day"...

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How old are you....my grandfather used to use that expression.LOL-JK I still have my corded Q-Beam I bought in the early 90's running on it's original bulb and I wouldn't trade it for anything!!!!

werkinem24/7 said:

If you guys are able to power these lights with battery packs there has to be a way for me to have an extremely bright headlamp. Thanks to all for your help in advance...

Click to expand...

DM51 said:

....but maybe it will need to be transferred to the Headlamps section later.

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The boys over in the Headlamp section will be of more help.:welcome::wave::wave::wave:

ANDREAS FERRARI said:

The boys over in the Headlamp section will be of more help.:welcome::wave::wave::wave:

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werkinem24/7,
Wind resistance comes to mind, imagining you and your air boat blasting your way through the night. For me, holding the portable steady out the window going 50+mph is hard enough. The headlamp group are just as lumen driven as the rest of us, but they have some pretty awesome gear to share.

If you still want to navigate with flames using a big design lamp strapped to your noggin, we'll be here for ya!