Starboard green, Port red

Like many humans, I can imagine great lights. Building them is something that, at this time, I prefer to leave to the CPF ModMen. Most of the time what I think is my idea has been thought of before.

In Louisiana, they use an excellent little boat in the bayous for fishing called a pirogue (pee-row). A pirogue is a cross between a canoe and a kayak with a flat bottom. Nowadays they have high carbon, electrically driven pirogues that are so fast they will throw a wake.

So what about extremely small water craft? Navigation rules still apply. If incountering another vessle head on, you should get all U.K. and break left.

It would be usefull (even though it might not be required) to have a bow light that was bright, and nautically correct by throwing green light off the starboard bow and red light off the port bow.

12V for small boats would be compatable with their trolling motors. I think the efffeciency and brightness of LEDs would make them a very good candidate for this job.

Thoughts?

I believe you will find that this is being done. Perko and TaylorBrite have LED navigation lights in the works and I have heard of others as well. As you probably know, there are specific beam angles required for CG approval as well as visible distance requirements.

- Don

How about putting one of these on your sea-going vessel:

Sealite

These seem to meet the distance and angle requirements, but it would be a little bit of "lateral thinking" to use a buoy marker light as port/starboard lights.

Thanks, Don.

Hotfoot-

Lateral thinking...heh heh...indeed. Nice site.
Thanks.

I've been asked about modifying my BT1 design to do something like this. My friend is a canoeist and often goes on the water at night. Instead of the LED being on the front of the torch, the LED's would be either side of the torch... one red, one green. If using something like a Toshiba PF14 for the green (maplin part no); this is a 2.7V device and therefore is compatible with a 2cell battery supply.
You'll get mny hours use out of a pair of AA cells!

Incidentally, I saw boatmen using LED navlights whilst we were in the States. J Percy Priest lake is popular for night fishermen and they use flat bottomed boats as aforementioned. The LED lights were tiny and were certainly not as bright as a BT1. (About 300mcd at most!) Another boat was equipped with a 12V fluorescent light as well as the nav lights.
It was suprising how well we could see the navlights even on the other side of the lake.

EMPOWERTORCH-

That would be an interesting mod. I wear one green and one white ARC AAA on my cap for night fishing...intermittant use. It truely is amazing how far away people can see me when they are on.

I was really thinking about two separated arrays so the angles are good and 12V works. But your idea is portable and self contained. The angle should be considered. In quiet waters it should work.

Cool.

The use of wider beam LED's (cheap 100 mcd 10mm milkycased LEDs as per the Maplin catalogue) would give a wide beam dispersal and give a wide field of view.

Perfect.

If you decide to make a few and don't mind letting go of one, please let me know.

-Jeff

I'll let you know as soon as I start production up again. I'll charge you the standard BT2 price of £8 for the torch and whatever it costa to ship to America by surface mail.

matt.

Thanks.

PM sent.