Canoe Light???

Hello All,

I need help with a light.

I have the Colorado River 100 (100 mile canoe race) coming up in about 9 weeks and need to make a new bow light for my canoe as I'll be paddling in the dark for some of the race. I will use a Mag head with either 3 or 4 leds in it. I have some Cree Q5's. I haven't made a light in a long time and am very rusty on the power end of it. Going through my old stuff I have an Nflex driver from 2004 that I would like to use. I'm tempted to buy one of George's newer ones that is more customized to biking applications, but I'd rather use what I already have.

I'll only need the power to last for one night. I figure I'll need light from about 9pm til morning at the worst, but I'm going to try and finish by 2am.

I plan to leave the light on constant and will use the driver feature to boost the brightness when needed.

What battery setup do you suggest? Voltage, type, etc.

Consider me a rookie with all this since I haven't made a light of any kind in about 4 years.

Thanks for your help and I'll see about pictures when it is completed.

Is your light so you can see where you're going, or is it for collision avoidance (other people not hitting you?).

I'm also making a canoe light, but the one I'm working on is so I can see what I'm doing in the boat (getting fishing lures, etc): it's mounted under a thwart. Also plan a 360 deg white light when that one's done.

Do you have an idea of how much you want to spend?

For a bow light I assume you'll want lots of flood because you'll have a narrow beam light attached to your head. (That's what I like anyway).

If money wasn't an issue then you'd start thinking about triple MC-E or P7 lights, about which there are several threads with good info.

The battery pack could be a big bunch of 18650s inside a waterproof case.

oh yeah... custom waterproof case with like 5 p7's running off of 6 18650's!

Sounds like you're not thinking about fitting it all in the mag head or lasting more than an hour (if you run them at full power).