On the buisness end of an L4

I have had my L4 for 3 weeks now and use it on night bicycle rides. It works perfectly for this. We have an abandoned railroad track converted to a bike walk trail that's about 200 miles long. Many people use the trail and some even at night. Whenever I would pass an oncoming person, that person would shield thier eyes almost to a drastic point, so I decided to test several of my lights from a distance of about 35 feet from the flashlights to see if indeed they were that blinding. Here's what I obviously subjectively came up with.
L4-very blinding but still can tolerate
E2E KL1- very tolerable
E2E 65 lumen incadecent in the spot- more blinding than the L4
L1 with green luxion- most blinding of all the lights not very tolerable
Maglite 4D in the tightly focused beam- more blinding than the L4, but less than the E2E 65 lumin

hm ... I too love the cyan/green lights for their brightness, but have to admit that they are not very comfortable for the eyes and I get a headache after a few minutes in bright cyan light.
bernhard

bernhard, it's interesting that you get a headache with cyan light. When I first saw the white slightly blue leds, they made me feel somewhat uneasy because I had been so used to the yellows of incadescent lighting. I have since gotten used to the whites of leds, and even prefer some of the whites to the incadescent lights. The color of my L4 is particularly appealing to me. It frequency range reminds me of an Ott-lite fluorescent light. These lights are designed to be similar to sunlight. It seems that our response to lighting is psycological. I wonder if there is a best frequency distribution of light for illumination? And if there is, how close to this best distribution do leds come?
Dierik

annomundi,

I have been considering the purchase of an L4 for use on my bicycle as well. How do you mount it? How fast do you feel that you can safely ride given the L4's throw?

L4 for bikes,
Sounds like a pricey way to run and operate a light, the Blaster VI with NiMH rechargables would be much cheaper in the long run. If it is only used for 20 minutes a week, that would be OK I guess.
How fast can you go and not overdrive the L4?

I mount the L4 on my bike with a "twofish cyclopblock" on the handlebars and ordered it from bike nashbar for $5.99 I have a nightrider pro light that I used riding at night before using the the L4. The nightrider has two halogen bulbs, 15 and 20 watt and weighs 10 times as much as the L4. Its runtime on nicads is 1.5 hrs. at 35 watts and 3.5 at 15 watts. I payed $225 for that setup and have used it for about 5 years. Although the nightrider has a better throw and sidefill, the L4 is still my favorite. The beam pattern of the L4 is perfect on the trails and I prefer the white light it produces. I feel I can safely ride about 30mph with the L4. This speed is going downhill

I've been using the L4 for almost a month and use it for everything that needs illumination outdoors. My bike is just one thing I use it for. I ride about 2 times a week at night for 1.5hrs, and I have 2 pilla LiIon rechargable batteries to give me that runtime. The danger with this setup is if the pilla batteries, which have a low voltage cutoff built into them, would cut off during your night ride at 20mph and leave you in the dark. My L4 gives me plenty of warning. After about 50 minuits it starts to switch between high and medium brightness, and stays in this mode for another 10min. This is plenty warning to change batteries. I have read in this fourm that someone using an E2E with KL1 and pilla LiIon the light goes dark instantly without warning. Not very good for bicycling at night. Again, this does not happen with my L4 and hopefully not other L4's. If the L4 lasts the 500 recharge cycles of the LiIon batteries, the expense will have been worth it.

I can't wait for winter to come so I can try the L4 in a Missouri cave. The only reservation I have about this use is that it might be too blinding for the other cavers. Dierik