light'n up
 

I few weeks back I picked up a blinky for the early morning rides. This week we decided that since sunrise is now 6:30AM to stop riding in the AM. So now I am looking for a head light. Does anyone have any suggestions for a head light that would be good on a bike path and throw enough light to let you ride at speed? I only need about 1 to 1.5 hours of light to get me through the morning ride.

The light & motion 2010 Stella 300L (300 lumens) dual light looks like a good package with both flood and spot lamps. I also think it is about the max I am willing to spend.

I can't imagine it not being adequate. Niteriders are on sale for $100 at Performance. At one point in time not so long ago, they were among the best, goes to show that lighting's advanced so much. I have an old CatEYE, does the job,not even LED but I can see well enough, more importantly, I'm seen well enough.

There's a thread on the Electronics and Gadgets (or whatever it's called, just above the 50+) about the MagicShine light. It's getting good reviews, allegedly greater than or equal to some of the Dinotte lights. Around $90, I believe.

I encountered a commuter this morning. A single normal intensity blinkey in the middle of the back is barely adequate. I saw his headlight on the ground in front of him before I saw the blinkey. The conditions were suburban with lots of lights to drown out the blinkey.

One can never have enough light.

If you ride on the road and cars pass you at more than 15mph, then most blinkies sold are inadequate.

A driver needs to see, recognize, and maneuver their car to avoid hitting or buzzing a cyclist. If the car is going above 15mph this all has to happen in a split second as the car closes in on the cyclist much faster than one would think.

Stop judging your tail light from two feet and start judging it from a two telephone pole length distance. This is the minimum distance a driver would need to begin reacting. And thats on a clear night, fog and rain makes it worse.

Only a Dinotte tail light will pass the test.

The morning ride can be done with 12 miles of bike path and the remaining 6 miles on quiet neighborhood streets - and when we get to these there should be the beginings of daylight. The big thing is seeing obsticals that might occur on the bike path not neccessarily being seen be cars that hopefully will not be on the bike path...

Thanks for pointing out the magicshine - from the little I found on it it seems like the winner by far.
Now all I need to determine is where to buy one.

Look around for a Halogen lamp with at least 10watts power. Providing it had a rechargable battery it will be economic to run.

I used to have an old twin 10w halogen and that was good enough for offroad.

I ride the roads early AM on relatively low traffic highways. In front I use two Dinotte 200's on the bars with a Cateye Opticube on top of my helmet.

In the rear, I ride with two Planet Bike Super Flashes mounted on the seat stays, a red light on the bag, and a Road ID green blinky on the back of my helmet.

Cars slow down when approaching from behind. I've been told that I look like a cop car with flashing lights (poor depth perception in the dark).

I ordered one of the Magic Shine's actually called Nova on ebay. We will see how it does. I was a little afraid of any filiment based lamp like a halogen due to some of the harsh spots I'll ride over - the Magic Shine is LED based. Report will appear shortly after arrival and early morning test ride.

Never found the Halogen bulbs a problem and that is offroad too. But LED's are pretty tough- They give out a lot of light But the range seems to stop dead. They illuminate so far and then stop. It also took me a while to get used to the "Blue" hue to the light. Made offroad shadows indistict but I did get used to that.

BUT- If night riding a lot- you need a second lamp- for failures and flat batteries. Best backup- or even main lamp if it were legal- Is a helmet lamp. Mine has a couple of LED's to read the bars or maps and a 1w halogen spot that is superb for looking round corners- illuminating what that pair of red eyes are at the edge of the main lights vision is and for pointing at car drivers so that they do know I am there.

I just ordered the Magicshine and plan to use that with my helmetmounted 5w led Silva LX. Which battery rear light is the sturdiest and most rainresistent without costing a fortune ?

Thanks Stapfam - at this point I have no desire to ride roads at night. I am hoping this lamp will allow me to ride at 6AM though mid November and again starting in mid March. Currently with our global position & daylight savings I can only do that from Mid May through Early Sept. Luckily my commute is also mostly on a bike path as well. So my requirement is enough illumination on the bike to allow me to ride at about 16 - 18 mph on the bike path - BTW I will be using the MTB with slicks rather than the road bike so the speed will be down 2 to 5 mph. The other issue is that we will soon start getting ice on the bike path in the morning.

Over here we have regulations on what a rear lamp can do- It has to be visible from the side aswell as the rear. Not many lamps do that but providing you have a rear lamp- then no-one seems to mind.

For ease of fitting- visiblilty and robustness- then Cateyes take a lot of beating. Lots of copies of them that seem to work just aswell but the only problem I have with cateyes- is changing the batteries. Shortly after doing this- they seem to start causing problems. Think it is the rubber seal around the lens that does not reseat properly but they do seem to last about 2 years and are cheap. And I always use 2 rear lamps. One on constant and one on Flash. Main reason for 2 is that if your rear light fails- then you cannot be seen. With 2 fitted- one will always work.:twitchy:

Found a link to this eastern european page which compares dozens of bicycle headlights. An amazing photographic comparison of lots of models. http://fonarevka.lux-rc.com/

Nice link. Thanks.

The mini Maglite with 2AA batteries is a hoot.

A Planet Bike Superflash is really bright, but it needs to be mounted correctly to point horizontally. It's much less effective clipped to a seat bag or helmet, where it'll point to the ground or the sky. It has a quick double flash that catches your eye, too.

Even though it's main beam is narrow, it does throw off a good amount of side light. And the beam spreads out with distance, so it's visible at an angle, too.

I use AAA rechargeables, and it works great with them. So I run it whenever I might be riding through darker forested roads and especially late in the day when the sun is low in the sky.

Headlight requirements depend on your riding speed, the road surface, and the amount of street lighting. My Dinotte and Fenix review from Oct 2007 is still useful.

Yep - the superflash is the blinky I bought. It is really bright. Unfortunately I used it on a ride recently and did not have it clipped in tightly so I lost it. I went to my LBS and bought what I thought was a replacement - it was a tourch, it is not the same - it is quite a bit less bright. I will get another super flash when I need to place an online order, until then the tourch will do.

I use 2 Stella (120Ls) on the front bar and a 200 Dinotte on my helmet and a Planet Bike SF on the back and I feel that I have more than enough light to ride at speed on the MUPs around Orlando. I might add another Super Flash on the back.
:cheers:

I've been running a PB superflash on the rear, and a PB "Blaze" for a headlight this season. I'm quite pleased with both. The Blaze if fantastically bright for a "be seen" LED headlight. In superflash mode, it is visible in broad daylight. Some folks totally blow off any light that runs on consumer batteries. That's what I thought, until LED lighting technology started taking off in the past few years.

As noted, it's important to mount the superflash so that is is visible to motorists, not aircraft. I have mine clipped to my under-seat tool bag. To keep it from moving, I stuffed a piece of black foam rubber under the clip place on the bag. This is the type of dense foam rubber that electronic components are stuck in for shipping. Works just fine.

If you need light "to see" any of the models mentioned are are nice. Planet Bike makes what looks like a really kick-butt headlight, the Alias HID

I like: It's all self-contained. No wires or battery packs hanging off someplace.

Dislike: Just shy of four hundred bucks, it's expensive!

Uh, is Vistalite still around?

I have an Ultrafire LED flashlight that I'm using AAA's with and throws out a good bit of light-might want to give it a shot-if you don't find it bright enough for your main light (and it is very bright)-it would at least be an inexpensive back-up. You can look around DX's site and find cheap mounts for flashlights as well. Here's the link for the light: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.17401 Oh-the mounts are under Flashlight Accessories. And there's a bike specific light under Bike Lights if you wish to spend more-but seems like it would be LOTS more light.

Nice thread with pics on the magicshine... http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=6093406

My Magic Shine arrived yesterday and I tested it tonight. It was a snap to mount on my bars. I took it out for a night ride to the ice cream store. The light is amazing. In half bright mode it provides plenty of light to ride by and in bright mode you can ride at speed with plenty of visibility. I took it down a very dark street with little ambient light and it illuminated the street well enough to sell to ride at speed. What a great product - I rate it 5 stars.