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Today I had a chance to take a look at some of those led sidelights (not
the Lopolight) mentioned a while back, and here is what I found;
These lights are well made and nicely finished, and the electronics seem
to be fully potted but there is a gap where the leds fit into the
electronics module that may let in water. The fixtures the electronics
go into are sealed but prob not comp water tight. Nonetheless, they
should last well unless immersed a lot, then they might fail.
The lights are compact and streamlined, so will be less likely to catch
a sheet.
The lights use optics so will make the required sectors. They are
designed to mount on the sides of the boat, and if not mounted properly
they will not make correct color sectors. Many like these I have seen
are not properly mounted, a piece of wood often is needed under the
light to get it 'flat' and along the centerline. This is much more
important than it might seem.
They are advertised as one half watt lights, a fair claim, one drew .6
watts the other .7 watts at 12.5 VDC, but I could not test to see if
the power went up as voltage increased, a more expensive light will have
a nearly flat power curve, I doubt these do.
The one big thing here was that these lights were designed (and
advertised) for a POWERBOATS use, not a sailboat, they make only a 25
deg vertical coverage VS a sailboats 70 deg required vertical coverage,
so if you put these lights on a sailboat you will disappear when the
boat heels! They are deck level lights and if you only used them when
under power this issue would not be a problem (unless you were heeling
due to lots of wind on the beam...). But the person who bought them was
not aware of this issue and had planned on using them both under power
and sail.
Judging the relative efficiency of the lights as compared to a FirstStar
MKIV tricolor, the sidelights were not as bright as the three watt
tricolor, the FirstStar was noticeably brighter even in full daylight
conditions. Given that these sidelights have a 25 deg vertical sector
coverage and the MKIV uses 140 deg leds, the FirstStar is about 2.5
times as efficient as these sidelights at 12.5 VDC, prob more like 3.5
times average 9-15 VDC.
That means these led side lights are not very efficient as far as led
nav lights go.
So, in sum, these lights are well made and look nice, but are not all
that bright, and are not very efficient for led lights, and have a
narrow beam angle. What's more, they likely have very little transient
and surge protection built in, but being leds they should still last
longer than a light bulb.
They are cheaply priced lights that use far less power (and make far
less heat) than comparably priced incandescent lights, but they are also
not all that cost effective in the big picture.
You do get what you pay for. -Ken
