Commuting lights

Commuting, Day rides, Audax, Incidents, etc.
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bertbeerpot
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Joined: 4 Nov 2013, 9:28am

Re: Commuting lights

Post by bertbeerpot »

Just think how many things *we* could find wrong with it :) Should be good for another 3 pages at least.
Brucey
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by Brucey »

gaz wrote:
[XAP]Bob wrote:...No, but if I asked you the best place to get square wheels I'd expect someone to suggest ...

Hengist Pod, wheelwright :wink: .


Image

'this is my latest invention....'

cheers
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MikeF
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Location: On the borders of the four South East Counties

Re: Commuting lights

Post by MikeF »

TrevA wrote:I've been searching for the battery light Holy Grail for some time.

I started off with a B&M Ixon IQ. I bought one for my son who had a 15 mile each way country lane commute. He was well impressed with it and is still using it 6 years later. I bought one for myself, used it for about 4 years and it's now on my wife's commuting bike. I found that I could get 4-5 hours on high beam and 10 hours on low. Beam good enough to see by on a dark lane, though it doesn't turn night into day.

I replaced it with a Phillips Saferide. Probably brighter than the Ixon but i've been disappointed by the run times and it's a weight old beast and also a bit of a lump, stuck on the bars and takes up quite a bit of space. I've also lost one of the brackets in a recent house move. I only have the oversized bracket, so it can only be used on my audax bike. I mainly commute on my tourer with 26mm bars.

I bought a Cateye Volt 400 and was impressed with it. Not as bright as the Saferide but very light, small and doesn't take up much room on the bars. It's just about bright enough for dark country lane riding. I've now bought a Volt 1200 (£105 in the Evans Warehouse sale). This has all of the advantages of the 400 but it's much brighter, similar run time - in fact it lasts longer as I can run it in a lower mode, with equal brightness. I use this as my main light with the 400 as back up. I also have an extra back up of a cheap "be seen" led light from Halfords.

For rear lights, I use a Cateye Rapid 3. Bright enough, has several modes, it runs off a single AA and I find it last for about 50 hours before the battery needs changing. Back up is a Halfords cheap LED.


Brucey wrote:
Tangled Metal wrote:....Were talking cost effective now....


the problems you have encountered with your battery lights are to some extent shared with most of them.

As to 'cost effective' how do you value your time and your safety?

I'd suggest that you have already spent the thick end (or more) of the price of a hub generator based system on crappy battery lights and you now propose to spend even more...? :shock: :shock: That is just throwing good money after bad IMHO.

I am pretty sure that I have spent between £500 and £1000 on battery lights over the years and nearly all of them were junk. In the meantime I've run a couple of bikes with hub generators and they have cost pennies to keep going, been far less faff and much more reliable.

I still use battery lights occasionally for some purposes on some bikes but for a 35min commute I'd choose a hub generator system every time.

cheers


:wink:
"It takes a genius to spot the obvious" - my old physics master.
I don't peddle bikes.
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661-Pete
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by 661-Pete »

[XAP]Bob wrote:The book doesn't specify the shape, but yes - the colour was the contentious issue...
Can't tell you what was specified on the radio show - or what is considered canon.

Oh come now - surely you're not so doggedly 'fannish' as to consider only the radio version to be canonical!

Only my opinion, naturally, but I think the TV series was the best. And the very fact that Douglas Adams himself did a cameo in the series (he was the naked man walking into the sea - and also one of the pub customers) surely counts as a seal of approval. OK it was heavily abridged as compared with the book/radio serial, but even in those days the BBC was on a limited budget...

I never got the point of the 2005 movie - but then that's Hollywood for you. Once they get their fingers on an excellent British story, you know what'll happen... :(

Mods: if you feel like getting busy peeling off all the allusions to [square] wheels etc. and transplanting to the Tea Shop, go ahead. To everyone else, sorry about perpetuating the off-topicality... :oops:
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Mick F
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by Mick F »

gaz wrote:Hengist Pod, wheelwright :wink: .
Seeing as you mentioned him, where do you think Hengist and Mrs Hengist were from?
Can you remember the narrator's description of where?

Coccium.

Roman name for Wigan. :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigan
Mick F. Cornwall
Mike Sales
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by Mike Sales »

I saw the stage premier of HHGG, in the Theatr Gwynedd in Bangor.
I noticed that labels the back of our seats said "telephone sanitiser" and "hairdresser". I said to my companion, "I'm not sure I like the look of this." We changed seats.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by [XAP]Bob »

661-Pete wrote:
[XAP]Bob wrote:The book doesn't specify the shape, but yes - the colour was the contentious issue...
Can't tell you what was specified on the radio show - or what is considered canon.

Oh come now - surely you're not so doggedly 'fannish' as to consider only the radio version to be canonical!

No - I said I didn't know what it said OR what was considered canon...
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Brucey
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Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Commuting lights

Post by Brucey »

as a small child was reputed to have said;

" I like the radio, because the pictures are better...."

Not that the TV series was bad per se, but it kind of applies to HHGTG for me, too.

cheers
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pwa
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by pwa »

This has to be the best Topic Drift ever! Where will it end?
Vorpal
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by Vorpal »

pwa wrote:This has to be the best Topic Drift ever! Where will it end?

It cannot end at least until we survive an assassination attempt at Stavromula Beta.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
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TrevA
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Re: Commuting lights

Post by TrevA »

MikeF wrote:
TrevA wrote:I've been searching for the battery light Holy Grail for some time.

I started off with a B&M Ixon IQ. I bought one for my son who had a 15 mile each way country lane commute. He was well impressed with it and is still using it 6 years later. I bought one for myself, used it for about 4 years and it's now on my wife's commuting bike. I found that I could get 4-5 hours on high beam and 10 hours on low. Beam good enough to see by on a dark lane, though it doesn't turn night into day.

I replaced it with a Phillips Saferide. Probably brighter than the Ixon but i've been disappointed by the run times and it's a weight old beast and also a bit of a lump, stuck on the bars and takes up quite a bit of space. I've also lost one of the brackets in a recent house move. I only have the oversized bracket, so it can only be used on my audax bike. I mainly commute on my tourer with 26mm bars.

I bought a Cateye Volt 400 and was impressed with it. Not as bright as the Saferide but very light, small and doesn't take up much room on the bars. It's just about bright enough for dark country lane riding. I've now bought a Volt 1200 (£105 in the Evans Warehouse sale). This has all of the advantages of the 400 but it's much brighter, similar run time - in fact it lasts longer as I can run it in a lower mode, with equal brightness. I use this as my main light with the 400 as back up. I also have an extra back up of a cheap "be seen" led light from Halfords.

For rear lights, I use a Cateye Rapid 3. Bright enough, has several modes, it runs off a single AA and I find it last for about 50 hours before the battery needs changing. Back up is a Halfords cheap LED.


Brucey wrote:
Tangled Metal wrote:....Were talking cost effective now....


the problems you have encountered with your battery lights are to some extent shared with most of them.

As to 'cost effective' how do you value your time and your safety?

I'd suggest that you have already spent the thick end (or more) of the price of a hub generator based system on crappy battery lights and you now propose to spend even more...? :shock: :shock: That is just throwing good money after bad IMHO.

I am pretty sure that I have spent between £500 and £1000 on battery lights over the years and nearly all of them were junk. In the meantime I've run a couple of bikes with hub generators and they have cost pennies to keep going, been far less faff and much more reliable.

I still use battery lights occasionally for some purposes on some bikes but for a 35min commute I'd choose a hub generator system every time.

cheers


:wink:


I have spent just over £250 on the various lighting systems. They all still work and I can equip 4 bikes with reasonable lights with these.

I'd have to have spent at least a similar amount on dynamo systems for my touring and audax bikes, but they would not be easily transferable to either my wife's bike or my summer bike, which needs a light for spring and autumn chain gangs and riding back from early season evening TT's. The big plus of battery lights is their tranferability between bikes, which is important when you have a stable of 6 bikes.

Dynamos are great if you only need lights on one bike, but they don't suit all circumstances.
Sherwood CC and Notts CTC.
A cart horse trapped in the body of a man.
http://www.jogler2009.blogspot.com
beardy
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Joined: 23 Feb 2010, 4:10pm

Re: Commuting lights

Post by beardy »

Dynamos are great if you only need lights on one bike, but they don't suit all circumstances.


Which sort of brings us back to the point of the original thread deviation.
The one place where dynamo lights really shine :D is on a dedicated all year commuter bike.
If I had such a steed, it would have dynamo lights.
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TrevA
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Location: Nottingham

Re: Commuting lights

Post by TrevA »

But what happens if you get a puncture on your Dynamo bike, in the dark, on the way home? How do you see to mend it? Oh, you need a back up battery light!
Sherwood CC and Notts CTC.
A cart horse trapped in the body of a man.
http://www.jogler2009.blogspot.com
beardy
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Joined: 23 Feb 2010, 4:10pm

Re: Commuting lights

Post by beardy »

I do because I live out in the wilds but I imagine that you have plenty of street lights in Nottingham.

I was caught on the moors in a sleetshower on Sunday, my left hand had gone numb with cold and I just wanted to keep cycling, I hadnt intended being out after dark anyway. I did keep thinking that a puncture would be a seriously depressing thing right then. I didnt have any back up lights because it was a day ride that I had set off on.

Another reason for being depressed was that my GPS had packed up on me, that good old trick of the batteries getting too cold to produce the electricity, I could have put the same sort of batteries in my lights!

Any bike of mine that was intended for night riding would have two lights front and rear with two different power sources. AAA blinkies front and rear are adequate for backup to a dynamo and weigh in at 60g for the pair.
pwa
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Joined: 2 Oct 2011, 8:55pm

Re: Commuting lights

Post by pwa »

I imagine Tangled Metal is in a similar situation to me, with a limited budget and unable to justify splashing out on an initially expensive lighting system that is stuck on one bike. When I have bought expensive lights I have justified the cost (to myself and my better half) by saying that I can use it on my audax bike and my tourer (which doubles as a commuter). The front wheels are not interchangeable. So battery systems have been my route, and apart from the odd dodgy rear light (mistaken visits to Halfords) I have had good reliable light combos that have kept me well lit over thousands of miles of commuting. If I were treating myself to my idea of an ultimate commuter bike it would probably have a dynamo system, but that is a luxury I have not yet found the money for.
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