Night lights

underdog said:

I figured some kind of handlebar mount light for a bike but mounted to
the seatpost would work but then it's only adjustable right and left.

As for a front light, depending on the bracket, there should be some
way of alternatively attaching the bracket to allow up/down adjustment
of the light.

I did something similar to mount a Schwinn bike computer on the
downtube of my uni (use the mounting bracket in a non standard way).

--Tom

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There are two reasons to use lights: one is to see with; the other is to
make you visible to others.

Strictly speaking, the lights should be attached to the vehicle, not
the rider, to comply with UK law, but as so many cyclists use no light
at all, the police are very unlikely to worry about lights that exist
but are not fully compliant - especially if the rider is on a bloody
great unicycle with no brakes.😉

I have owned 3 head torches of very different design, and all of them
have been adjustable to fit round my helmet. I would be surprised if
yours cannot be made to fit.

The problem is getting the elastic to sit still instead of slipping up
the outside of the helmet. An answer to this is to get some
sticky-backed Velcro discs - the hooky ones, not the furry ones, and
stick them to the helmet. This will snag the elastic of the head band
of the torch and hold it in place.

A 3 LED head torch allows enough light for steady road or pavement
riding, and easy towpaths and the like. As it is near to your eyeline,
there is some back scatter from fog or dust, and it also attracts
insects towards your eyes, which is a Bad Thing.

Any single point of light will give you only limited information about
the surface, because you don't get the full 3 dimensionel effect. The
ideal is to have two sources of light, although very powerful head
torches (£100 plus!) will do the business. I haven't ridden in the
dark for a while (getting old and lazy), but when I did, I relied on a
3 LED head torch and carried a small hand torch (Mini Mag-Lite). I'd
use the hand torch for scanning the route ahead, and giving more detail
on tricky bits, and the head torch to provide a pool of light a few
metres ahead of me. It is important to be able to ride by feel, so
that you use the lights to tell you what's coming, but your skill to
deal with what's immediately under your wheel.

As for the lights to be seen with: there are various cheap and cheerful
LED lights available. I have a red LEd mounted on the seat post,
fairly high up, and a white LED mounted just above the fork crown.

Good luck, you'll have lots of fun.🙂

--
Mikefule

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voluptuousness; we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the
musty stench of corpses."
Arthur Schopenhauer. Philosopher and pessimist.
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cathwood said:

Does anyone use any other form of lighting when unicycling in the dark
other than head torches?

I've tried mounting lights in various places, but if the light is for
seeing by (rather than being seen by) then I've found that it has to be
either head-mounted or hand-held.

Anything mounted to the unicycle will present problematic shadows, and
usually distracting moving shadows as the legs go past on either side.

Anything mounted to the body (I've tried abdominal lights) will move
from side to side with each pedal stroke, which is distracting.

Head-mounted or hand-held lights will remain steady as you ride and can
be directed wherever you most need the light. In good weather I prefer
head-mounting. In snow, rain or fog the reflections from a head
mounted light will render the light useless, so it has to be hand-held.

The advantages of head-mounting are so great on a unicycle that I am
willing to wear a helmet in order to mount my Lumicycles to it - the
only reason that I would wear a helmet on a unicycle.

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I've used 'pedals with LEDs like these' (http://www.pedalite.com/) on my
29er at night. Just watch out for rubberneckers! 😉

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You can make a pretty sucsessful headlamp at home

Go to a hardware or lighting store and get a 40-50watt small lamp, (i
cant remember what it was exactly) but make sure you get one of the
ones that is low heat, the lower the better

You then mount this either in a wire frame or in a peice of plastic
tubing (hence the low heat thingy) add a switch and a 12v battery (in a
backpack) and you have a bloody strong headlamp, there was one when i
was at the 2006 cateye Moonride (a 24 hour mountain bike race, that we
did on unicycles of course) and it was fantastic, mounted on your
helmet

Well hope that makes sense

Cheers

Dan

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nzunicyclist.dan said:

You can make a pretty sucsessful headlamp at home ....

I converted a maglite to a 12V DC 20 Watt Halogen for my night riding
on mountain bike.
[image: http://www.trappersplace.com/maglite/sideshot1.jpg]

50 watt would be big time overkill and generate too much heat. You
would also need too big a battery (heavy) to power it any reasonable
length of time. Even the 20 watt one I built needed a 5 lb battery
which was fine for a bike but I'm not willing to carry it on the one
wheeler. I also don't feel I need 20 watt for the uni. I needed 20
watt for the bike to illuminate far enough ahead to allow me to ride at
high speed and see stuff in time to navigate it. Speed isn't so much
an issue on the uni so I'll be modifying it to a 10 watt setup with a
much lighter power source. I can probably put together a lighter NiMH
cell pack that will hold up for 2 hours or so now.

For those that are interested here's the project link. 'Maglite
Project' (http://tinyurl.com/l7qqb)

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to get a good headlamp without spending a bunch of money you're
basically going to have to homebrew one much like what's posted above.
the lower end Niterider lights are under $100US, and some pretty good
ones can be had for around $250. Cateye makes a light call the
"doubleshot" which is lightweight and incredibly bright. What you'll
spend depends on how much light you need. 24 hr mtn bike racing needs
as much as possible so systems for that run $300-600. riding a unicycle
after dark down a sidewalk doesn't need much but $70-100 would probably
be a good investment. if you can still see but need others to see you,
$25-50 is probaly more than sufficient.

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I've been looking for a decent light for night riding as well. Has
anyone tried CygoLite such as the following...

'HiFlux200 B*ke Light'
(http://www.cygolite.com/2-Products/2-Hiflux200-2.htm)

Would the water bottle cage mount for the battery work on a Uni?

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seems like a solid light. and the battery would work fine, you'd just
have to get a helmet mount for the light and put that battery in a
jersey pocket or camelbak.

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nzunicyclist.dan said:

You can make a pretty sucsessful headlamp at home

Go to a hardware or lighting store and get a 40-50watt small lamp, (i
cant remember what it was exactly) but make sure you get one of the
ones that is low heat, the lower the better

You then mount this either in a wire frame or in a peice of plastic
tubing (hence the low heat thingy) add a switch and a 12v battery (in a
backpack) and you have a bloody strong headlamp, there was one when i
was at the 2006 cateye Moonride (a 24 hour mountain bike race, that we
did on unicycles of course) and it was fantastic, mounted on your
helmet

My commercial head torch uses a halogen bulb type MR11 (6V 10W).
However if you use the larger MR16 bulb (say 12V 10~20W) you can mount
it in standard plumbing adapters, I have nearly finished building one
for my bike. A 50W bulb would result in very heavy battery, or a very
short battery life.

The easiest way to mount the lights to your helmet is with velcro
straps (this is the bit I have still to do).

The total cost, excluding battery and charger, is less than £10. I
already have the other bits but total cost should be <£30.

I will try and bring them upto Manchester, alternatively search the web
for "homemade cycle lights" and you will find lots of pictures,
including full parts lists. e.g.
http://www.geocities.com/jimburnetto/bike_light.html in the UK Maplins
is the easiest shop to buy the parts.

I used to ride with a Petzl head torch, but found cars would pull out
on me even if I shone the beam into their eyes. If you have a 10W bulb
this does not happen, if a car is blinding me on a lane a quick lifting
of the head to 'flash' the driver usually results in them turning off
full beam.

Also a quick look back when a car is approaching fast from behind is a
great way of slowing them down (I avoid shining the full beam at them)
as it is unusual. This normally results in me being given sufficient
road space.

Keith

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cathwood said:

I've recently started riding in the dark. At the moment I use a head
torch but it's not very comfortable (as I can't get it over my helmet,
so has to go round my forehead underneath the helmet). Does anyone use
any other form of lighting when unicycling in the dark other than head
torches?

Cathy

Cathy is this on road or off road riding? I can only comment on off
road muni and XC riding in the dark. All the times have been with a
'Petzl Xenon' (http://www.sailgb.com/p/myolite_xenon_halogen_headlamp/)
head torch. This has provided enough light to ride by but to be honest
something a little stronger would have been nicer. I have also started
taking out a 3W LED small hand torch that is proving very useful.

XC night riding is excellent fun and is a great way of improving your
riding.

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I've got a 12w and a 10w pair of halogen lights. They're head mounted.
They work.

They're pretty expensive though, from http://www.lumicycle.co.uk

Mounting to your heads works best almost all the time. To mount lights
that don't come with helmet mounts to your helmet, you can buy velcro
zip-ties from a DIY store to put them on. Night riding is different,
and things look different, but you get used to watching the shape of
the ground in other ways than looking at the shadows.

Generally, people either use halogen bulbs, or LEDs. LEDs are v.v.
expensive for a good one currently though.

Personally I'd not bother building my own halogen light any more,
unless you have lots of bulbs, batteries connectors etc. already,
because you can buy things like the Electron lights
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=5769
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=8736
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=8738
for about the same as the parts would cost to make a similar light
yourself.

Joe

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I have a Lumicycle light too, and if you don't mind the price I can
recommend them. They seem to be well-built and pretty good value.

Mine is the 12 watt 'single light' (http://tinyurl.com/j64ux) with a
2.2 Amp/h Li-Ion battery. I haven't got a helmet mount yet but I've
used it for night muni by clipping the bracket around my forefinger and
holding the battery pack in my hand, and it works prety well. The best
thing about it is that the battery pack is pretty tiny and still lasts
for almost two hours.

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:o

Mikefule said:

I have owned 3 head torches of very different design, and all of them
have been adjustable to fit round my helmet. I would be surprised if
yours cannot be made to fit.

Good luck, you'll have lots of fun.🙂

Thanks Mike. I went back to my helmet. Took off the take offable peak.
And lo and behold it fitted (duh!).

So now the posts about good head lights are relevant.

Norry - as social conditioning has conditioned me to be afraid of rape
and pillage if I venture out into the dark and isolated spots on my
own, I'm going to stick to road riding for now. Having said that I have
found it great fun to ride round a certain local field in the dark. So
perhaps when I have more confidence in riding in the dark I'll go with
the statistics - which suggest I am safer in the dark and isolated spot
than I am at home.

So thanks for all the replies. It's time for some shopping.

Cathy

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cathwood said:

Norry - as social conditioning has conditioned me to be afraid of rape
and pillage if I venture out into the dark and isolated spots on my
own, I'm going to stick to road riding for now. Cathy

I realise you write half in jest, but the number of people raped by
strangers each year is tiny; the number of cyclists killed on the road
is large.

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voluptuousness; we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the
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Mikefule said:

I realise you write half in jest, but the number of people raped by
strangers each year is tiny; the number of cyclists killed on the road
is large.

Well that was my (half in jest and almost totally obscure) point I
think. The media doesn't get as hysterical about cyclists being killed
on the road as it does about women being raped by strangers (especially
if said strangers have some kind of mental health problem). In my most
feminist/paranoid moments I wonder if its all some kind of plot to keep
women from getting too adventurous. And since cars reign supreme in
this country, we wouldn't want to emphasise their killing power too
much now would we. 😉

Cathy

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