Well in a previous post I ask for recomm. on lights. Thanks for all those who responded.
Unfortunately, I didn't listen to any of the advise (for now). Instead I bought the Cateye EL-300
bar light and the Cateye OptiCube helmet lamp, $55 combined at REI. Testing them at home on my yard,
they seemed bright enough. So I set out to familiar trails tonight. These are single tracks that I
know like the back of my hand. I set the bar light to focus straight ahead, and the helmet light to
shine where my eyes would be looking. Like I said, both lights' LEDs (5 on the EL-300 and 3 on the
OptiCube) were "white bright." However, both had the "flashlight" effect, where the beams on each
illuminated the area directly in front of it, but not a big area, and then you see a "halo" on the
periphery. It was like a white spot in front surrounded by a white circle 10 feet away from it's
cicumference! As a result, I was so tentative that I was falling all over the place, granted it just
rained and the trails were a little wet. I hesitated almost the whole ride since I couldn't see well
enough, even though I knew the trails really well. I went on fire roads the last 30 mins. of the
ride, and they worked fine there.
Lessons learned...
- You get what you pay for.
- Try out new accesories on familiar trails.
- I definitely want white LED lights and not necessarily HID lights.
- Both the EL-300 and Opticube would serve well for backup lights.
So any recomms. for a light system w/ white LEDs?
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- Zilla Cary, NC (Remove XSPAM)