Starting light working group

[Rabbit Farmer]

have an inherent 7 degree downward beam tilt.

Is that an option? Pretty much every start line is on a hill anyway... the light will be vertical to the center of the earth, but at an angle at ground level.

[walterclark]

Just throwing in something I haven't seen proposed. What about mounting the light horizontally rather than vertically?

The light can support that and it would put all 3 LED lights on exactly the same viewing plane though the outermost light might be obscured in some cars by A-pillars. We dont have all the correct hardware for horizontal mounting of the light and it does complicate fabrication of a stand. Since Joey committed to the stand it would be his call.

[walterclark]

have an inherent 7 degree downward beam tilt.

Is that an option? Pretty much every start line is on a hill anyway... the light will be vertical to the center of the earth, but at an angle at ground level.

Its not an option, it is inherent in the GE LED light design. I would guess that is because the LEDS used are directional and to be effective in daylight they need to point toward you within a few degrees...and they all are mounted overhead at intersections. Yes, all our start line areas slope up hill and one of them may be 7 degrees resulting in a light that is actually vertical when aimed parallel with the road. However we cant count on that so I keep referring to the 7 degree tilt back relative to a tangent or parallel to the road and not to horizontal or vertical. Obviously the stand will need to stay upright on our grades, so the front (or downhill) legs will need to be angled out from the bottom of the light cradle by more than the 7 degrees needed to bring the light beams in parallel with the road or on a 7 or more degree grade the light would tend to tip over easily. And since the ground at the edge of roads is hardly ever even, the legs (or at least one front and the rear) need some sort of adjustment for length.

[Rabbit Farmer]

Actually, I mis-typed... I meant to ask if that was a PROBLEM. Regardless, you answered my question.

[walterclark]

We have everything but the light stand completed and tested. The survey here and on the NEHA newsgroup produced an eye height of 39". I swapped the red and green lights, putting the green on top and letting us lower the light 10 inches.

This is an unedited video on youtube of our light functioning. It wasnt until I had the video back on my PC that I realized I dont have any editing software that will let me rotate the whole .MOV 90 degrees and I shot the vid with the 16:9 camera on its side to close in on the light itself. Sorry about that...

[sachilles]

pretty damn cool!!!

[jkale]

thats seems like an really fast countdown.. other than that, its awesome...

[sdwarf36]

Its a 1/2 second between each-just like the drag strip. NIce thing about that is there are plenty of practic trees online.

[jkale]

Yea but it all happens so fast with this.. At a dragstrip you get the staging lights to let you know when you are about to get the yellow-yellow-green. With this, it just happens..

[walterclark]

We will still have a start person asking if you are ready immediately before the sequence begins so its shouldnt be a surprise. This just replaces them waving their arms and shouting. I was resistant to the speed of this at first too but after cycling it a lot of times under test I got used to it and now the 3mississippi-2mississippi-1mississippi-Go seems like an eternity to me.