LED deck or spreader lights

[scottydaum]

I have the steaming/foredeck combo light. I also have LED spreader lights. The Starboard spreader light is aimed just a little bit forward and illuminates the foredeck, and because it is up high, it also illuminates part of any dock I am dealing with. The Portside spreader is aimed a little bit aft, and illuminates the aft portion of the boat and the dock as well.
I like to have a little of the water around the boat lit up when I flip on the spreader lights.
As for nighttime deck lighting when underway, I wear a headlamp which a red/white option to save night vision....I actually enjoy sailing at night, and do a lot of single handed deliveries so I am very fussy about night vision issues.

[a64pilot]

My foredeck light is a Marine Beam and so far has been excellent. It’s not so bad to wipe out night vision, but the spreader light are Hella and light up the deck like daylight, which is what I wanted.
I had these lights in the picture as cockpit lights, but they are of course WAY too bright and I finally gave up trying to dim them, they flicker at some settings no matter what dimmer you use, I’ll put them in the engine room I guess, they are meant to be and would be great spreader lights.

Nolex and I disagree on night lighting, I am a Retired Military pilot and I know the US Army spent a lot of money on the last few decades becoming a night fighting force, and all their studies indicate that light color and night vision retention is irrelevant, it’s the intensity, not the color of light that will wash out your visual purple and therefore your night vision, so a very dim white light is no worse or better than a red light.
The “red light” myth if you will came from film developing and before any real testing was done. It wasn’t until after Vietnam that serious studies were conducted.

[roland stockham]

LED spreader lights are now available but expensive! Worth it if you want to leave them on at anchor otherwise maybe not. Things to consider are dazzle and shadow and they are individual to the boat. The plus with spreader lights is that they cover a wide area and' unless you look up don't dazzle. They are also geat for lighting up the sails if you need to increase visibility. The downside is that if you bend over something you immediately put it in shadow. Deck lights on the other hand can be much liver power and close to work areas pointing down so no dazzle. But you never seam to have fitted one where you need it.
Personally my solution is big foredeck light combined with the steaming light plus aft deck floodlight on the stern arch. This light the boat up like a fish boat if I want to be seen of for serious nighttime work. I also have a lower power cockpit light for clearing up/in habour. All of these kill night vision so mostly I use a variable power head lamp when sailing. Always where you want the light and if you set it super low does not kill night vision.

[Ted and Relinda]

I put led flood type lights on the spreaders. One angled a little forward the other a little aft. They light the whole boat like daylight at night. It does mess with the night vision. So keep i one eye closed when I use them. ( Old cop trick). Ted..

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

My foredeck light is a Marine Beam and so far has been excellent. It’s not so bad to wipe out night vision, but the spreader light are Hella and light up the deck like daylight, which is what I wanted.
I had these lights in the picture as cockpit lights, but they are of course WAY too bright and I finally gave up trying to dim them, they flicker at some settings no matter what dimmer you use, I’ll put them in the engine room I guess, they are meant to be and would be great spreader lights.Attachment 173858

Nolex and I disagree on night lighting, I am a Retired Military pilot and I know the US Army spent a lot of money on the last few decades becoming a night fighting force, and all their studies indicate that light color and night vision retention is irrelevant, it’s the intensity, not the color of light that will wash out your visual purple and therefore your night vision, so a very dim white light is no worse or better than a red light.
The “red light” myth if you will came from film developing and before any real testing was done. It wasn’t until after Vietnam that serious studies were conducted.

I’ve got a paper in this floating around on my computer somewhere. The recommendation of the paper agrees with what A64 indicates.

Specifically for chart reading use a dimmable white light set as low as usable. To use a red or other colored light you need greater intensity to be as usable and that ruins night vision longer.

[sailcrazy]

When we redid our mast and rigging, I added installed both a foredeck light and new spreader lights; all 3 are LED. I also installed 2 LED flood lights, one on each side of the radar arch. All are wired/switched independently, but I also added an intruder light switch to my Nav panel below. If we every hear unknown noises on the deck- one switch lights up the whole boat! Works good, and it's effective.

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Nolex and I disagree on night lighting.

Yep .

The scotopic receptors are insensitive to red illumination. This basic visual physiology is the reason red light has an advantage in some circumstances. It has nothing to do with film sensitivity.

You would need to be very careful when using red deck illumination that it could not be confused with a port navigation light, so I am not sure it is such a good idea.

[a64pilot]

The kicker is what Adelie posted, however from my memory I don’t think red is worse, just not any better.
Additionally it has the distinct disadvantage of making anything red not visible, and often on maps danger areas etc are denoted in red to draw attention to them, illuminated in red, you can’t see them.

After Vietnam the US government shifted warfighting to nighttime, reasoning being that we had an advantage over whichever adversary we were going against equipment and technology wise, and as such there was a lot of studies done on night adaption, night viewing techniques, and Billions spent on night systems and night flying. The AH-64 was built specifically to perform its mission at night, and originally had red cockpit lighting, that was later changed to blue green after significant data was collected to determine that dim blue green lighting caused less eye strain and was best for night time.

Believe it or not but the hospital green that you see scrubs are, is about the best color and causes the lease eye strain etc.

Guess what? Apparently the Soviet Union knew this or at least adopted it well before the US, look at any Soviet era aircraft cockpit and tell me the color of the instrument panel. Russia still uses the color, this is an SU-35 cockpit.
MiG 21, Vietnam era airplane

[a64pilot]

This is, I think a computer game simulation of the AH-64D cockpit cause there are errors and the lighting is WAY too bright, but it is the correct color for night ops.

[noelex 77]

The military have made sensible lighting decisions.

Basically modern military warfare in planes tanks etc requires so much information that it impossible to preserve scotopic vision. If night vision is required down to scotopic levels (and lower), then night vision equipment is used.

To extrapolate these requirements to a sailboat is very wrong.

[Wckoek]

Coverage is what I am looking for, now Roland mention that when pointed low to avoid glare it might not be effective.
I might as well add some on bimini for cockpit lighting underway.

Now someone mentioned that they have both spreader and floodlight, I understand what floodlights are in a normal context, but on a sailboat would they be much stronger than spreader, or overkill?

[Wckoek]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

This is, I think a computer game simulation of the AH-64D cockpit cause there are errors and the lighting is WAY too bright, but it is the correct color for night ops.Attachment 173866

Green looks great, I imagine it would be ideal as a cockpit light, might have them on the bimini as well.

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

This is, I think a computer game simulation of the AH-64D cockpit cause there are errors and the lighting is WAY too bright, but it is the correct color for night ops.Attachment 173866

This is a very good illustration why red illumination would be not be a sensible choice for this aircraft.

It is impossible to present this amount of detailed information in a way that it can processed quickly and preserve the most sensitive levels of night vision. So red illumination is not the best choice.

Red illumination only has an impact on preserving rod function. This is only used in the deeper levels of dark adaption. If you are flying an aircraft with very simple instruments such as many of the WW2 military aircraft, and you can process this information relatively slowly, then preserving this scotopic level of vision is feasible. This is why these aircraft used red illumination.

[a64pilot]

Geez, Nolex I like you but your incorrect.
The AH-64a was a pure analog instrument airplane, we wore “lip lights” on our microphones and had zero cockpit illumination, everything we needed was displayed on our HDU or helmet display unit, if for some reason we wanted to see something inside of the cockpit, we would poke our lip out, that touched a button on the lip light and a little blue green LED would illuminate whatever we were looking at, not a red led, but a blue green one. If for some reason we had to have cockpit illumination NOW, like inadvertently going into the clouds, we flipped a switch and eyebrow lights on the glare panel illuminated the whole instrument panel, they were blue green as well.
Ever looked through a NVG? Night vision goggles? They display in green, not red, ever wonder why? They are just an image intensifier, and it is awfully important to preserve night vision for any soldier.
Red would be very simple to display, but it’s not used, hasn’t been for a long time.

[sailcrazy]

Our floods are each aimed down the respective side walkway (from the transom past the cockpit side, and then forward). When we hit the "intruder" switch, the foredeck lights the foredeck, the Spreaders light the mast area, and the 2 floods light each side.....the only unlit deck area (not directly lit) is the very center of the transom. Intruders have no place to go but overboard or back to their boat! Works much better than tacks spread every night! As I mentioned, they can all be used individually, as needed....or can all be turned on together with a single switch, depending on what we need to light up.