>> We had so little light that we could not even see the tops of waves. We broke out some lightsticks and placed them on our stern decks so that we could stay with each other. We found that we had to cover half of the four inch lightstick because the glare was too bright for us in such a low light environment. >> While searching the Web for information about night vision, I ran across several sites offering LED flashlights for sale. Seems to me that LED lights could be used for a couple of purposes: making yourself visible to your companions and for illuminating your compass. For the first use, a low-intensity LED that could be attached to your PFD would be ideal. It should be fairly easy to make one from parts bought from Radio Shack. In fact, Sky and Telescope has instructions for making one for stargazing that could be easily adapted; theirs even includes a dimmer! The instructions can be found at http://www.skypub.com/tips/projects/redlight.html. The Nexus (Silva) 70P compass has a hood available for it that has light stick illumination. Though I haven't seen one close up, it seems to me that it should be possible to replace the light stick with an LED and run the wires to a switch in the cockpit. As with the S&T light, you could incorporate a potentiometer to adjust the brightness. Other compasses would probably require a little more effort to mount the LED. LED batteries should last far longer than a light stick. LEDs might also be the way to go if you want to put running lights on your kayak. One possible problem: if the lights are too dim, power boat drivers might run you down thinking they are on a larger boat much farther away. Chuck Holst *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Mar 03 1999 - 09:31:34 PST
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