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AUX-10W-120W
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AUX-10W-20B
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ORB-18WD-35
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ORB-24W-30-DI
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ORB-36W-30-DI
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ORB-54WS-35
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ORB-72WD-35
Story and photos by Bryan Irons
Without a doubt, driving at night is challenging at the best of times. The lighting you have can make the difference between getting home safe, and not finishing your “bucket list”. As you stand facing the selection of auxiliary lights at you local truck outfitters, what do you choose? Where do you start? You really need to be honest with yourself in what you, and your rig needs. In our experience, we have yet to find the perfect light for all conditions. It was time to do some testing and see what works best.
We hit up Super Bright LED’s for a selection of different LED lights with different purposes in mind for each. On a cold February night, our editor Perry Mack, talked/coerced me into a dark field in the middle of nowhere where we listened to coyotes howl and I wondered if we would become bear fodder. Oh, and we tested the lights. For our tests, we set up a grid with white targets at 25, 37 and 50 metres from the lights. In order to see how wide, targets perpendicular to the 50-metre marker were set at 10 and 20 metres. We built a test rack to hold the lights and powered them with the ArkPak portable power station.
A light output meter measuring in “lux” was used to measure the light at each or our targets in the field. A Lumen is a standard unit for measuring the total light output of a fixture. Lux is a measurement of “lumens per square meter”. With this information, we were set to measure how much light was actually reaching our targets, and in what pattern.
LED’s have been the recent rave in the lighting world, and for good reason. The total light output vs. energy used is vastly superior to the halogen lights of yesterday. The lights produce very little heat and have very long life spans. Another bonus is the wide operating voltage. This means hooking them up to a 24V charging system is not a problem if you are having a hard time finding lights for your military rig. Along with the test results, we’ll also include where we think each of these lights could be utilized, and some of the features built into them.
For more information along with other LED lighting, see SuperBrightLEDs.com