PRODUCT REVIEW
Ay Up Lighting David Shepherd
On June 21st, midwinter, in our nations capital the sun is above the horizon between 7:12AM and 4:58PM. If you spend nine of those hours at work and getting to/from work there isn’t much time left for training! Training at night is a familiar activity for European orienteers and has become more so for orienteers here in Australia. Apart from in Melbourne where more than 100 competitors race in several events each week during the winter, there’s a lack of any real night Orienteering races on the OA calendar meaning that orienteers in other States never race at night.
H
owever the rising popularity of adventure races and marathon MTB races (such as CORC’s Scott 24 hour) means many orienteers are racing through the night. The ACTAS squad owns 15 Silva and Mila headlamps which are regularly used by the Canberra Cockatoos for orienteering, running, commuting, mountain biking... These headlamps are worth a small fortune, have heavy batteries and don’t fit on anything other than your head. Besides, the technology used in those lights (halogen globes, NiMH batteries) is older than mobile phones. Imagine you were still using a big car phone thing like Nice Guy Eddie in Reservoir Dogs. While Silva and Mila are developing LED (light emitting diode) lights, the real advances are happening in the bike light market. LED lightsets are light (weight!), tough, easy to use and put out a bright, white light. Just a note of warning, this article is a John Laws style product review. Ay Up Lighting have generously sponsored me and given me several of their LED lightsets for orienteering/running and cycling. News just in: Ay Ups are awesome, know what I mean?
An Ay Up lightset
your door as soon as physically possible”. A lightset is actually 2 lights, each LED encased in a separate shell. There are 12 colour choices for the shell so you can choose one that doesn’t clash with your bike (or your hair). The light has a cool white tint and has three beam width options; narrow, intermediate and medium. The narrow beam is recommended for use on the helmet and intermediate on the handlebars. The medium beam has a much wider spread and is good for running and orienteering, but the intermediate beam has a better throw and is my choice. The lights can be independently rotated so with an intermediate lens you can widen the beam if it’s too narrow. For cycling you probably want less spread and more throw, so the intermediate is a good choice for someone wanting to use the light for both sports. I found the throw on the medium beam a little too short for the MTB. The best set up for cycling is narrow on the helmet and a wider beam on the bars, which gives you the best of both worlds. The LEDs are currently CREE XRE, but Ay Up uses the LEDs with the highest possible flux bin they can buy. The technology in LEDs is advancing every day. Before we talk numbers we need a quick science lesson. A lumen is the unit of luminous flux, it gives a number to the power of light in the way that the kilowatt does to the power of the engine in your car. Now the numbers: each lightset outputs over 300 lumens, not as many of the little fellas
Ay Up Lighting was started in Brisbane a couple of years ago. The Australian company has developed a reliable lighting system with super low weight, long burn time, high light output and low cost. They plan to continue to evolve the system and incorporate advances in LED and battery technology. Their lights have been designed to be a multi purpose unit suitable for running/ orienteering, mountain and road cycling, adventure sports, hiking, climbing/trekking, camping, kayaking, caving, and anything else requiring light bright lights.
The Lightset When all is said and done the most important thing for night Orienteering is light. Bright and reliable light. Most orienteers (and mountain bikers) have had some sort of problem with their light. Circuitry, vibration, switch, plugs and water have all played a part. Ay Up lights are bombproof, the units are fully sealed (waterproof to 5m, means you can snorkel with it!) anodised aluminium shells which weigh just over 50 grams. They say “You break it .... we want it back - a new set will be delivered to 22 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2008
Intermediate beam, the marker is 35 metres away.