Lighting Tech for the TOW PROFESSIONAL

By David Cotsmire

Full disclosure, just so you know where I am coming from here. I remember the days of corded rotary phones and party lines where you would have to ask your neighbor to hang up so you could place a call. I also remember walking to a co-worker’s office to converse with them, or calling them on the phone. Handheld searchlights that required those huge rectangular six-volt batteries seemed to last only minutes and didn’t provide much more light than a candle. I was two years old when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon! The bottom line is that I love technology and the benefits it has delivered – a safer, cleaner world in which to work and play. Let’s explore how lighting and power technology has improved to allow the tow professional to work in a safer environment at night and be more efficient at the same time.

Will-Burt’s Night Scan on-vehicle folding light tower was introduced in the late 1980’s and significantly improved the safety of nighttime road rescue operations for towmen, police, and fire fighters. Night Scan then, as it does today, focuses the illumination power of several lights on the working scene. A remote-controlled positioner allows a user to point the lights exactly where they are needed regardless of the position of the vehicle to which the system is mounted. Needless to say, the manner in which this was accomplished in 1989 was significantly different than it is done today.

Today, the power management system, controls, and lights are much more advanced than 30+ years ago. Will-Burt has employed the latest technologies to make the system more powerful, more dependable, and more effective for the same price (adjusted for inflation). We will review beginning at the top of the mast where the action is – LED lights.

LED lights have become more powerful, rugged, and affordable over the past several years. Beyond these benefits, LED lights consume much less power than the lights on that 1989 Night Scan, in fact, that 1989 model consumed 9,000 watts to generate the same amount of light as today’s model that operates using 1,200 watts. What this means is that today’s system can be run from vehicle power, no need for a costly generator. Another important benefit of LED’s is that many of the lights offered by Will-Burt come with a limited lifetime warranty; you will not find that with the old halogen lights. The positioner to which the lights are attached was once filled with relay switches that simply controlled the up / down, left / right movement of the lights. Today, potentiometers provide digital positional feedback to the Night Scan IQ allowing the position of the lights to be displayed on a LED monitor.

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Looking “under the hood,” you will see the “brains” have transitioned from relays and switches in the 80’s and 90’s to circuit boards with built-in relays in the 2000’s to solid state power management and controls using CANBus communications in the Night Scan IQ of 2023. Finicky switches and relays are things of the past; again, delivering a more reliable and safer system.

What would a state-of-the-art light tower be without a user-friendly interface controlling it? Back in the day, controllers were a series of toggle switches, straight forward but a bit archaic. The transition was then made to push button controls with a small LED screen for limited system feedback. Today’s Night Scan IQ employs a multifunction, programmable display that visually shows you the position of the light tower. You can store a number of preset deployment options for the tower so that you can arrive on scene, hit a couple of buttons, and get on to other tasks as the light tower deploys automatically. That completes our review of the evolution of on-vehicle light tower technology. Next, we will cover the improvements that have been made in portable, rechargeable lighting.

Thankfully, the days of low-power, short-lived, rechargeable lighting products are a thing of the past. The promise of a lighting device, always at the ready, was very appealing – just unplug it and go, but they did not live up to the hype. The devices still used halogen bulbs which were power hungry and, frankly, not so bright with batteries based on Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) developing a memory over time and providing power for shorter and shorter periods of time, eventually making the device practically useless. Today’s rechargeable lighting products are much better!

LED’s and lithium-ion (Li-ion) are a match made in heaven. The low-power draw of LED’s while providing high lumen output coupled with Li-ion power storage can deliver dependable and safe lighting for hours. Li-ion batteries do not have a “memory” and typically perform identically for hundreds of charge cycles. Li-ion technology is changing rapidly and is being driven by the auto industry. Costs continue to decline while energy density per weight continues to increase. Night Searcher along with Tesla are starting to use lithium iron phosphate batteries (LiFePO4) which offer a lower cost, high safety, low toxicity, long cycle life compared to lithium-ion – the tradeoff being slightly larger size. Make sure to investigate what type of batteries are being used before purchasing a rechargeable product, price typically correlates to battery type and quality of battery build.

The lighting available today is technically advanced and affordable. It is safe and designed to handle the heavy and rugged use of the tow professional. Dispose of those outdated fixtures (along with those rotary phones) and experience all that the future of lighting can do for you!

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23” Light Duty Wireless Tow Light Bar with 4-round transmitter & magnetic mount.