I'd like to add a report on 'real world' testing of Trout's lights this weekend.
Some of you who have been following this thread will recall that Trout was asking for someone who was riding D2D this weekend to test his lights, so I got in touch, as I'm interested in trying out new things, and have dabbled in the past with making my my own home brew lights.
After a bit of bouncing around of ideas, Trout eventually decided to drive down to Thetford, and meet me and my riding buddy, Robdeanhove, of the infamous homebrew LED light fame.
Now, on to the lights themselves!
Trout brought me a daddy Trout and a baby Trout. The daddy mounted very easily on my bars, directly over the stem with the battery being strapped under the stem with a single velcro strap. The baby Trout mounted with a single velcro strap to the top of the helmet. My riding/racing preference is to ride without a pack, so we ended up strapping a battery onto the back of the helmet.
Playing around with the light, I was really impressed with the switches, and how well constructed the lights felt. I've raced with plastic pipe LED-lights, so don't demand aesthetics over function, but these were really cool. I liked the little 'Trout' logo, proposed on here, and also the luminous paint used behind the LED's, so that once you turn them off, the lights glow a cool green. Handy if you drop them, or they get ripped off in a bad crash – but, I just liked how they made people notice you were riding something new and a little different.
During the race, I spent most of the time with the Daddy on 'full', with the Baby on 'low'. This was more than enough light for the tight, twisty trees in Thetford. Switching between 'full' and 'low' is really easy with a nice, positive click on the push switch. The switch has no illumination, but I found it easy enough to find, even in a hurry as I suddenly entered a section of singletrack. With both lights on full, the light levels were astonishing, with a really good coverage of light up to about 50-60 metres out.
I found battery life to be pretty good with the 'standard' batteries (although I have to confess I can't remember their rating) I ran the Daddy on two batteries for 7 laps, and although I noticed a small decrease in its intensity after a couple of laps, the light produced was still well above what I was used to.
The Baby, mounted on my helmet could do with a lighter battery, if you are going to mount it on the helmet in its entirety, otherwise you could easily carry the battery in your pack. After 3 laps, I swapped to my Joystick Maxx, as we didn't have another battery small enough to mount on my helmet. This was instantly noticeable for its much reduced power, in fact, I hardly noticed that it was on, or really felt I needed it with the Daddy doing its business on the bars. The only exception to this was really tight stuff, when being able to 'look' around the corner was necessary. I would say that with a little work on the ergonomics of the battery, the Baby light would be hard to beat for the money.
Trout pointed out that these lights were running on the 'old' LEDs. The new ones he is waiting for, will be 35% brighter and draw less battery power!! Wow!
I would like to pass a huge thanks to Trout and wish him all the best for these lights. In a small way of thanks, we came 3rd in the Male Pairs, and hopefully I provided a useful test of these lights in a 'real world' setting.
