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These articles first appeared in Audax UK's hardcopy magazine, Arrivee, and have been only slightly adapted for the web.
Please read them in the context of their original publication date, as prices, specifications, weblinks and even opinions will change over time.

Mostly Dynamo Front Lights by Francis Cooke
A slightly adapted reprint of the article first published in Arrivee, August 2001

I saw one of our most active randonneurs the other day, with a Lumotec Oval headlamp slung upside-down under her handlebars. This is a neat arrangement, and the standoff is just right to put the light in a good position, not too high up. If you do this, note that the beam pattern put out by Lumotec headlamps - both round and oval - is not symmetrical. See this picture, I hope it comes out all right. It shows how the top of the beam is brighter than the bottom - this is how it should be, to give an even distribution as the light is projected down the road. By the way, I pinched this picture from the website of Peter White, a specialist cycle dealer in the US - Arrivee gets to the most surprising places and he might just get to read this article, in which case, thanks Peter! www.peterwhitecycles.com/

So if you mount a circular Lumotec upside down, disassemble the front (as though you were replacing the bulb) and turn it round through 180 degrees. Unfortunately, with the Oval you can't do this. Its also a good idea to drill a hole in the top of the case - which is now going to be the bottom - to let water out.

And all this applies equally to other headlamps designed to be used with generators - Lumotec-lovers might be interested to see this pattern put out by the BiSy headlamp - picture pinched from you-know-where.


This lamp is supplied by those nice Schmidt people and is considered by all who've used it to be slightly better then the Lumotec - it looks as though there's a bit less spillage, in other words more of the light goes where you most want it, which is what tight square beam patterns like this are all about. But bulb changing is a screwdriver job, which is very bad news, and there's no switch.

The BiSy is very like the round Lumotec - the mounting is compatible - its slightly larger and the whole area is taken up by the optics, instead of having that questionable doughnut reflector. So for the actual optics, there's a diameter of about 7cm as opposed to about 4cm for the Lumotec. (There is also a 'doughnut' version of the BiSy, which is even bigger.) The price is comparable to the Lumotec.

However - Schmidt are bringing out a new headlamp which will use an aluminium body allowing bulb change without tool, a built-in switch, O-ring sealing (a bit pointless if you're going to mount it upside-down ...), all using the excellent BiSy optics. Expect it to cost about £50.

I noticed, while looking at the Peter White Cycles site, that he does a version of the round Lumotec which is wired differently, specifically for use as an optional 2nd light in a twin-headlamp system used with a Schmidt. This would be good for those many people who wouldn't want to tackle the slightly counter-intuitive 'series wiring with bypass switch' trick - easy though it is - for themselves. Allegedly this modified light is also available from the CTC shop. Worth a try.

Here's an ill-assorted pair of headlights - the Lumotec Oval and Original. The beam's exactly the same from either - it just depends which fits best for you.


On the twin headlamp theme, the Lightspin generator has a problem in that the voltage limiter is built in to the generator itself - as opposed to the lamps. So it can never produce the 12V required to make the 'wired in series' trick work, and which the Schmidt is so easily capable of. However Robin Thorn (of St John St Cycles) finds that parallel wiring works OK with the Lightspin - he writes "Lights are in parallel, one 6v .5a on all the time, the other 6v .4a switch on when required ... although harder work it powers both lights fine." Slippage in the wet is likely with 2 lights, but if it happens you can always drop back down to one.

A final thing I noticed on the Peter White page - he does a 28-hole Schmidt (for standard wheel) - Sheila would give her eye-teeth for one of those, so I'm not letting her proof-read this article!


3 Schmidts - a very expensive picture

Right, now I enjoyed Ian Horne's Petzl Tikka review in the last magazine. Not least because it wasn't me filling up the 'Bright Ideas' page - more, more!

It's a shame the light is angled only for reading. There are alternatives - though availability might be a problem - and here an American correspondent, Marty Goodman, writes -

What I found, in the under $100 price range, were the following two items:

From Princeton Tec: a three white LED headlamp that runs off two AA batteries. This sells for $50 retail at my local Recreational Equipment Inc. store. Princeton Tec also has available for $33 a three LED module that drops into existing "Solo" headlamps of theirs, to convert those incandescent bulb headlamps into white LED headlamps.

From Luxbrite: a nine LED headlamp, which looks very similar to the Princeton Tec model. Luxbrite also makes a 5 LED version of this product. These also run off 2 AA batteries. The LuxBrite is available at Bernie's, in England. Price is around £40.

At the high end of the cost spectrum for such products is the one from Glo Bug, a $150 or so unit that has push button control over three brightness levels (microprocessor controlled).

I should add that Marty also had some fairly actionable comments about the Tikka, compared with the above, which I had to remove! The thing about both these is that they run off AAs, rather than AAAs - easier to replace, more powerful batteries. And they both use circuitry for voltage regulation. I like the idea of the Princeton Tec drop-in module for their standard headlight too.

Some Princeton Tec stuff is available through the Cotswold Outdoor chain - other than that I don't know about availability. As for the Luxbrite, this is a very nice light indeed - pictured below center - I found a website for 'Bernies' - it's www.berniescafe.co.uk and they're in Ingleton.


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