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 boland398 |
brinkman starfire II lights? |
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Greenhorn
 Posts: 2 02/10/10 10:20 PM |
Anyone have any experiences with them? They were recommended by a friend. Attached is a link to the cheapest place I could find them.
http://www.gradysonline.com/product.php?productid=18502
Last Edited By: CaptLeeNoga 04/25/10 11:53 AM.
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wishiniwasfishin |
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Posts: 2147 02/11/10 09:17 AM
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I have used them in the past, and here is my suggestion. There are several negatives to starfires that I will share, and then a better alternative for you.
Starfires are power hungry. They will draw your battery down quickly. If you have a gigantic battery, you will be able to run them all night, but not with a small battery. Starfires are BRIGHT. You might think this is a good thing, but the problem is that the bright light hurts your eyes after a while, and fatigues you. I prefer a green tint. If I were using starfires, I might cut a mountain dew bottle up, and mount the light inside the bottle (Open botom, so water gets in). Still too bright for my liking. Very short cord, so you cant effectively submerge the light without altering the factory cord, which then allows the entry of salt and corrosion. Ok, enough bashing, here is my suggestion. I would make a trip (in lieu of professional lights) to Bass Pro Shops. They sell in their underwater lighting section a flourescent tube light, the amature version of the professional lights many of us use. They sell them in like 12 and 24 inches, and they will work VERY well. I think they werent much more than 20 bucks a piece, and they won't last much mote than a season, as they are more fragile than the professional lights, but last year I limited 5 times, and caught countless shrimp with them. I rig them the same as the captain with a weight to submerge, and an adjustable cord, to regulate depth. Good luck with whatever you choose. Mike |
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CaptLeeNoga |
#2 | |||
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Posts: 7624 02/11/10 11:11 AM Captain |
I concur 100% with Wishin's experience.
Starfires MUST be submerged, if you burn them out of water they turn black and short out. Most people end up laying them on the top water, or submerge them only a few inches. If you do this, any kind of chop or wake can smack those starfires into your hull and break them. Back when I started out, I got PVC pipe at lowes, and some corner joints. I made an arm that rested in my rod holder and extended away from my boat. I cable tied my starfires to the PVC for stability. The wires are short so you will need to scab in 15 foot or so. When you add wire: I use a 14-16g male and female connector, liquid tape, shrink wrap tube, then stretchy black tape, and then a coating of liquid tape again. You can add weight to get below the water line. Make sure your PVC is sturdy because when you add weight you do not want the PVC to bend. Buy full size marine batteries. OR .............. You can bottom toss these, but you have to be able to control how deep they go with adjustable depth line and weight. I have my equipment with pics in the equipment forum...quick way to navigate this board is to look below the post at the BLUE forums button, scroll down and highlight equipment and off you go. Halogen burns hot...and is a battery killer....NEVER NEVER NEVER clip to your engine crank battery. If the shrimp are running on top, the starfires will do fine and Walmart sells them for under $14 I believe. If the shrimp are running deep due to wind chop, top water setups will hinder you. Remember, shrimp DO NOT like light, the biggones will swim on the outer edge of your light field where it is darker. They have lenses in the back of their eyes that magnify light, and they can see the smallest of light in the dark in their world. We come along with booming lights on the river and some steer away. Lights are for US to see...lights DO NOT attract shrimp. So, I lay my lights on the bottom of the river for the catfish to lay on....and I back light my shrimp, easier on my eyes, and does not deter the big whankers from entering my light field USCG Licensed [OUPV/6 pak] - Captain 100% Disabled Vet E-5/USN Medic  Purchase
LED Greenie Shrimplight HEREl - Our Site SPONSOR - They accept Paypal!
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NiteOwl40 |
#3 | |||
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Posts: 573 02/11/10 11:27 AM SPONSOR |
Then there soon will be LED Greenies. See.
www.ledgreenie.com This site is new, still undergoing some cleanup with CaptLee's help. This is a professional grade light, with a very generous warranty, but it will outlast anything currently on the river. You'll not ever wear this rugged light out, period. Out performs any 4 foot, 2 foot, 18 inch professional fluorescent light, Starfires, Halogen light, RV bulb types, etc. period. Will be available latter part of March 2010. Go to the website, look at it and let me know your intentions, and I'll start a backorder list to make sure I have needed material to build them on hand, as this is late in the season, but well worth the wait to get your hands on one of these. The LEDGreeinie will be the new standard light for years to come for bridge and boat fishermen period. Sorry, but you won't be the first to own one of these. The prototype light CaptLee is showing on the longest shrimp tourney has already generated interest and sold 2 lights this week. CaptLee will use this prototype for 3 weeks, so watch for her on the river. |
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CaptLeeNoga |
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Posts: 7624 02/11/10 11:50 AM Captain |
T'aint knowing the right people in life the bomb!
As a result, NightOwl has generously worked out a deal with our community to donate LED greenie's as prizes! Folks, NightOwl40 is Pete Wehner, the iconic name associated with shrimp lights and technology. I can't wait to take this light into battle with me. I will say, the test you let me do at the ramp wound me up like a crazy woman. I cannot believe the difference over fluorescent, well I do....LED Cmas lights are so much more vibrant in color, and your light is true to standard. I like the 400lb burst weight...does that mean if my fat *ss sits on it, it won't break??? WOO, I see the web site propagated and is now in commerce....that was fast....store open, Huh? Congrats my friend. THANK YOU for the prize donations now and as we grow. It may be later in season, but good news, we will all be here next year. I just can't wait for the first member here that gets the first LED light as a prize next month. I am dying for his feedback here...they gonna squeal! I will be doing another LED Greenie tourney from April to June for longest shrimp, so the Titusville & Southern folks can play... USCG Licensed [OUPV/6 pak] - Captain 100% Disabled Vet E-5/USN Medic Purchase
LED Greenie Shrimplight HEREl - Our Site SPONSOR - They accept Paypal!
Last Edited By: CaptLeeNoga 02/11/10 11:53 AM.
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NiteOwl40 |
#5 | |||
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Posts: 573 02/11/10 12:58 PM SPONSOR |
The LED Greenie will take physical abuses that will shatter any Fluorescent light bulb type light on the river. No inverters or generators to deal with, no internal ballast transformers to sputter out, will not fail with reversed battery connections, and will stay put in the strongest tide with a flat or pyramid 4 lb weight - 2 lbs from Titusville Haulover to well south of Melbourne. All with about 1/4 the power drain of a single Starfire.
The LED Greenie has the purest green light available. This natural LED Green light projects the majority of the light horizontally in the water. For want of a better visual description, imagine a flattened out donut with the LED light in the center of the donut hole. This greenie is set on the bottom initially and raised from the bottom if more light is desired. The shrimp are always back lighted for you to see. Did CaptLee say the LED Greenie was rugged? Won't break if you accidentally drop it in the boat, bang it against a bridge piling? Tho not yet tested, I believe you can sink this light to 100 feet without damage. |
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Q |
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Sea Worthy
Posts: 79 02/11/10 10:43 PM |
I'm already drooling over the "perfect Swordin' light"......
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CaptLeeNoga |
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Posts: 7624 02/11/10 11:56 PM Captain |
NightOwl in the Oak Hill area is a hardware store [Anchor Hardware] about 1 block North of Lagoon bait and tackle. These places are real close to the turn in street/RV park at Riverbreeze.
Anchor hardware sells LED lights, and halogens. What do you think of these LED and alternative lights? As a beginner who has NO lights, and needs something NOW....I would be confused to see this selection... can you raise the shroud of mystery? http://www.anchorhardware...water-shrimp-lights.html USCG Licensed [OUPV/6 pak] - Captain 100% Disabled Vet E-5/USN Medic Purchase
LED Greenie Shrimplight HEREl - Our Site SPONSOR - They accept Paypal!
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NiteOwl40 |
#8 | |||
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Posts: 573 02/12/10 02:27 AM SPONSOR |
CaptLeeNoga wrote:Where to begin....it's 1:45 AM and this will take a while to complete. I've personally owned some of these lights several years ago. The first 2 rows of lights shown are all produced by a company called OPTRONICS. They've been building these lights for many years. The nightblaster series are slender fluorescent bulb type lights that I experimented using about 5 years ago. They lasted maybe 2 months, started to leak water while I was shrimping and quit working. Now, I'm a trained EE, and materials engineer, so it did not take long to find the sourvce of the leaks - an inadequately rugged cable jacket that developed a split and wicked water into the housing ala like an intravenous bag tubing would do into your arm. Once water gets into these lights, they are history - you cannot get the water out of tehm no matter what you do to them. I gutted the lights and re built the bulb and ballast into 2 clear, 1 inch PVC tubes and mounted the ballast into a larger 1.5 inch housing and sealed tehn up. Worked well for months until one night when the lead weight struck the housing.and snapped it into 2 pieces. built a new housing for the lamp and ballast. I still have these lights, with longer and better cords.. As you buy these, they are flimsy construction, not worthy of a season of shrimping. Did I mention the light field is dim and very limited as well.. About 1/2 the field of the ISAA 18 inch Greenie. I think they are a waste of money that could be used for a better lights. Did I mention these 2 lights are low power/low light output? The ballast transformer is at the battery end of the cable, and the high voltage cable exits the ballst housing and that is what you have to handle in raising or lowering the light, so you'd best turn off the light if you have to pull it out of the water to relocate your light or quit. And the flimsy cable length is far too short to use off a boat in Oak Hill or off a bridge for bridge dippers. And I tried these lights thinking they were an improvement over Starfire and Starfire wanna be's. Starfires were covered earlier so I won't go into them again here. I started with them my first season, tried green filters on them and then went to fluorescent lighting, and newer looked back. There had to be a better light. I'll add more to this post in the morning..... Good Morning Everyone that's still with me on this discussion. The Third light on the top row is a combo shimp light and halogen flashlight. Don't really know what Opreonics people were thinking about this design that couples an inadequate green fluorescent with a halogen flashlight. Seems like a compromise between a Starfire and short, minuscule greenie. The worst of both worlds by today's standards. A waste of good greenback wallet liners IMHO. Going on to the middle row, of LED lighting These are also OPTRONICS lights, been around for several years. I have no personal first hand experiane with these lights, but a close friend has seen one and commented they have insufficient light field for our purposes. He's an old timer (he'll resent this) shrimping buddy and regular on my boat, so I'll take his word as the real "skinny" in this. He has used and broken every fluorescent light type from 4', 2' 18", and Spiral Greenie over the years. He's also the one that I use to test my new lights as a result. A near 400 lb guy that moves the boat out of the light field every time he readjusts a Greenie for better lighting. I swear he can put the 4" fluorescent with its 12 lb weight into low earth orbit. That man can pitch a mean light. You may have seen me at Oak Hill south, anchored x current with a band of green lights covering a 30 foot wide swath of green water - 5 18" fluorescent Greenies. Trouble is, these greenies were designed by your's truly and are only available via ISAA membership. Theyare the ISAA de facto standard llight 2 years in a row, with over 125 of these ISAA club built lights in service. I know this as fact since I led the 18" and 24" building parties for the last 3 years. That brings me back to Anchor website and the lower right corner picture That's the one that really is a 5 foot long javelin/tube Draws about half the power out of a battery that a Starfire sucks out of the battery. There are at least 3 operations that make this type of light, 1 in Texas, 1 in S Florida, and a 3rd in Alabama, I think. All are priced about the same. This light was also an ISAA standard about 5 years ago. Lights up the water fairly well, but, hard to anchor due to it's size and weight requirements. But, let me get back to the OPTRONICS LED lights sold by Anchor. The LED's used are an older technoloty LED that are great for what they are, but when this light was designed, OPTRONICS had a major problem to overcome - how to fan the light out 360 deg at right angles to the housing. So they designed an elegant prism system to redirect this Green LED light out 90 deg from the light axis. They patended this elegant design. The next problem they needed to solve was how to get more light out into the water, and they solved that by adding additional modules.. So, here you are, buy the initial module for $49, and hope the next 2 modules at $35 each will give the desired light - total investment - about $ 119. Not a good tradeoff - 2 screw on modules and connections that may corrode in time in the salt water environment. All of these drawbacks to the older technology lights available in various bait shops and bix box stores are variations of the lights described above. I thought I could develop a better light that adressed some of these shortcomings and be far easier to use, so I develope and sold a propritary green spiral 12 volt battery powered light a year ago. A great little light that I called Lli Greenie. What a learning experience that was. I've quit making them when it became apparent that the LilGreenie bulb was much to fragile for our fishing and shrimping light. When you shrink the light size, you vastly increase the amount mechanical shock the light sees in use.. I'm retired from Rockwell Cliins Avionics now, and have worked in cockpit display optics for over 30 years in all the different display technologies, including Plasma, LCD, Incandescent, LED, and on and on. I've adapted to what I know to the underwater fishing lights, and have tracked technology advances in LED lighting for over 30 years, and never found any bright enough until the past few months. The newer technology is an outgrowth of MIT (Massashute...sh*t... Instutute of Technology) researchers that have figured out how to direct the light ouot of the LED from teh top of the device. This is a major technological discovery that has sparrked a revolution in automotive type very bright LED's - tail light, trailer lights, traffic lights, etc. Finally a LED configuration came to market that is usable for fishing and shrimp lights that is practical, nay, superior, for our purposes, No tricky internal reflectors to re direct the light, and low power consumption. So, be patient for a little longer, and don't buy the older technology lights just now. I'm re starting limited production of an LED LilGreenie as a small family startup operation. You can look at this prtotype light on this blog site because it is going to be given away as a first prize for the longest shrimp. The winner of this light will be amazed by it's light field size, color putity, and ease of use. CaptLee can attest to it, beiing the first blog observer and tryout for this light - still recall the first words out of her mouth this week - OMG.... You can learn more (plug coming) at www.ledgreenie.com Well worth the price - a light with a lifetime waranty, a schrimp/dishing light that will never leave you in the dark (if the cable stays connected to the battery, LOL). You'll never buy a replacement for this light. Buy 2 and get $10 off for the second light - doing this because I can ship 2 in the same box. CapLee will have this light mid next week until March 7th, so go look for her on the river (unless she wants to organize an armada for a demo -LOL)
Last Edited By: NiteOwl40 02/12/10 12:24 PM.
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NiteOwl40 |
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Posts: 573 02/12/10 01:49 PM SPONSOR |
Just a bump back to the top of the pile of replies.
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REDMAN |
Led Light | #10 | ||
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Sea Worthy
Posts: 15 02/12/10 03:53 PM
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Nite Owl I checked out your website and I really like those lights. I see in your note they will be av in March. If they are on back order I like to go ahead and get on thewaiting list if possible. If they are avb I will take two. Cant wait to try them out! Not going this w/e. Cold and the winds will be wrong. Plane on going the last week on Feb 27th or 28th. Full Moon and late tide. Usually not alot of people of the water on the late night. I think you all call it the graveyard shift |
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Fish On |
Wow | #11 | ||
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Posts: 954 02/12/10 04:07 PM
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Wowie Pete I am totally impressed. I can't wait to use these lights with Lee next week. Sometimes I have a problem seeing the shrimp with our clubs 18" green flouresents. Lee assured me once these lights are in the water I won't miss a shrimp. Can't wait!!! Thanks for all your hard work and sharing it with us.
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NiteOwl40 |
Next Generation of Fishing/Shrimping Lights | #12 | ||
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Posts: 573 02/14/10 03:41 PM SPONSOR |
 Check out this new generation LED Lil'Greenie. Light  See www.ledgreenie.com
Last Edited By: CaptLeeNoga 02/28/10 01:15 PM.
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