Some scene lighting manufacturers who have been experimenting with LED technologies are putting what they’ve learned into play.
Others, meanwhile, are continuing to make products that are less expensive, yet deliver quality lighting.
Among the new LED products introduced at the Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC) in Indianapolis, Ind., this spring was one made by Torrance, Calif.-based Pelican Products.
Pelican’s 9470 remote area lighting system has four solid state-mounted LEDs.
Paul Putas from Pelican’s commercial sales division said company officials feel LEDs will soon take over on fire and rescue scenes. “This will take the place of quartz-type lamps that burn very hot and bright and are hard to set up,” he said. “These are not as bright as a quartz halogen can get, but sometimes those quartz halogens can be too bright. They get very hot and they break.”
Putas touted the 9470’s battery, which he said will sustain a minimum of a thousand recharges before it needs to be replaced.
At Whelen Engineering Company’s booth, regional sales manager Wayne Lyons and advertising manager Anne Niles almost talked over each other in their excitement about upcoming LED scene lighting technology. “You don’t need a power supply to run it,” Lyons said. “The technology is growing so fast that the product is twice as bright.”
This was the Chester, Conn.-based company’s first year showing its double-intensity Pioneer Series “Super-LED” vehicle-mounted flood lighting.
Niles said the new lights are part of Whelen’s goal to provide a total LED package. “Everything you want,” she said, “exterior lighting, interior lighting, warning lights, DOT lights, underground lighting – you can do a whole LED truck.”
Rick Fix of Fire Research Corporation (FRC) of Nesconset, N.Y., showed his company’s new LED scene light at the show. But Fix said it was still a prototype, with price and configuration yet to be determined, and it wasn’t expected to be available until later this summer.
Command Light of Loveland, Colo., had a new traffic arrow board based on LED technology. President Roger Weinmeister said it’s the next best thing to shutting the road down. “The unit can sit on a tailboard or be mounted between the cab and the body, and then raised up at the scene,” he said. Models range from 96 to 240 pounds, and raise and rotate via remote control.
But not everyone is jumping on the LED bandwagon. The four-person shop at Hauser, Idaho-based J. Neils Enterprises, which has been making lighting systems for 35 years, saw no need to change its halogen-based Lentry portable lighting systems.
At FDIC, communications manager Joan Neils exhibited her company’s new two-headed XT light, which runs off a Honda generator with unique, all-terrain tripod legs, as well as the Dual light, which has two separate poles coming from the generator.
“If you want to light the ground, you can do it with anything,” Neils said. “But if you want to light anything else, you have to do it with Lentry. They can light the inside of a house from the outside.”
And Orrville, Ohio-based Will-Burt showed its new Night Scan series of DC Metal Halide light towers. Will-Burt’s Marlin Nichol said the series caters to fire departments that still need light towers, but are dealing with lean wallets.
“It’s a pull-down model,” Nichol said. “It doesn’t telescope up, but it stands up and rotates.”
Mike Bernert, vice president of Warminster, Pa.-based Havis-Shields Equipment Corp., also stuck to the tried and true at FDIC, showcasing his company’s new 35-watt spotlight with a xenon HID bulb.
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