Super-Visible Beam/Vertical Column of Light Project

That is the goal. Now to be fair, I can already light up “low hanging clouds” with my little 700mA pinspot stage light. But only when they’re 300 ft AGL (about 100m above ground) and it’s foggy. I want WAY MORE than that. I want you to see that beam in spite of the Christmas lights, and street lamps, and clear air. I DO want to draw attention. I do want people to see it from miles away.

Fortunately, I live in a little farm town in eastern Colorado (the uncool flat part, not the mountains). Folks out here would think a big light was “badass”. Also, I’m super-mindful of my neighbors. I only run the animated portion of my Christmas display once every 15 minutes, between dusk and 9:00 PM. I do not intend to become “that guy” with the too-big display that creates hassle, traffic, legal issues, etc. for his neighbors. When my Christmas display gets big enough, it’ll move to a commercial location and will be a drive-through experience. Likewise, I’m very mindful of aircraft. I live directly under one of the approach patterns to Denver Int’l Airport. When it’s in use, the searchlight will not be operated. Simple as that.

300 feet AGL? sounds more like fog to me :stuck_out_tongue: You’re lucky to have such low hanging clouds where you live! I’m talking about Cumulus clouds. The fluffy, white cottonballs that are several thousand feet up in the sky. (I think by definition, “low clouds” are anything under 6,500 feet) obviously with fog being excluded as that’s a ground level cloud. Anyway the point is I can already hit the very very low hanging cumulus clouds just barely, but I’d love to maybe build a big spotlight that could easily and very noticeably light up clouds several miles up in the sky. It sounds like what you’re building might be able to do that. The carbon arc really is a marvel, that thing can light up ANYTHING!

That last part you mentioned about being mindful of aircraft reminds me of a friend of mine who recently acquired a laser he had lost in the past once again. He sent me a video where he was pointing it around at the sky and then he pointed it straight into a passing commercial aircraft! :person_facepalming: I was like dude do NOT do that! Not only is it illegal, but it’s very dangerous. He took it as a joke and I was like you do realize that there could be potentially 200 people on that flight, right? Now I’m not saying a laser pointer is gonna cause a plane to crash, but still… have some common decency.

He’s dam lucky he’s not getting to know Tyrone in an intimate setting. :open_mouth:

Hey, Evil Genius, I was watching some videos on yt last night and ran into one where they reviewed a couple of Fireflies flashlights. It was a video by Matt Smith (adventuresportflashlights) from 2018. Anyway, it got me interested because he mentioned that that brand offered premium products with high performance for a modest price. So hours later, I got the curiosity to check out their website. First page that loaded contained a “featured” section of flashlights, of which I clicked on the T9R cuz it caught my eye (I’m into throwers). Anyway, the light comes in 3 different configs, 2 of which are an osram LED and the other being an SBT-90.2.

Point is the Osram emitter is the one checking out. With that LED, the flashlight produced a beam that looks like an LEP flashlight. CULNM1 10W is the LED you wanna look into. It produced 1.5km of throw at just 900 lumens, and as I said previously, the beam looks like an LEP light, so even though it’s only 900 lumens, it produces a very focused “laser” beam that’s easily visible and very long. Not that hard to drive either, I think it takes just 6amps for max output. This LED is mounted on a single 21700 flashlight so you shouldn’t have any problem with a custom build. Only downside is, the emitter seems to be quite inefficient, so output drops a bit even if not prompted to by heat management. Also seems to get hot rather quickly (flashaholic mentioned this on his YT review. Although, I doubt any of this will be a problem since you’re only gonna be blasting the lights in bursts, so it sounds like this LED fits ur application perfectly. Now I don’t know how much they cost, but I don’t think they should be too expensive.

They were pretty successful w/ the vertical lights in this story. Probably outside the budget.

If you can find a 90cm mirror all you need is a 100w HID kit. All up cost about AUD$280
1km

3km

Sitting on my living room floor, I’m already 4,992 ft above sea level. So yeah, in winter we do get some LOW clouds if the winds are blowing “upslope” from east to west against the mountains. Normal cloudbase for cummies (when there are any) is around 3,000 AGL. This side of Colorado is a desert, so they’re kinda scarce. But yeah… huntin’ zepplins…. that’s the goal. And yeah, it’s a felony and a Federal crime to point a laser at an aircraft. Plus, it can be dangerous. Commercial laser shows require an FAA variance. There’s a form that must be submitted, etc. Conventional searchlights are OK as long as you’re not being a douchebag and hotspotting aircraft.

The Osrams max out at around 4.3 amps per Djozz’s posts. I went with a 3-amp driver from Mountain electronics b/c it was $4.60, and a 4-amp driver would have been $20.00. Likewise, the led was about $6.50. It’s not anywhere near the SBT90.2. But it doesn’t cost $130 from Mouser either. And, it’s still pretty much the king of intensity for 1mm2 dies. Enderman’s “Optafire” & “Lightcanon” are the two projects I’m emulating. My design won’t be as powerful as his. But it’ll be cheaper and that will allow me to just build more units and gang them together. I’m not looking for numbers with this project, so I don’t need a single giant emitter. And yeah, I’ve seen those videos. Every encouraging, even though I’m going with a 100mm aspheric lens (if Fasttech ever ships it).

Same plan, smaller & fewer emitters.

Oh, I can find a 90cm mirror. Phoenix Electroforms can make me a nice Rhodium-plated one. It’ll cost about $5,000 US. And if I had that kind of budget, I’s just save up a bit and get a Sperry carbon-arc and smoke all ’da fools. The reason you don’t see reflectors bigger than 90-120mm is because holding tolerances at that size is extremely difficult. Enderman used an 11” (about 275mm) Phoenix reflector and it cost him the equivalent of a week at Disneyland. There’s a guy on Ebay selling glass parabolics up to 14.25”, supposedly made by Buffalo Precision Glass. But I can’t find any projects that have ever used one. And $280 for a possibly sketch optic is too rich for me. I know the cheeze-grade 100mm Fasttech aspheric will work b/c Enderman already proved it would. And it’s only $7.63 plus shipping (and maybe 3 months of waiting).

Where would one even start to look to find such a relic? And how much is one of those anyway? Must be worth a pretty penny.

My Nitecore TM39 just came in today. Did a bit of testing around the house/neighborhood but I really need to go somewhere else to test it properly. I will say the SBT-90.2 is one impressive piece of semiconductor. This thing easily lit up an apartment complex that’s ~400m away on low (200 lumens) and absolutely obliterated it with light in turbo, to the point where to my eyes, it all just looked washed out and all I could see was white. Ppl im that building must’ve been thinking there was a chopper looking for someone, although after a while they’d probably realize they never heard it and realized something else was going on. (There’s a chopper that patrols through this area pretty often, but I’ve never seen a searchlight on it). Can’t wait to try this out by El Morro and shine it on the side of a cruise-ship and don’t worry, I won’t aim it at any harbor pilots, lol. There’s a mountain peak close to my house where I can even see the sealine, the airport, El Morro and all of that, might go by there tomorrow night and hope it’s not full of cops like always. They just loooove killing people’s buzz up there.

The buffalo glass mirrors are very good quality and the easiest way to get the effect you are looking for. The HID is cheap and doesnt need so much cooling.

Is there any thread you could point me to of a how to of someone building a really high power spotlight? I don’t care about efficiency or size, I’d just love to build something that can be seen from miles and miles away and can throw a very defined beam at the clouds miles up in the air. Preferably something that’s relatively affordable to build too, under a thousand dollars and even better if it didn’t total more than $500. I just wanna obliterate the clouds and have a “batman signaler” type of beam. I’ve always wanted one of those since I was a kid.

Go read grin’s threads.

A royal blue LED is going to be more visible in the air than white. More efficient also.

Endermann did a bunch of those. Nice reflex lights with water-cooling, you could take out the Death Star with one of those.

Well, maybe.

Please do it and take out that Death Star—that thang has been such a pain in my arse.

Same here. Always blowing up my favorite planets…

Neurotoxin:

Search on this forum and/or YouTube for Lightcanon (one ‘n’, misispelled by Enderman on purpose) and “Optafire”. Those are Enderman’s large aspheric projects. Basically, they’re what I’m trying to replicate.

As for carbon arcs, Bob's Searchlight Page

Thanks for the update. Is this your project?

FYI: I promised my professional lighting engineer relatives (who design very large lighting systems for stadiums, high bays, etc) and that I wouldn’t try short-arc HIDs. I was cautioned that miscalculating the optics, or using a sketchy reflector, could reflect light back into the lamp. And that would cause it to explode and shower a 10-ft area with 1,000-3,000 degree shrapnel traveling at Mach 6. According to them, it’s already happened more than once and has killed at least one person. LEDs may be low power compared to an Osram short-arc. But a white flat probably wont try to kill me and burn my house down if I look at it wrong.