LED running lights

[woodster]

Those are white LEDs in your bow nav lights?

the red or port light has a red led in it and the green starboard has a green led in it.... all the white lights have white leds and the deck light has a down light replacement led.... if you look along the ground you can see how well the deck lights up things and not over bearing.... the deck light is a aqua signal and all the other are perko ...the little chrome ones that came with the boat

 

[justsomeguy]

the red or port light has a red led in it and the green starboard has a green led in it.... all the white lights have white leds and the deck light has a down light replacement led.... if you look along the ground you can see how well the deck lights up things and not over bearing.... the deck light is a aqua signal and all the other are perko ...the little chrome ones that came with the boat

That's the way I've heard is best, red for red, green for green. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Brian S]

I'm just speaking out of my nether regions here, so whateves…

If you buy a USCG LED fixture, I expect you will find red LEDs for the red, and green for green. The two biggest manufacturers to have gone to the trouble are Aquasignal and Hella.

However, if you are retro-fitting an existing incandescent bicolor light, it is best to use a warm white LED. The lens of the bi-color fixture is what provides the color, and it is formulated to give proper red and green using an incandescent bulb. If you put a cooler white LED in there, there will be too much blue, and the colors will not look right coming through the lens. I have seen small boats on our lake, that I can't tell what color it is. The green will certainly look almost blue. I suspect that flashlight style removable lights that used to have incandescent lights when I was a kid, have just had LEDs dropped in for the first generation or so, and thus do not match the lens color with the LED color. Remember when all white LEDs were blue-ish?

I replaced my incandescents with warm white LEDs, and they look exactly the correct color, and just like the original incandescent bulbs. I also sail on a small lake with 20hp max motor size, so I'm not as worried about liability issues.

Why did I go to the trouble of replacing the nav lights? Well, now I know I can get plenty of burn time out of a small U1 tractor battery, which is far easier to lift out and take home for charging than a group 27. (And then I went and bought a solar panel anyway, so I only take it home at the end of the season )