Category: Cabin & deck gear
That’s Eric Braitmayer, Imtra’s marketing guy, and he’s got lots to be happy about. The years of having to carefully explain the relative pros and cons of LED and halogen marine lighting are over. He’s confident that the Ventura PowerLED upper left is as bright as a similar size 20 watt halogen fixture while being fully dimable (without RFI issues), much cooler, and much, much more power efficient. In fact, Imtra is phasing out of halogen lighting altogether, and recently announced significantly increased LED sales despite the ‘downturn’. In other words, lots of boaters and boatbuilders apparently agree with Imtra that LED technology has advanced beyond the confusion area. Not that I would just go buy any old LED…
The U.K. company Scanstrut has been making all sorts of radome mounts and similar gear since 1986, and I know I’m not the only one who’s admired their smart and handsome engineering. I learned at the Miami show that they were working on a line of universal electronics pods, and today that line is not only official, but a few nice new design twists are revealed. For instance, the preview literature for the Deck Pod above — meant to mount MFDs up to 15″ on fly bridges and the like — illustrated its heavy duty silicone gasket and other features, but showed a mount that “only” swiveled. Look what they came up with for the finished product! Apparently you can just release that lever and position the pod however you’d like. I’ve long held that such flexibility can make displays much more useful in varying light conditions, and I’ve achieved that goal often with RAM mounts, but this looks like a truly elegant solution…
Dutch Panbo reader Eric Criens (thanks Eric!) reports that this good looking LED strip lighting on his Midget 26 was easily fashioned from a relatively inexpensive Ikea “Dioder” kit…
This is more than usually peripheral to “marine electronics” but these days everything electrical on boats is coming together, and, besides, I like it! Arid Bilge Systems makes what appear to be vacuum pumps that suck nearly every last drop out of areas…
Last winter, thanks to Lee Guite of East Boothbay, I tried some LED bulbs Lee used to replace the incandescent ones in the Aqua Signal nav lights aboard his Dulcinea. Lee got pretty carried away researching available replacement bulbs and the ones he finally chose were “flux” models from the LED Shop in Australia. In the photo above I was trying
Bebi Electronic’s LED lights most likely don’t employ the latest technology, like touch dimming, but there’s a lot to like about them…
Neato! Touch the red button on this new Hella Marine EuroLEDTouch dome light, and you get red light; hold your finger there for two seconds and it will cycle through four dimming levels…
Who isn’t fascinated by the Maltese Falcon, the 289’, $100,000,000 yacht that sails under a very unusual DynaRig, actually three rotating carbon fiber masts carrying fifteen automated square sails on carbon yards? I did get to see...
My April PMY column about Charles Industries, and isolation transformers specifically, is now online. Also up are some new product write-ups meant, in part, to illustrate how companies that traditionally supplied engine and boat manufacturers are now making plays for...
The first LightShip I tested had rather stiff and ineffectual suction feet and kept falling off the south window I stuck it on so that its little solar panel would charge up its Ni-Cad battery (no doubt the...
