Here's a little something I conjured up to sort out the lighting situation. The ideal setup, in my opinion, is to have one bar-mounted "flood" light and a helmet-mounted "spot" light. Now, prudence had gotten the better of me and instead of purchasing a dedicated (and pricey) lighting system from say, Lupine or Dinotte, I decided to buy a pair of BJ's LED lights. Basically they are Cree Q5 LEDs done up in a flashlight or torch configuration. Comes with a charger and rechargeable batteries. Claimed output on high is 250 lumens. With a run time of 3 hours on a full charge.


Now for the price (P1,900 - around US$45, each), and the versatility—these can be used as flashlights as well—I don't think there's anything out there that can match these babies. Initial tests have shown these lights give out adequate output for their size. Plus, they have no wires to snag. 


The beam pattern has a nicely-defined spot, but there's enough spill to illuminate the radius. I snagged two of these for redundancy's sake, and at the same time I wanted to experiment with using them as a helmet/bar-mounted duo.

Here's the result. The light is secured to a base salvaged from a plastic container via cut-up sections of inner tube. Another section of tube then wraps around the base, keeping everything together. The base neatly and snugly plugs into one of the vents of my helmet. Initial rides have proven The Plug stable and secure.


The perfect partner to the bar-mounted version.

Coming to some night-time singletrack near you. That'd be the real test of this setup. I won't bore you with more photos of the bar-mount. It's not as sexy as my DIY jobbie. Hehe.