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Bright lights
Sunday 20th October 2013
Things have been fairly quiet recently so far as weddings are concerned so I am winding down and getting ready to put the cars away for their winter break. The New Zealand car has one more wedding so I took it out the other day to give it a little run and to fill up with petrol. It sprinted happily around Redbourn Common and is in fine fettle. At one point, it was racing a green woodpecker which was zooming around the lime trees. Sadly we couldn't keep up and the bird disappeared, off into the distance in a flash of yellow and green.
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I had been asked to test some prototype LED headlight bulbs by a chap who is developing them. The results have been quite astounding! The original filament bulbs emit a dull yellow glimmer and soak up the current from the battery like a dry sponge in a bucket of water. The LED bulbs radiate a brilliant white light that is akin to a searchlight at a top-security prison. There is no focused beam, just an all-encompassing mass of white illumination that turns night into day; the sort of radiance that flooded from the alien spaceship in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". This was like nothing I have ever seen before on a vintage car and, the best part is that it takes up only a tiny fraction of current needed by conventional bulbs. Sadly, I have to return the prototypes but I shall be first in the queue to buy some when they finally hit the market.