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wilma / arc (Flyer!!)

5K views 57 replies 13 participants last post by  crisillo 
#1 ·
just looking at the arc pics posted on here today, its impressive!

in the UK the Li-ion ultra Arc retails at about £359 and the wilma i can get for similar price...

I think i need min of 3-4 hours burn time as i cant keep switching the arc on and off thats why i'm comparing the wilma and arc ultra li-ion.

Anyway getting to the point.... i know you have w ilma, betty and had an arc. Apart from the betty do you still think the arc is the best light for spread / penetration (like general use...i will have a 240 lumen helmet spot as well) ?

Haha dont know what to do at this price :confused:
 
#28 · (Edited)
Alex- it gets hot (as hot as the Wilma it seems) but there is no loss in output. I was burning both on full for all but 5 minutes. The heatsink works well and transfers the heat out of the LEDs, into the body, and out into the air.

The Betty is maybe 40% bigger than the Wilma. The Wilma weighs around 125 while I believe the Betty weighs around 175. The heat is no issue as long as you are moving andit's constantly being cooled. Losing 10% of the betty's light woudl not be visible anyway:)

I feel like someone hit me on the left side a few times with a baseball bat- I have to be more careful. I got caught up trying to follow a faster rider and didn't look at the rocks as carefully as I should have. I'm not a very good rockgarden negotiator to begin with and will put my Gravity Dropper back on :p

I also like how high up the Betty illuminates the trail. That was very cool. So if there is a big cat waiting up on a tree, you can blind it, make it fall, pounce and gut it! That's what the Betty can do for you.

You can customize the settings to also make it burn at 75% at the touch of a button, thus basically doubling the LED life and it may be hard to tell if there is much perceived light loss. I'll try that next time but I love full power for now.
 
#35 ·
When I was riding, I touched both lights several times. Obviously, cooling airflow was present and neither light was too hot to touch or adjust. They were warm but I adjusted both a dozen times during the ride- always at full power for over two hours and once in a while with no gloves on. Like I mentioned ealier, there was no no drop in light levels.

I let the lights run indoors (70 degrees) at full power for a little over five minutes. It's a silly test but the Betty got slightly hotter. I could still handle them though they were a lot warmer than when I was riding last night. I could touch the body and the end caps areas.

Outdoors, it's a non-issue but it is getting colder here at night. I have no way to test the heat management at higher temps unless I run them indoors with a fan pointed at them.

But it comes down to an important point raised- will the lights get too hot outdoors and drop the light level. I don't think so. I have run the Wilma in 70 plus degree weather and stayed stationary for 10 minutes (trying to figure out what animal belonged to a few sets of glowing eyes) and the light level did not drop.

I am confident that the Betty will not drop light levels either in an outdoor situation. Indoors, they may if left at full brightness and stationary with no airflow. Lupine has designed a more effective cooling system for the Betty specifically because it runs three more LEDs and produces around 600 more Lumens. There should be no light-level drop unless you somehow get a defective unit. I was handling these with bare fingers last night. I also stayed stationary for a while after the crash and when I was waiting for my lightless friend to show up- no loss in light level.
 
#36 ·
Oh, Titanium also dissipates heat really fast but cools off fast. You can't touch an Aluminum motorcycle exhaust for a long time after the bike has been shut off. However, switch to a Titanium exhaust and you can touch it soon after without getting burned and it stays cooler during the ride. I'm not sure if that is why Lupine put a Titanium endcap on the Betty but I dig it. It also looks pretty nice.

Now I need to do some other non-light related stuff so I hope this helps.
 
#37 ·
Flyer,

A few questions (I know this is still somewhat preliminary)

Have you decided if you're going to run the lights with the standard 2-step lighting or reprogram it for 3-step? I'm thinking the 3 step will be more useful

Did you run Betty solo or with Wilma. And if with Wilma, how much did Wilma add?

My plan is to initially run Betty as a solo helmet mounted unit but I haven't ruled out moving it to the bars and adding a wilma on the helmet for peeking around corners.
 
#38 ·
I'll re-program it to the 3-step. It may work better for me.

I ran the Betty solo (on the bar) and then added the Wilma. The Wilma adds a lot only because the Betty was stationary on the bar and the Wilma could be pointed around. If the Betty was on the helmet, using a second light would be less important for me.

On these steep trails, a bar-only light freaks me out. I tried it but when going around a 10 ft boulder or a big tree that blocks most of a turn, I need to look around as soon as I get there- before the handlebar can be turned. I could never just run a bar light unless it is a pretty open trail like Green Mountain. Lair O The Bear has too many twists and turns in some steep sections.

Running the Betty as a helmet light only would be what I would do. Then if you add the Wilma, it's even more fun because you get a few more shadows and a wide swath of light on the bar- plus you have a backup light just in case one goes down. The Wilma is so light too.
 
#44 ·
Hahaha this is funny... Testosterone-induced fight for Betty´s love...er, lumens, now? Or are you guys just trying to top out each other in lumen count? :p A Betty + Betty must be a killer... But Squeaky, make sure to check with local authorities if that´s legal heh? :p

Now serious... Flyer, thanks for the pics, very illustrative. Betty is noticeably bigger than Wilma indeed. But that doesn´t bother me the least, nor does the weight - I´ll sure run it on the bars, with the Wilma on the helmet. I loved the Wilma on the helmet anyway. Besides, it´s not what I would call a bulky light. I´m not really concerned with the temp issue either... I just found the Wilma to be a bit warmer than I´m used to, but I agree it´s no big deal. Indeed the cooling fins on the back of the headlamp get hot, meaning it´s effectively drawing the heat away from the LEDs. I didn´t notice any output reduction either, I was just wondering about the matter. Thanks for the info ;)

I too changed the original 2-step setting to 2-step. Even at 1W there´s enough light to see nearly the bike, useful on a slow (not too technical) climb or when you don´t want to blind any oncoming driver, hiker or biker. The mid-step on this setting (9W or 60%) is plenty for even mildly fast riding on flat and open, wider trails, or some DH as long as not too technical or super fast. It saves a lot runtime too, and also the LEDs. And the 100% is... well, it´s light enough for just about anything.

I´m taking my lights to a 12 hour race happening here this next weekend. I´m one of the organizers (that is, I´m not racing this time, unfortunatelly) but every year I do a few laps on the circuit to see the riders out there and to check things out. Guess I´ll be able to finally take some pics of them to post here.

P.S.: Flyer, do you live in Denver? I spent some time living there back in ´94, awesome place! I miss CO and its mountains big time hehehe... ;)
 
#45 ·
Yes Alex, I live in Denver. I love it here. Squeaky lives an hour or so away in Loveland.

The Lumen race is on. If Squeaky gets another Betty from Larry, I'll mount two on my bar:D


The Lupine cooling fins are very deep so it creates a lot of surface area for cooling. By the way, the Betty is around the same weight as the ARC- maybe 10-15 grams more so it would still work as a helmet light quite well.

Have fun at the race and drop me a line if you ever head this way to ride or visit.
 
#48 ·
I want a hundred for my Christmas tree.

NRRider, call Larry at mtnhighcyclery and tell him Flyer and Squeaky sent you. It ain't cheap but nothing else is like it. It took me a while to come to terms with the cash outlay for the Wilma and Betty but I'd do it again. The riding experience at night will make you smile the first time you ride with it. We were all in awe last night and we have all used some nice lights.
 
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