Mark wrote:

No flame, Ed, but LED's are a helluva lot more reliable and long-lived
than incandescent bulbs. That said, one might well question if they
are bright enough.

There's a few outfits that are selling LED anchor lights now google
for "LED anchor light". They're an array of white LEDs.
Unfortunately, cost is $100 and above.

The only reason they are so dear is 'cause the rich folks have
not stopped buying them, yet. Once the 500 dollar marketplace is
saturated, all us po' foke will see them come down in price.
Leds used to cost dollars. Now, they cost pennies. How long
before incandescents become obsolete, and tungsten prices fall to
the point where mines close? How long before the 'gotta get a new
tech toy crowd' realises what is being done to them?

My wife bought me an Led pocket light by Coughlin at wall mart
for 6 bucks that uses 3 aaa cells to produce a strong bluish
white light that seems not to use battery power much at all.
After 20 hours or so of use, it is just as bright as ever it was.
I used it to illuminate the beach camp site in my back yard for 6
hours, I just clipped it on a protruberance of bark and shined it
on the tree leaves overhead to give enough glimmer so we could
find the beer on what must have been the darkest night ever. I
suppose that at some point it will just quit, requiring me to
change those tiny cells in the dark. A timex with glow dial would
give enough light to do that. Our new 'green' electroflourescent
night lights, 2 for a buck, use 2 cents of power a year.
Flourescent lamps replace high useage lamps at home, saving
enough power to pay for themselves in a year. 3 carbon zinc aaa's
cost 49 cents at the dollar store and last for weeks in my pocket
light. I will probably seldom buy tungsten again. I wonder if the
UV output of white leds will further damage my vision?

Soon, 3 aaa pencil lights with 1 white led will superscede all
those tungsten torches you now see hyped up in the stores on
special sale and unannounced end of the road clear outs. Don't
be tempted. Those 5 dollar solar yard lights should give you a
clue. Regulators live in the past, thanks to governmental and
large industry inertia. Will we see led replacements for tungsten
flashlight bulbs? Probably. If you used such a replacement,
expect the 'd' cells in your old style 'torch' to go stale before
you ever use them up. Flashlight batteries will soon get much
cheaper, thanks to white led lamps, at least until domestic dry
cell plants close.

Never give up your right to tell the government what regulations
you want to impose on industry. You own the government. Don't
let them convince you that government owns you. It definitely
does not. Just respectfully ask the judge to show you his
ownership papers for your body before you accept his authority
over you. They cannot afford to keep everybody in jail for long.

If you want to **** off the coasties, do as I do: get a boat you
can anchor in 3 feet of water, and use a low powered bluish
anchor light. When they try to come alongside in their lust to
cite you, they will go aground if they forget to check their
charts. We can hope for a 10% success rate. You are under no
obligation to help refloat them, unless lives are at risk. You
may anchor anywhere out of the channel. You own the water, not
some government tyrant, not some landlubber. Your nieghbours may
sue you if you hurt their environment.

Anchor lights should be blue, if you ask me, and should warn
passers by that a vessel in shallow water may suffer grounding
damage if wakes are not controlled, causing damage due to
negligence that is the responsibility of the wake maker, in a way
similar to the way we assign responsibility to those who
indiscriminantly throw rocks. I would rather see a 6 inch wake
from a bass runner at full speed than ride out his 3 foot wake
made at hull speed plus 1 knot. Not everyone thinks as I do, yet.
It's no big surprise.

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