So I have been busy in the lab with the crying & the screaming that the pro circus brings to town… you know it gets pretty crowded with all the visitors in town here. on of my team riders (Alex Swadling) Dad gave me an idea. so after a few gyro gearloose moments i can anounce the Nightrider…
Tuning???
Awesome dave, are they lights??
Cool!!
Does that board come with the tag “batteries not included”?
Thats pretty sweet!
If there’s battery power in that board for the lights… makes me think of the possibility for a small propulsion unit to provide boost to help catch a wave.
The next step…
It’ll happen. Just how soon?
Dave, thats brilliant, great graphic to start with and then the lights. That good enough to be in an ad somewhere.
You could always go night fishing on that board and between sets see what really really big toothy fish you can lure to the surface…
**(^^^..^^^)**
da dum... da dum..., da da daaa.....You will never beat the night rider! (mad max)
Last year in g-land a guy was using a helmet with high powered leds on the sides to night surf.
We called him the nightrider.
Was good to watch from jungle camp a long way away and you see this wave light up the wall and travel for a few hundred metres…Then go over the falls.
I really dislike crowds and that there is a crowd beater if ever I’ve heard of one.
** Howzit Dave, I love it and the name definitly fits. Only a true Swalockian could come up with that and you realy out done yourself with this one. If this isn’t thinking out side the box I don’t know what is plus you ha to figure out the logistics to mae it work. Has to be those 12 volt xmas lights . The only other thing I can think is you have way to much time on your hands or are bored as heck.Good one.Aloha,Kokua**
3 x 1.2v rechargables each side… 6 hours of surfing… mercury switches to isolate charging circuit when surfing and switch off the board when its deck down… two exposed screws on the bottom laps to tape the charger wires to… get this i kept the weight of the board down to 2.8kg with 4 oz bottom 6 ox deck tailpatch and std weight blank… i since added a reflective pinline to highlight the shape when photographing at night. have quik making a reflective neon boardie for the photo shoot next week. we wanted to shoot about 3 weeks ago when the quik was on but thing were a little hectic with the circus…
sounds like you have the whole shebang under control. Once again that is awesome.
Im assuming that it is intended for a dusk/night shoot… whithout a flash? I imagine that with a flash in the water the lights within the board would be overpowered. Please post pics of the board in action, or a link to the publication with pics, whenever that happens. I am extremely interested in seeing it in action. Props to you feraldave, you have taken it to another level.
Absolutely awesome board Dave. Guess when you surf it at night, people will think the aliens crashlanded in the ocean
Howzit S.Sense, T was goingto say basically the same thing, next thing you know someboy takes a vido of it at night and then it shows up on oe of the UO shows about the UFO’s that are in the ocean. This has to go down in swaylocks history as a first . Now Dave needs to patent the process before some gold digger does . We saw it here on Saylocks.Aloha,Kokua
Does it talk like the real night rider??
Imagine what it would say??
hahah. awesome
Does it talk like the real night rider??
Imagine what it would say??
hahah. awesome
[img_assist|nid=1041426|title=knight rider|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=946|height=567]
Like so many things in surfing, it’s already been done. Case in point: one such board (twin electric motors driving ducted propellors) was displayed at the ASR show in San Diego a couple of years ago. As I recall, the system would propel the board and rider at about 5 mph and the battery had sufficient storage capacity to assist in something like 20 take-offs.
In 1989, Tom Carroll, a surfer/diver in Del Mar, decided to build himself a waterproof lighting system that would allow him to surf and dive at night. Thus was born “Nite Rider” lighting systems–presently a major player in the manufacture of diver lighting systems and lighting systems for bicycles.
I purchased one of their systems in 1990 to see how well it would work for night surfing. The primary problem I experienced was that unless the air is pretty dry (not the typical case at my home break), there is a moist layer of very tiny water particles (i.e. wavelength of the light comparable to particle diameter) that lies adjacent to the sea surface. A consequence of this situation is that once you get within this layer (typ. thickness of 3-5m), and the light(s) is(are) on, it is like driving in fog with your car lights on.
I experimented a bit with the system to see if displacing the lights laterally as far away from my eyes as possible (e.g. limited by ergonomic constraints) would reduce this problem as the intensity of light backscattered from small particles diminishes rapidly as the angle between the initial beam and the reflected beam separate away from a direct 180 degree reversal. The picture below shows one such experiment. In this experiment, the light pod (containing a switch that allows the rider to select between a wide-angle lamp and a spot lamp), which is normally is mounted in front of the two empty holes in the helmet immediately above the “NiteRider” print, has been moved to well above the top of the helmet. In addition, the light pod mounting means was also changed so that it could also be easily tilted by the rider while underway so as to accomodate changes in the rider’s viewing angle (depending on whether the rider was standing, paddling prone, bent forward etc.) But unfortunately a satisfactory solution to the backscattering problem was never found.
nice way to attract fish… and sharks,eh?
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/fish/light-attract-sharks1.htm
Its a beauty but be careful where you ride that thing. We’d hate to hear you ended up as dinner !