Bright light for Chichester Harbour entrance

The light, which has been placed on ‘West Pole’ beacon at the entrance to the harbour, is the latest light to be installed as part of the Harbour Conservancy’s continuous programme to replace all filament bulb navigation lights with new LED self powered systems.Richard Craven, Deputy Harbour Master for the Chichester Harbour Conservancy said, ‘The entrance to Chichester Harbour is low lying and indistinct and is flanked on either side by sand and shingle banks that extend for more than a mile offshore. For all these reasons, the light we installed on the new outer mark to the harbour entrance, West Pole, needed to be one that we could trust and would perform in all conditions. The VLB has more than met our expectations. The range of this Vega light is also excellent. The light is set at a height of 14m above MHWS and is visible from seven miles, flashing once every five seconds.’

He added that the VLB’s reliability and robustness was unexpectedly tested in the field a few months ago when another of the Conservancy’s beacons, also fitted with a Vega VLB light, was knocked over and the light itself sat in the water for a few hours before being rescued. The harbour crew took the beacon back to the workshop for repairs and found it was actually still working despite having been under water.

The VLB-44 is part of the Vega LED marine navigation light family. The unique optical system utilises an acrylic lens to maximise the light capture from the LED’s which are precisely graded and placed to produce a light beam with minimum variation in intensity. The beacon is available in five colours, Red, Green, White, Yellow and Blue (on request). All colours meet the IALA chromaticity recommendation.

The use of high efficient optics and electronics in the Vega VLB has resulted in energy efficiency as high as 175 Candela per Watt. The low energy needs reduce the solar panel and battery requirements for a stand alone application. There are 15 programmable effective intensity settings, nine On/Off daylight settings and up to 246 standard flash characters. Once set, the VLB-44 provides automatic Schmitt Clausen correction to increase intensity for the flash Character and maintain the effective range of the light.