Our products find application in all areas of all types of naval platform.
A few example scenarios illustrate the range of our activities:
Warship Boat Bay Lighting
A UK Royal Navy amphibious warship was using fluorescent tubes with green NVG filters to illuminate its boat bays. An excess of uncontrolled green light was creating misleading signals to nearby ships.
We designed a new range of dual mode lights to provide white light in a well defined narrow beam to illuminate only the deck and boats, so there was no illumination of the side walls and no overspill of light over the side of the ship. The lights were switchable between a bright white mode and a low level white NVG mode.
The design has gone on to be one of our most successful products, with a range of output options finding application in a variety of situations.
Frigate Hangar and Machinery Space Lighting
UK Royal Navy frigates were using legacy sodium lights (SONs) to provide hangar illumination. The lights were subject to frequent failure and were not NVG compliant.
We designed a low profile LED floodlight to fit the exact footprint of the old light, filtered for NVG compliance, providing white light fully dimmable from a bright normal level right down to a level acceptable to NVGs.
We modelled the illumination using photometric files for the light generated with our in-house goniophotometer. This enabled the light distribution in each area to be fully optimised for lux level and uniformity.
The same sodium lights were also used in all the ships’ machinery spaces so we supplied non-NVG variants of the LED lights to replace those. The low profile format was ideally suited to the low headroom in those areas. Again each area was carefully modelled before finalising the arrangement.
Davit Lights
An overseas customer wanted a set of lights to mount to a boat davit to illuminate the boat during deployment and recovery, and also the surrounding sea surface.
We modelled the illumination options and supplied our high output floodlight with a modified bracket to accommodate the special mounting requirements. The light had to be NVG compliant so we filtered the white light output with a suitable filter. The end user then decided they wanted the option of a red NVG output (always a challenge) so we added a folding red filter assembly to permit manual switch over to red output.
Complex Navigation Light System
An overseas customer needed a complete navigation light system for a major warship programme. They required an unusual mix of different light types, with NVG compliance, full dimming, and control from three different locations on the ship, making it a complex system.
We were able to provide all required lights and three separate control panels with manual transfer of control between them. We also included a Safe Return to Port (SRTP) add on to permit continued operation of critical navigation lights in the event of damage to the main system.
Visually Secure Flight Deck Lighting
Major UK Royal Navy warships were using a very old design of flight deck floodlight, not NVG compliant, subject to frequent failure, and suffering problems with water ingress and obsolescence. The lights operated with three different beam angles to provide uniform coverage of the whole flight deck.
We designed a new set of LED based floodlights to exceed the outputs and match the beam angles, with mounting brackets to permit direct one for one replacement of the old lights. We modelled the illumination pattern in great detail to optimise the mounting angles. When fitted they provided greater illumination uniformity, higher lux levels and no deck edge overspill. Filters and full dimming permitted NVG compliance. The shrouds ensured no direct visibility to approaching aviators, and a novel addition was to fit polarising filters in the lights to block reflections off a wet flight deck, previously a major problem with the old lights.
We also designed a new control system to interface with the existing Flyco control panels, permitting more reliable switching and dimming of the new LED lights.
