Glow round techniques

[Puddleduck]

I'm putting this under equipment because I think it is the best fit ...

This weekend I'll be playing in my first tournament (Volksfest) and it will include my first glow round.

My regular putter is a glow wizard and I'm going to buy a glow roc and a glow teebird at the event.

My question is, what is the best way to keep these discs charged during the event? My wizards hold a dim glow for about an hour ... is the innova glow blend any better?

I'm thinking I'll keep all three discs in a bag with a couple small flashlights in it to keep them charged ... but that seems a little haphazard.

I had grand plans to construct a special translucent sleeve lit by LEDs .... but the time has gotten away from me.

Any suggestions on keeping the discs nice and bright?

[jtkustomizer]

Innova glow discs suck....they do not hold their charge very well, but a blacklight gets them charged better than any flashlight.

[Puddleduck]

Would it work to shine a battery powered black light on the disc in between holes?

(I know my game and I'm going to be looking for these discs in the shule all too often .......)

[gorillaboy]

forget glow discs....just tape little glow sticks to your discs or those little led lights you can get... works way better for glow rounds IMO...

[Puddleduck]

hmmm ... hadn't thought of that. I guess those thin, flexible glow sticks would work best. Where do you attach them? Middle of bottom of the dome?

Only worry would be if it landed light side down as my discs are all opaque, but in dark woods I guess the light bleeding out would still be visible.

[Timko]

LED fishing lights are what you want to go with. They are little sticks about an inch long, super thin, and tape to the top of your disc. Can't find them on google right now, but you can pick them up at any wal-mart.

[Jaysus]

http://gottagogottathrow.com/discgolf/n ... p-576.html

Get the red ones.

[gorillaboy]

tape to the top middle of the disc thats where I put em

[Puddleduck]

Thanks Jaysus. No time to order them ... but I've got some LEDs kicking around, I think I'll just tape one to a pancake battery and slap one on either side of my disc ... should do the trick.

Don't know why I didn't think of it sooner ... guess I just assumed glow discs were the way to go.

[Jaysus]

that works too... tape it to the bottom of the disc if you go that route though.

[Jsw]

The way shown above is the only way I've played night golf, I would be worried that a small glow stick wouldn't glow brightly enough.

Just one LED bulb is sufficient though if you want to get a little more out of your stash.

[JR]

I think there was another thread with glow golf info but the search turned up only this thread using the topic name.

I bought a 200 lumen flashlight to replace my 50 lumen one that wasn't getting glow discs bright enough and glowing long enough. It's snowy outside so throwing in the dark with white discs is a bad idea. With caveats. Arthur Haverkamp kindly dyed my Glo Z Stalker yellow on top. The trouble is that even with 200 lumen lamp or illuminating from the bottom of the disc it doesn't light up and last long enough. But it is usable in the snow in the daylight and the added overstability over Z Stalkers is good for the winter winds. MVP Eclipse tech is an interesting change for daylight visibility as long as the core is visible. The problem with them is the white outer edge, which limits visibility in the snow during daylight. And the glow ain't bright enough to color the disc visibly green in daylight.

Therefore i suggest a double threat for all round ease of finding the disc and recommend attaching a LED to a glow disc. Using a 22000 millicandela light lights up a little snow around the disc making the disc easier to see. The light also charges up a portion of the glo disc in the dark in case the LED breaks, falls off (screws to a keychain LED through the flight plate helps there). That's really only helpful in the dark but in daylight you could use regular discs. In the dark you have a slightly larger safety margin and using a bright enough light long enough on a glow disc in the dark is a good solution because the edge of the disc appears green instead of white.

I didn't clock illumination or bright illumination times of the glow of the test discs nor did i clock the amount of time i used with the lamp on any discs. I stacked up a Glow Wizard, Ion, Glo Z Buzzz the yellow topped Glo Z Stalker and a Glo Z Nuke on top of each other. I shone the light bright spot simultaneously on each and the Glo Z Nuke lit up the most and held the charge and post initial top rate real usable glo the longest. Wizard was noticeably less bright and lost the medium glow that you have after a throw and walking to the disc and putting faster. The Eclipse Ion was so close to the Wizard in brightness and the duration of the glow at easy to find intensity that without a side by side comparison i could not probably have seen a difference. Buzzz was way dimmer than the putters and the Stalker would get lost soon relying on the glow alone. I have not perused my stacks to find an undyed Glo Z Stalker yet but i imagine it is on par with the Buzzz and other older glow discs that aren't as good as the old top dog Wizard in brightness.

There is a noticeable difference between a 50 lumen and 200 lumen lamp. The 200 lumen lamp has a double wide bright spot vs the 50 lumen lamp so you charge the disc faster from that too and not only the added brightness. I haven't checked the lamp yet and wary of manufacturer claims of throwing distance but the manufacturer claims a very modest 200 meter throw for the 200 lumen lamp. It may be true but i would wonder because this lamp (NexTorch 18650) has the widest dispersion pattern and sweet spot i've experienced. As a non torchlight buff that spent a day reading up. The short version is that a 200 lumen lamp with a typically a lot narrower beam should throw a longer cone of light. And the sweet spot should be brighter. The good thing about my wide dispersion torch is that it won't blind you or hurt the eyes.

The main thing with 200 lumen torch is that not only does it charge the disc a lot faster but it also makes the disc very much brighter. And especially in the case of the Ion the 50 fell short on the requirement of the disc. With the 50 the difference between the Ion and the Wizard was very noticeable in favor of the Wiz. The Ion is a light hog. The other discs had linear increase in lighting up going from 50 to 200 lamp. Not 4x brightness but not lighting up as much more going to a better torch as the Ion did.

I just received a notice that i need to go to the customs house to get my next batch so soon i can test Eclipse Axis and Glow Teebird

Before i leave: the glowing material ain't distributed evenly in the discs and there are brighter flecks. The Nuke has about 3-5x higher concentration by eyeballing vs the Buzzz The large mass thus large density by volume of glow particle in the wing means that when one photons are emitted they have a larger chance of hitting another glo particle and charging it so the there's a better chain reaction going on in the Nuke. Cough. What this means with the brighter wing and longer glow time is that the Nuke is by far the most visible glow disc i've ever seen. It glows so much longer and so much brighter that without snow and leaves to get buried under the longer flights still probably won't stop the disc from being found. In fact i wouldn't wonder if the Nuke driven to max D would be easier to find than shorter throws with other discs. I think that the LEDs may be unnecessary with the Nuke.

Grip is an issue in the winter and wet weather so Eclipse may be a problematic solution for slick fingered people. Unless you pull power or use grip enhancers. So far the best i've found is bees wax but i haven't tried the stuff Mr. Ellis prefers. Bees wax is better than nothing but not enough especially in winter temps.

You may hurt your eyes or even temporarily blind and possibly damage your eyesight with a tight beam 200 lumen lamp from close range. The wide beam one i have leaves some night vision left. But i still would wear glasses to protect from walking eyes open into branches. A too common problem among night golfers. I think that as a guess 400-500 lumens is still usable as long as you point away from people and keep the disc and the torch inside your bag as you're charging the disc. 200 ain't flashlight bright but can cause immediate pain in the eye (had to try). But in practice i didn't have any eye trouble charging the disc even though at times a part of the light shone straight at my eye. As long as the discs were absorbing much of the light i had no trouble. The higher you go in lumens and the tighter the pattern is the more likely it is that you are gonna experience all manner of problems.

200 lumens wise beam is perfectly good at home as long as it has a low setting too. Shining 200 full tilt into metal objects at short ranges reflects painfully. I fear the effects of mishaps with 1300-1600 lumen LEDs and 3500 lumen HIDs. Somehow i think they aren't usable in a golf environment considering 1200 lumens in a fairly narrow beam is way brighter than long headlights of cars. You wouldn't want to stare at those at close ranges would you? So take care and don't go overboard with light intensity. I wouldn't recommend capping oneself to 200 lumens though. Most if not all high power torches won't work their brightest with AA batteries. 18650 is a beefy battery and i have no clue as to how much cobalt there is and if cobalt in itself is radioactive (think it is, because i think i read somewhere that cobalt 60 the result of a nuclear bomb of some type has over a 5 year half life). Dunno which kind of cobalt there is in the batteries and how radioactive it is though.

Some torches get hot at high power soon. About 5 mins with my torch at high warmed up the torch but probably not to dangerous levels for the LED emitter. I would get a waterproof torch with batteries and charger that protect against overcharging and overdischarging. Some places are reported to sell knock offs and factory rejects. So read up customer testimonials for broken leads, other construction issues, tightness of battery space for each battery type etc. There are surprising defects out there for places that sell torches cheap. I have no personal experience and have heard mostly great things about dealextreme.com but reading their customer testimonials i don't wonder why a Finnish engineer warned that in extreme cases the chance of the torch turning into a pipe bomb unexpectedly exploding in the hand of the user is a chance with black or grey market stuff from China. And basically most of the torch industry manufacturers have their units built in China so some of the stuff is high end and the lemons are more like acid in lethality. Often times the plants in China do extra shifts producing the same stuff to sell on their own and with luck the stuff may be of similar quality to non pirated ones. In bad cases well look up the Dealextreme customer testimonials for many models for wild fantasies. Like 4x225 lumen torch is marketed as a 900 lumen lamp and according to users it's closer to 350 Review sites also had interesting stories about wild claims.

I have no idea about Dealextreme but when they sell some torches for about 10x less than some competitors it is worth thinking of. Despite having seen a perfectly fine functioning torch bought from them IRL.

[turso]

Wow now that's a wall of text!

I advocate the leds as well. Glow discs are pretty weak in their glow no matter the manufacturer, but if you insist on going with them, rig some blacklight leds in your bag.

[Varsi]

Added bonus with LEDs during winter is that you'll usually still see where the disc is even if it's buried 40cm in snow.

[JR]

I'm not even sure if you need to go IR or UV. Visible light is good for lighting up the snow around the disc and that's great even for daylight rounds. Especially if it is not a white LED. So far i've not tested 22000 millicandela LEDs but a single 15000 mCd LED lit up only a few centimeter diameter mounted under the disc in the snow. Come to think of it i can't recall the specs of that LED but a single CR2032 may have driven it undervoltaged. My 22000 mCd keychain light uses two CR2032s and is way brighter but i've yet to bury one in the snow. We just got pummeled by snow so now there's something to sink the disc to. Too bad customs has jammed themselves up to their arse head first with removing customs service site from the center of Helsinki. Now its at Vantaa airport grr. Way to screw up 10 % of the population of the country. So it's a few hours before i can get my new stuff to try instead of getting it yesterday and getting the stuff is gonna cost me one discs worth in transportation cost alone That sure takes time, money and interest from ordering overseas