Ditch lights

Anyone have recommendations for a good ditch light? I need to look down crop rows. Now the days are longer it’s no big deal but I’d like something by winter.

I was not impressed by the VLED puddles I bought. I had to re wire both of the harnesses. That is not acceptable when I could have gotten something for 1/4 the price of elsewhere.

 

You doing to use as ditch lights or forward?

Ditch you can use flood or diffused.

Forward facing go with spot.

 

Send a message to @memario1214 and ask.
This (my) is the best advice you will ever receive.

 

I have caliraised and have had no issues

 

Diode dynamics has fantastic ditch lights. @memario1214 has a sale on them coming up.

 

Side facing. I farm and need to look down crop rows to the sides occasionally after dark. The roads are only ~25’ wide sometimes so it’s hard to turn the truck to use headlights.

 

I’m prob rolling <10MPH when I’m using the lights.

I’m trying to look down rows low this…

on about ~4500 acres.

I’d only use them sporadically but in the fall I did wish I had some.

 

Personally I think a diffused would work well.

Rigid Diffused Pro would be way overkill but they put out some serious light (have personally run them).

 

I’m running these and have been satisfied.

 

I’m a fan of Baja Designs for this. In my experience Caliraised isn’t light enough. I do love their amber “ditch” lights as chase (dust) lights… just the right color to be visible through heavy dust, whereas BD are too yellow. But as you are looking for light output to see a fair distance, of these 2, I would go BD > Caliraised.

 

Generally I’m looking for deer

and also, to see if the row has fallen over or is leaning. Big things. The rows are 1000’ long. Im not looking to see more than 50 ft.

 

I installed Baja Designs Squadron Pro for ditch lights on my rig a few hours ago and just got back from my night drive through the country. Outstanding light output. With those and the Tundra LED brights you could almost forget you’re driving at night.

 

Curious: if the rows are 1,000’ long, why even check the 50’ nearest the road if you don’t mind about the rest-?

Edit: hunting from your truck?

 

I use sdhq brackets because they are low profile and stick out enough so my lights don't shine off the hook and fender, and they are the only ones I've seen with a vibration dampening rubber support.

I use the baja designs squadron sport with wide cornering lights at 45 degrees. Get the clear lense, they have amber covers for cheap that I keep in the truck.

It's an amazing setup and I can't imagine anything better.

 

Here is a small video of my drive…

https://youtu.be/TSSnk0e3JkM


Edit: these are the driving/combo lens.

 

Wow? Thanks!

Where do I find your website?

I can’t remember the light temp I have on my LEDs now so I’ll need to look that up. I’m guessing 5000.

6000 looks more blue, correct?

I mean, it doesn’t really matter as I’m working but also why not look good doing it

 

That’s an incredible difference. I didn’t think I needed that but now I think I need that!

 

I can see the sway from the road when a trellis is needing support at 50-100’ and I drive both sides anyway. When a row of trees falls over it’s pretty obvious (and expensive, tens of thousands of dollars. There’s not much you can do about a fallen trellis once the row is down. I’m mostly interested in watching for sway when the crop load is heavy. We will try to get in at daylight and put in more poles, our lighten the crop if we can to take weight off the system. The wind blows in the evening and mid-October is pretty risky. For example, if something looks like it’s seating I might send some crews in to reinforce it I might just harvest it to get the weight off, then reinforce. When you have everything tied together in giant hedges with wire, if one section fails, it can take down a lot of trees.

Unfortunately we can’t hunt on commercial farming property unless we have tags. It’s one of those situations where it’s not very sporty anyway. The deer take refuge in the trees so you’d be wrapped up by 7AM on the first day. We’re looking at some special control tags this year because of the amount of deer right now which would let us get the doe out too.

There are a few bucks that are enormous - 12, maybe 14 point. At least two different huge bucks. Mostly it’s just groups of doe and babies, 10-12, maybe as many as 20-ish at a time.

 

It was a beautiful morning last week when I took this. This property is ~1400 acres over 7 miles end to end.

 

I love that you gave a detailed answer; I can almost picture it! I’d appreciate a pic in the daytime of any section, from outside the outside-most stand of trees, if it’s ever easy to post one, because now I’m picturing espaliered trees, but I’ve never seen this for a large growing application.

Thank you!

I love, about this forum, that I regularly learn about all sorts, not just truck stuff.

 

You should write novels, I mean, just reading that gives me images in my head of what that "looks" like.....
I know maybe no visitors, but man, that's one hell of a place that I would love to see

 

Boy our farm manager wishes it could be a clean espaliered system but we just can’t afford it. And if we could, we probably couldn’t find the laborers to do it.

Despite the rising cost of production the produce isn’t bringing in more revenue. And where prices are going up, the retailers are taking that margin.

There’s no foliage right now but here’s some from last year. There are ~2200 acres like this of apples.

These are 4th leaf (2 yrs in the ground so -3 from full wall coverage, so baby baby trees).


And these are a little older:

 

Thank you for this! Today, this is my favorite thread on this forum. Great intro thread, even if you didn’t mean it that way; I think others are digging it too!

 

Now I want an apple, or ten, or a hundred.....lol