Floodlight tree not working with LED bulbs

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Floodlight tree not working with LED bulbs

Postby MarkCassel » Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:09 am

Our club bought a used 2600B drag system with a 110v drag tree with floodlights. We updated the tree with LED bulbs and they work fine just not as bright as the 100 watt floodlights. Recently, we changed out the 3 watt LED bulbs with 12 watt LED bulbs. Now the tree is a lot brighter but when running a PRO starting tree, the three yellows should come on at the same time but don't. Watching the tree closely, you can see each yellow lights up just a little out of sequence. Instead of lighting all three yellows at exactly the same time, the left side lights up the bottom yellow first then the middle yellow lights up just ever so slightly later, then the same kind of delay later the top yellow lights. The right side light up each yellow closer to the same time but still you can detect a small delay.

I know this is an old tree so wondering if the tree is aging or what? Any insight or comment would be appreciated.
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Re: Floodlight tree not working with LED bulbs

Postby raceamerica » Thu Aug 09, 2018 10:29 am

The older 110VAC drag trees with 100 watt floodlights were never designed for an LED bulb (LED floodlights did not exist back then). Usually any 110VAC based bulb will work for home use. My guess is the LED bulbs you changed to may have been designed without a spec for turn-on-time. LEDs tend to light up immediately in a low voltage DC powered environment as is the case in the RaceAmerica LED trees where LEDs are mounted on circuit boards inside the tree and powered by 15VDC supplies. In a 110VAC environment, the power must be reduced to LED tolerant voltage levels and rectified to a DC power source in order to power LEDs safely. Companies making LED bulbs add in a lot of filtering to prevent the fast reacting LED from flickering. This filtering slows the turn-on time down a little. This filtering is not designed with a turn-on response time spec. Since three bulbs must have identical turn-on-time response (or al least close enough for the human eye to not see it), you may be experiencing the variation in bulbs. This will be more prominent in higher output wattage LED bulbs and in less expensive LED floodlights which will have wider variances between bulbs due to less precise, and less cost, circuitry.

You can look for an LED floodlight with a better bulb-to-bulb turn-on-time response and bright enough for your use or convert over to a RaceAmerica LED tree. Since the electronics in your tree is no longer available, a new tree may be a better investment overall.
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Re: Floodlight tree not working with LED bulbs

Postby MarkCassel » Thu Aug 09, 2018 10:43 am

Now that I think about it, we did not have any problems with the first LED bulbs but they were lower wattage. We changed to the current LED bulbs since they would be brighter. The higher wattage bulbs we used now were pretty cheap. I guess we got what we paid for ... trying to put LED floodlight made for the home into our race events sounded like an easy solution. I do like the way the RaceAmerica LED tree is a new approach to using LEDs designed for the racing world. Something to review at the cub meeting next week. Thank you for the insight.
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