As you may have gathered I've been cycling to and from work since I
> started there. Now the nights have drawn in I'm finding my current
> lighting setup inadequate. I know there are at least a couple of MTB
> guys in here and the newsgroup for cycling is full of car hating > fascists.
Some of who also post here :-)
You'll get a good answer from uk.rec.cycling and you may notice that it's not the car hating facists who are the problem (mostly it's one utterly demented loon who posts under lots of names including some other regulars).
Before anyone suggests it, I don't want to go OTT and get one of those
> floodlight jobbies with a big battery that goes in your bottle holder! >
> My commute only covers about 400 yards of actual road. The rest of it
> is along a disused railway line that's become part of the national
> cycle network. It is entirely unlit so pitch black on the way home. >
> I've currently got a boggo Cateye, probably krypton bulb, takes 2 C > sized batteries.
That'll be shit. They were shit 10 years ago, and things have moved on a lot since then :-)
I've seen a couple of other guys on the route with twin, very small
> units that are incredibly bright, blueish light a bit like HIDs on a
> car. I assume they're LED from the size of them. I tried asking one
> bloke (who was very lacking in social skills as it turned out, or
> thought I was going to mug him) and he said "they're just
> aliens" or something along those lines. I've googled for that but > turned up nothing.
>
> I want those things, or something as good. They really light up the
> path in front and spread the light everywhere so you can really see
> where you're going.
Quite possibly they're the ones with the big battery you don't want. Or expensive.
Budget, up to roughly a tank of petrol (so 50 quid-ish).
You want an LED of some kind. Best IMO (not the brightest, but most reliable) is a hub dynamo driving one of the newer generation of LEDs - eg B+M IQ fly, IQ Cyo, etc, but that blows your budget.
B+M IQ Ixon is the battery version of what I use (IQ fly), which is good enough for reasonably brisk narrow country lane riding (ie dark).
I actually asked a very similar question to yours recently -
formatting link
(ignore the subthread about whether or not to use flashing).
I think you might be best off with one of the import torches mentioned in the last couple of posts if your 50 quid is a hard limit.
Also remember lighting for MTBs is a rather different game to what you need - smooth track, no overhead branches to avoid needs rather less light, and in different places.
cheers, clive