Lights to help aim

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by jijiglobe

Fair warning, our team used a flashlight to aim our shot with incredible success throughout all of our qualifications matches, however, in Eliminations, our opponents said that our flashlight was distracting/blinding them during the match. We were forced to unplug the flashlight, significantly dropping our accuracy. Be careful about relying on a flashlight to aim, I highly recommend you have some sort of fallback solution.

We have the same head referee at Tech Valley that we did at Pittsburgh, so if he suddenly disallowed our flashlight at Tech Valley because of some team's bogus claims, that would be a fun discussion indeed.

Did you leave your light on all the time or turn it on only when the shooter was on? Is your flashlight very large/bright?

We used China's finest Cree LED $6 specials from amazon.com. Cheap, light, bright, effective. And not overpoweringly so. I remember seeing the light sweep through the opposing driver stations at Pittsburgh on the way to aiming, but the hardy Ohio and Western PA types must have less sensitive eyes than those in New York City, cuz no complaints were lodged.

I remember 25's ridiculously large and bright lightzooka from 2012 being on all the time. I was standing behind the driver's glass watching matches at CMP and I remember the thing practically blinding me. I'm fairly sure it could induce migraines in people. I don't believe anyone asked for that to be turned off.

If you are pointing the light at the opposing drivers for an extended period in an attempt to intentionally distract them, that's one thing. If you are merely using the light for its intended purpose of aiming and shooting, that should be TOTALLY acceptable by ANY head referee. Running the light off a relay will certainly help matters.

If this becomes a thing, you can rest assured I will wage war against all those annoyingly bright green LED rings that are on 24/7/365 during a match. Those are CLEARLY meant to distract and annoy, right? They don't serve any other useful purpose in a match, do they? [/sarcasm]

#teamflashlight #allyourvisionledbelongtous