Yup that's exactly how I figured it worked.
No offense to whomever came up with this idea, but frankly..... its lame and gimmicky.
Think about it, a driver ahead of the emergency vehicle is only going to be in one of the x/y areas covered by that focused head, thus its only going to be as effective as that one head. As I said above, it will certainly look cool to the occupants of the emergency vehicle (which is why
FS has the display set up the way they do) but I do not see it being any more effective as any other flashing LED.
***RANT ON***
Frankly I do not understand why moving light-heads are not brought back, at least to supplement fixed LEDs. My assumption is that it has to do with pricing mark-up more than anything else as fixed light heads are dirt cheap to produce and use in bars. aka.... far more profit for the manufacturer.
Yes one can argue that motors and other moving parts are more prone to failure, but we managed to survive just fine for how long running moving lights. During my ~25 years of fire/rescue service I can only remember a handful of times where light motors/mechanics failed, bulbs were about the only things that failed regularly.
We are approaching the 3rd decade of the 21st century, LED's are just about bomb-proof, and there is no reason motors & mechanics cannot be vastly improved as well. I would love to see moving LED's with highly focused beams brought back to lightbars, etc. Picture a modernized MX7000 type bar using fixed LED heads, but with a pair of highly focused LEDs sweeping 90 degrees on either side, and another center mounted one running 888 style.
That would solve what I consider the LEDs biggest weakness, focused beam projection.
I use small 1500 lumen scout lights on two of my Steyr AUGs, even with a bunch of spill they still have a decently focused hot spot that pushes out several hundred yards. Something similar but more focused and optimized would make for a killer 888 or sweepers that would dominate something like this new '
TCL', And they would be small enough to fit inside a bar.
Don't get me wrong,
I love profit..... but I think we can do far better.
***RANT OFF***
