New Member From Arizona

RCMoeur

Member
Apr 26, 2019
43
Phoenix, Arizona
Hi. I just discovered and joined the site, even though I've been involved to some degree with response vehicle lighting for nearly 30 years.

My career is in traffic engineering, specializing in highway and freeway signing. I retired a little over two years ago after nearly 31 years with Arizona DOT as an engineer and team manager. As part of the team's work all over the state. we used vehicles equipped with lighting systems, and I educated myself over the years in order to get the most effective lighting for our tasks while minimizing taxpayer expense. Our office was notorious renowned for refurbishing old Highway Patrol LP6000s for our vehicles and getting a great system for less than 25% of the cost of new. I was also involved in public service communications and special event traffic management, and accumulated (on my own dime) several useful beacons and light bars for personal use.

With the advent of pre-specified LED systems and being chained to a desk for the final few years of my public agency career, I wasn't really involved in vehicle lighting issues for a while. But now that I have a one-person engineering firm and I'm starting to do field work again, I'm blowing the dust off the lights and getting back up to speed.
 
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RCMoeur

Member
Apr 26, 2019
43
Phoenix, Arizona
And I know it's very bad form to join a group and immediately start spouting opinions, but I'd just like to say that as much as I like Code 3 / PSE, Star, SVP, Sho-Me, and everyone else, the Federal Signal FB4 Magnabeam is (in my 2¢ opinion) the single best directional light in existence. Doesn't mean other options aren't good, but I think it's the best.

(putting on Nomex coveralls...)
 
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RCMoeur

Member
Apr 26, 2019
43
Phoenix, Arizona
Here's one when I was visiting our neighbors to the east in 2002 for an I-40 project coordination meeting.

Here's the old Traffic Design fleet at the Jack Rabbit Trading Post in 2010 when we were up there for field location work as part of a sign replacement project. All the LP bars are ex-DPS outfitted with new lenses, changed filter colors, and rear-facing FB4s in place of the inboard rotators.

Since then, as the vehicles are replaced due to age (if a new vehicle is issued, that is), the new vehicle gets whatever LED bar is on state contract at the moment. The new bars are reliable, but don't have quite the same panache as the old ones.
 

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RCMoeur

Member
Apr 26, 2019
43
Phoenix, Arizona
Found a better image in my files of the LP refurbs we did in ADOT - I must have done this for one of those "show off your group's cost-saving achievements" back then.
 

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