MAXIMIZING
GROOMING VISIBILITY
The industry needs better lighting solutions
for nighttime grooming
By Philip Gotthelf, Ultra-Tech™ Lighting
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ULTRA-TECH™ LIGHTING snowopsmag.com | SnowOps 29
Groomers must work in all
weather conditions – day
and night. One of the big-gest
challenges is resolv-ing
the texture and contours of snow
because the highly reflective white
surface tends to appear flat under ar-tificial
light. Unfortunately, very little
attention has been given to improv-ing
snow-cat lighting to help overall
performance through enhanced visual
acuity. This is because most snow-cat
manufacturers use conventional halo-gen
headlamps or supplemental metal
halide light bars. More recently, some
groomers have installed LED lamps for
LIGHTING
supplemental lighting. None of these
technologies are specifically designed
to illuminate snow.
Conventional lighting uses a concen-trated
source like a circular bulb and
a dispersion reflector. Headlamps are
designed to throw light forward in a
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