We have met some great people and been a part of some amazing events. From car dealerships and football games to after proms and coffee shops. We traveled across Colorado and southern Wyoming lighting up the sky.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to and end. As lighting technology has advanced, it changed the face of the promotional searchlight as we know it. Back in the day, the giant 60" WWII carbon arc searchlights ruled the skies. When the Vietnam era rolled around, they developed xenon gas technology which made the lights smaller and more intense. In the late 1970's, the four beam Skytracker searchlight was developed and everybody wanted one. In the early 2000's, a new metal halide lamp was developed which produced more lumens per watt than xenon or carbon arc light sources. This new light source was smaller and more efficient. With that, the lights got smaller.
At the same time searchlights were getting smaller, LED technology was being developed to replace street lamps and parking lot lights. These brighter lights are closer in color temperature to searchlights than the older mercury vapor or low pressure sodium lights making it more difficult to see searchlights in many cities. Since 2008, we experienced a decreasing need and interest in searchlight rentals. We always took pride in our equipment having the cleanest and in tune equipment. The influx of cheaper searchlights from overseas led to many businesses nationwide purchasing their own lights. This was generally short lived as many of the imported units were not very reliable. The used searchlight was flooded with lights for sale as many of the old carbon arc searchlight operators were retiring at the same time lights were being downsized and the economy was on the decline. Not to mention, the effective visibility of the searchlight beams was diminishing in the night sky.
We still love searchlights and still own a few. However, its not a viable business in the dry mountain air of Colorado and we need to focus on other ventures. If you have worked with us in the past, feel free to reach out and see if we can possibly help you out on a project, but for the most part, we won't be lighting up the skies much in the future.
Thank you to everyone who we have had the pleasure of working with all these years. Many of those businesses are gone (not our fault) and many still remain. We still have several lights out in operation at haunted houses across the country. We will continue to maintain and repair those lights as well as helping others with their technical needs. We are always happy to assist with searchlight repairs to keep their machines lighting up the skies.
This was one of the more interesting projects we worked on. Dutch visual artist Bernault Smilde called us with the concept of splitting light from a searchlight through a giant prism and projecting the refracted light onto the Flatirons (mountain features outside of Boulder, Colorado). We worked together to accomplish a smaller scale test on a barn across a field. Watch the PBS video here. https://www.pbs.org/video/wedu-arts-plus-541-berndnaut-smilde-rainbow-prism/
Every year, the Bud Light Spring Jam in Aspen was one of our favorite events. The event staff and management were true professionals and we always enjoyed working with them. It was later taken over by the ESPN X Games staff who also produced the Winter X Games. Great people, great bands and snowboard competitions.
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