[Ohio_3Der]

We are coming into the second season of indoor archery at my club. Last year, lighting was a major concern. We helped it out a lot by using a huge flourescent light on the target butts and some four foot shop lights hung above the shooters. This year, we want to put the lighting issue to bed. What are you guys using?

Our clubhouse has ten foot ceilings, and the primary light source is flush mounted four foot flouescent lights scattered sparingly over the ceiling. We are thinking of running two eight foot flourescent lights on the ceiling right over the firing line. Will this be a good thing? Can you get to much light when talking about flurescent lights?

We are talking right now about installing a light track down at the targets with a spot on each target butt. Has anyone ever done this? I think the lights mounted on the ceiling will be to far away to cause harsh shadows from arrows in the target, but I'm not sure. The ceiling is quite a ways from the butts.

Any info or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[outdoorattic]

Good luck

We switched our lighting last year also. Now we have a new set of complaints. The one thing we find that most guys agree on is less is better with lighting on the range. (I'm sure some will disagree) We found turning off some of the rows actually helped out.

 

[heavy dart]

There is quite the science behind properly lighting an indoor range to please all comers.Par values,colour mixing,illuminance,beam spread,the list goes on.
I found that a fantastic and FREE resource was the rep. at a local lighting dist.
This fellow came to the range, listened to and understood our needs,and completely mapped the range using a variety of different types of lighting.
He even considered exsisting wiring so as not to blow the budget

 

[BIG ARCHERY NUT]

We have had our new lanes up and running for two years now. Our range is 90' x 50' with 20 lanes. We also have ten foot ceilings with 2'x4' drop in acoustical tiles. We used 4 lamp drop in troughers (lay in grid) for lighting with the standard prismatic lenses. We did switch the inboard tubes and out board tubes separately Along with each row. The fixtures were ordered with 35 watt electronic ballast and now we realize we should have stayed with the 40 watt lamps at least on the targets. We started with one continuous row over the targets but found we needed two rows to get the brightest lighting on the target faces. We have one row every other tile above the shooters and another row two tiles behind the shooters. With each row of lights switched along with the inboard and out board lamps we can set each row of lights to what ever level we want. The rest of the range the rows are eight foot apart and eight foot between fixtures. It creates a nice even level of light that can be adjusted to fit any type of shooting.

I would not suggest using any kind of incandescent lights on the targets due to the shadow effect they create. An arrow in the X looks like it could be low because of the shadow.

Good Luck.

 

[Brocky]

Range Lighting

Flourescent lighting with electronic ballasts and daylight tubes will work well for this application. For ease of maintenance, cost effective, good efficiency use four foot fixtures with four F40T12 tubes in each. Check out your local electrical wholesaler for prices and more advice for your requirements.
Cheers

 

[DBL LUNG]

Flourescent lighting with electronic ballasts and daylight tubes will work well for this application. For ease of maintenance, cost effective, good efficiency use four foot fixtures with four F40T12 tubes in each. Check out your local electrical wholesaler for prices and more advice for your requirements.
Cheers

I actually do this for a living. I work for a wholesale distributor and do lighting layouts all the time.

To start with I would get F32T8 lamps instead. The T12 lamp is going to be obsolite very soon. Almost no fixture manufacturer is still producing the T12 magnetic ballast. They are all going to T8 and T5 electronic ballasts.

As stated 2X4 troffers will work great. If you even wanted to you could go to parabolic louver instead of the prismatic lens. The parabolics cut down on glare, but sometimes they can give the "cave affect" on the walls. If the fixture is too far away from the wall you will have some light cutoff on the top of the wall where it meets the ceiling.

A new fixture and lamp which is becoming very popular is the T5 flourescent. It can be purchased in a 59W high output. These fixtures and lamps are still a little expensive, but offer a higher wattage and more light output. But sometimes less is more.

PM me if you want anymore info. Josh

 

[DBL LUNG]

I should also point out that if you have someone come to your range and do a lighting layout ask them to have roughly 40 - 50 footcandles at the target and roughly 25 - 30 footcandles at the shooting line.

Another thing to take into consideration is making sure that the fixtures that are placed down range have a cutoff visor or reflector so the light does not come back at the archer on the shooting line. This of course is only necessary if the fixtures are surface mounted or the lamps are exposed like a strip light.