Originally Posted By: rafowell
> Is floatation important?

The three issues I find with modern retroreflective aimers are:

(1) The brightness of the "fireball". Some are too bright in full sunlight (which I address by using sunglasses), and some are too dim in dim sunlight. This is a long recognized problem ( see this patent: http://www.google.com/patents?id=ys1DAAAAEBAJ ). Of the modern mirrors, I find the Starflash too bright, Rescue Flash, Coghlan's and Vector I brighter than I favor, the one Rescue Reflector I have a bit brighter, the 3"x5" S.I. Howard mirror aimer is "just right" and the 2"x3" S.I. Howard mirror on the dim side.


I havent found any of the mirrors I have to be "too" bright - the main complaint i have is that some of them are too dim, and some of them require a certain amount of hunting around to find an eye-mirror alignment that has a bright fireball - i.e. the reflective meshes vary in retroreflectivity across the mesh. The 2x3" Howard mirror is especially like this.

Quote:

(3) Clarity of the window - scattered light can be a problem -
another reason to keep the mirror clean and protect plastic mirrors from scratches. The USCG requires that cleaning cloths be provided with lifeboat mirrors. Another thing to check with the Rescue Flash mirror - make sure you peel back the transparent protective membrane when you use it (and sometimes it is on the back, for some reason) - the viewing is muddy with the membrane in place. It would seem that the size of the clear hole in the mesh would play into this, but I haven't done a careful study to determine my position on that.


The StarFlash is particularly bad in this regard.