Signal Lamp Development for Minor Aids to Navigation

摘要

This report documents the research and development effort conducted to find analternative light source to the standard tungsten filament incandescent lamp used on most minor aids to navigation. The goal was a lamp that directly emitted the required color light, with reduced maintenance, and improved reliability. The study evaluated a number of arc lamp technologies including: metal vapor, cold and heated salts, amalgams, and mercury pool lamps. While the effort failed to find a single lamp technology to provide all signal colors used in the navigation system, a liquid electrode (LE)/Argon (Ar) green lamp was developed and tested, and significant advances were made in the development of a neon discharge lamp which emitted a red color.