Creating a light tower to illuminate a large area

[Fat Gordy]

I'm trying to get the basic infrastructure up and running for my future Mun base and I thought I would land a few rover light towers to illuminate the area prior to the larger, manned modules landing. I built and landed this light tower but was disappointed to find out that the Mk2 lights can't even shine far enough to light up the ground from atop of my tower. I know the description says that they don't shine very far, but I was hoping that the wider beam would be a good application for a wide area lighting tower.

Should I try to use the Mk1 lights? Are there any mods available that have brighter lights or is there a way to edit the light properties to make the beam travel farther? I can't seem to find a setting in the spotLightMk2.cfg file. Thanks!

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Edited May 8, 2015 by Fat Gordy

[Tex]

(I am at school so unfortunately I can't see your images :<)

However, yes, it would indeed be better to use the farther-illuminating round lights. And indeed, towers are unnecessary because even the light from those lights won't reach very far. I recommend low-laying lights that are angled very shallowly to project light over a long distance right on the ground.

[Fat Gordy]

Thanks for the pointer. I rebuilt my light tower with the round Mk1 lights and they are SIGNIFICANTLY brighter than the Mk2 ones. In fact, as I was landing the new one on site, I had the lights on and I could start to see that they were lighting up the terrain at about 300m up in the air. So much better!

- - - Updated - - -

I even got a little bit creative and used some adapters to change the angles and create a wider field with multiple Mk1 lights.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Fat Gordy

[SDEngineer]

No need to use different adaptors to change the angles. You can use SHIFT+(change orientation keys WASDQE) in the VAB and rather than changing the orientation by 90 degrees it will change it by 5 degress each time instead. Very handy for lights, landing gears, wings, etc.

[BluetoothThePirate]

No need to use different adaptors to change the angles. You can use SHIFT+(change orientation keys WASDQE) in the VAB and rather than changing the orientation by 90 degrees it will change it by 5 degress each time instead. Very handy for lights, landing gears, wings, etc.

Or the rotation widget. That's usually even better.