Lights On at the Tigue

[EDOrgeronsGhost]

You think the lights that were brought in were messing with the OF some? I know the OM RF and 2B were struggling to find the ball last night....

[jphebert_24]

I noticed the same thing. centerfield, rightfield and second basemen for both team struggled with pop ups.

[DocCajun]

Very possible. That's several uncharacteristic errors so far this weekend

[Dad04]

Our CF said the field played "the same", but me thinks it is not quite the same.

[EDOrgeronsGhost]

Our CF said the field played "the same", but me thinks it is not quite the same.

That's how you play the game, no excuses...

I was meaning more on some of the reads and reactions on actual outs or balls that dropped in that shouldn't have. We had 1 or 2 that dropped in that a play could have been made on, and our rf was all over the place out there....

[Turbine]

You think the lights that were brought in were messing with the OF some? I know the OM RF and 2B were struggling to find the ball last night....

I thought the NCAA lights contributed to your drop Saturday and UL's drop Sunday.

[Ole Colony]

I would say yes. I sit down the line and the lights suck. When I looked at them it would take about twenty second to focus again.

[CajunRebel]

I would say yes if the lights were closer to home plate, but they were both pretty far down the left and right field lines so I wouldn't think they would be in the way.

Also, it's not like the field was over-lit. This is how bright most NCAA and all MLB fields are.

[CajunFan3406]

I would say yes if the lights were closer to home plate, but they were both pretty far down the left and right field lines so I wouldn't think they would be in the way.

Also, it's not like the field was over-lit. This is how bright most NCAA and all MLB fields are.

The optimum solution is to add fixtures to the 8 poles that the The Tigue already has. Of course that is dependent on whether structurally the poles can handle additional fixtures and electrically your feeders out to the poles can handle the additional load. Long term, this is what needs to, and most likely will, be done. In its current format The Tigue is defined as a Class II facility by the IES and is required to maintain foot candle levels of 100 fc (average) in the infield and 70 fc (average) in the outfield with a max to min ratio of 2.5:1. Now there's no guarantee this is currently being adhered to, as these are the latest numbers. Bump the seating to over 5000 and The Tigue becomes a Class I facility and the illumination requirements change to 150 fc in the infield and 100 fc in the outfield with a max to min of 1.7:1. These were the levels that NCAA was trying to achieve and these are the levels that you see at any professional or large college ballpark. Problem is trying to do that sort of thing on the fly with two temporary light trucks.

You see the problem with temporary light like this past weekend is with the distribution. While you can get the desired average foot candle levels with, say, 15 additional fixtures on each pole, you start to run into problems with how that light is distributed. Obviously the individual fixtures on the temporary poles can be aimed at different spots on the field, but you can run into problems when trying to aim at low light level spots in hard to reach places, like center field.

[Cajun90]

An easy course is to utilize LED lights. While upfront capital outlay is higher it can be recouped to some extent and the technology is definitely proven. The O&G industry is quickly moving to LED for numerous reasons. It can be done with current infrastructure at the Tigue. I am almost positive that I noticed LED fixtures have already been added to the football field lighting.

[CajunAmos]

I'm thinking that the lights around the infield area will be part of the new grandstand construction and moved to an area where they aren't part of the view. If the outfield can be upgraded it would probably save money. I'm thinking there will also have to be some tree trimming as well.

[HelmutVII]

What CajunFan3406 said plus:

They could light the field with fewer lights and get more candle power. New lighting technology is more efficient and it will cost less to run. Been trying to get the guy from Qualite to go by and see the people in charge. I know the architect doing the renovation, I might get the Qualite guy to go see them. I know this works because we did it for Teurlings and Clark Field.

They could light Cajun Field with half the fixtures they have now and save a ton of money. We did Clark Field and Teurlings with about 40 or 50 fixtures each. Clark Field had very low candle power and they were spending about $120.00 in power per game The new lights gave them about 50 foot candles and the numbers came out to less than $30.00 per game (if memory serves me correctly). New lighting technology allows for dimming of the during the daytime to save money. All televised games require lights on even in the day time in case a cloud passes over and screws up the lighting. It takes about 15 minutes for the lights to come to full intensity once they are turened on (it called strike time). HD TV requires a lot more light than standard definition.