Twin Moons
'Masina'		'Masina'

Mounting Masina Replacement LED Lights into
An Aqua Signal Tri-Color/Anchor Light Combo Fixture

Copyright © 2008-2010 by Bebi Electronics, Ltd


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When Greg S of S/V Yoohoo purchased two Masina Malosi LED replacement lights from us, we thought that he was buying one for himself and one for a friend. What he really wanted to was use the Masina Malosi in both the tricolour AND the anchor light. We don't offer the Malosi drilled to accept a screw eye (but have no problem in doing so, nor supplying a stainless steel screw eye at no addition cost) so as to suspend it as is shown on our page How to Mount an Owl.

We offered Greg that if he returned the light to us, we would drill it and return it to him, along with the eye, but at no additional cost.

Greg had a better idea though, which is to mount the Masina on both sides of the top (tricolor) platform. The rest of this essay is by Greg (save our comments in italics), also earning a free Rinorino LED cabin light.

The original Tricolor assembly with the lens.	Complete masthead lamp assembly with the lens removed.

You were right about the 25 mm spacer not being quite enough to center the Malosi vertically for the anchor light. The simple thing would have been to run to the local building center, buy a piece of it, and cut it 1/4 inch longer, but I didn't. What I had on hand was a scrap of 1/2 inch King Starboard, so I cut donut shaped spacer out if it and cut 1/4 inch off of the PVC spacer thus lowering the light 1/4 inch.

Actually it's a tight fit and this method made it much easier to get everything in place above the strobe. I'm sure a better man could do the same thing with a longer piece of PVC, but this is what I went with. With the thought that the lower Malosi's would be radiating heat up through the hole in the tricolor floor, I also drilled a few extra holes in the tricolor spacer for extra ventilation.

I followed your instructions for attaching the spacer to the Malosi, but for attaching the upper and lower lights to the tricolor floor I just drilled three holes and used stainless steel rigging wire. (You can't see it from the top, but there are plastic 'bosses' under the stainless steel screws.)

The result is rock solid!

(You can see clearly in this picture the polarity colour coding for the tricolour light: The rail on the left is the positive (you can just see that Greg marked it with red tape), on the right is the negative (common) for both the tricolor and the anchor light (which he marked with white tape)).

If you start early everything, from up the mast, to installing the LEDs, to letting the 5200 set up, and returning the Aqua-Signal to the masthead can be done in a day. Very nice!

The overall results are excellent. I had a couple of other boats in the marina turn on their tricolor and anchor lights. Your tricolor were as bright, or brighter as any of the others, and with the Malosi for my anchor light it far out shone the others, which is just what I wanted. Thanks for the great product! I thank you, my batteries thank you, and the environment thanks you. After telling them I was only drawing about a tenth of an amp for each, I think you may have some future customers! (Thank you very much for the kind words Greg! We can't compete with 'the big guys' in an advertising budget, but we know that our happy customers are much more efficient advertisers. Being small, we can also 'do what it takes' to make each customer, as an individual, happy. All the best to you, and look us up when you get out this way.)