Romain Chabert, CEO of Airstar Light, discusses the benefits behind lighting balloons

One of the major challenges of scene lighting is to guarantee the safety of the emergency teams with equipment that is easy, quick to install and both powerful and reliable. In this niche market of emergency lighting, there has been a powerful lighting solution for over 25 years, the Sirocco lighting balloon.

What is a lighting balloon?

A lighting balloon is more than just a “ball on a stick”. It is an LED light engine, protected by an inflated envelope made of technical textile, mounted on a stand or truck. Resistant to intensive uses, rain, wind and dust, the envelope provides a homogeneous diffusion of light at 360°, glare free and without cast shadow. The lighting of the area is progressive, gradually diminishing as you move away from the light source.

This type of equipment provides better visibility of the immediate work area and its surroundings, as well as a very good perception of the relief on uneven ground.

An innovation that matches firefighters innovation

After three years of R&D efforts, Airstar has launched a new range of lighting balloons, the Sirocco Redtech. These products are a real game-changer in the emergency lighting market. They are the most cost-effective, have the highest light output, the lowest power consumption , and they are physically the lightest.

The brand-new light engine has been totally re-designed and benefits from the latest and reliable LED technologies. It now offers the ability to drive the light with an application for smartphones. Users can dim the light, apply lighting effects such as beacon or pulse and switch on and off up to 250 balloons at the same time thanks to a Bluetooth connection.

For example, the powerful Sirocco 1300 Redtech from the M range puts out 132,000 lumens, lights up an area of 6,500m² (69,965ft²) for less than 10kg (22lbs). On its stand, that goes up to 5m (18ft), you turn night in to day in only 2 minutes.

Fully certified, the Redtech range currently consists of 4 M size lighting balloons, but we are already working on S, L and XL versions of the series. Until the next launches, our battery-operated (S range) and lighting tower (L range) products are still available.