High-Mast & Sports Lighting

High-mast lighting is a different discipline from ordinary site lighting. The poles run 80 to 150 feet, the fixtures are aimed to a photometric plan rather than pointed in a general direction, and servicing them requires either a lowering device that actually works or a lift with the reach and the ground conditions to use it. Most electrical contractors subcontract this. We do it ourselves — and Musco Lighting, one of the largest high-mast and sports lighting manufacturers in the world, has contracted EVO to install their systems on aviation apron work.

Where high-mast lighting shows up

Anywhere a large open area has to be lit uniformly from a small number of points: airfield aprons and ramps, interchanges and roadways, ports and rail yards, large parking fields, and sports facilities.

• Musco high-mast system installation — contracted directly by Musco Lighting
• Airfield apron, ramp and gate lighting
• Roadway, interchange and corridor lighting
• Large parking fields and truck yards
• Sports fields, courts and stadium lighting
• Rail yards, ports and logistics terminals
• Pole erection, foundations and grounding
• Lowering-device installation, repair and servicing
• Aiming, photometric verification and re-commissioning

Manufacturers hire us for this

Musco Lighting contracted EVO directly to install their high-mast systems on aviation apron work. That is a useful signal, because a manufacturer selecting an installer is applying a stricter filter than a general contractor picking the low bid — their product carries their name once it is in the ground, and a badly aimed installation reflects on them rather than on whoever wired it.

It is also why we treat aiming and photometric verification as part of the installation rather than an optional extra.

Aiming is the whole job

A high-mast installation lives or dies on aiming. Fixtures are specified with particular optical distributions and aimed to a photometric plan that produces a designed uniformity ratio across the surface. Get the aiming wrong and you produce exactly what the design was meant to avoid: bright pools with dark gaps between them, glare into the operating area, and light spilling somewhere it is not wanted.

We verify aiming against the photometric plan and take field readings rather than assuming the design was executed. On retrofits this matters even more, because LED optics do not distribute the same way the metal halide fixtures they replace did — reusing the old aiming angles is one of the most common ways an LED conversion produces worse lighting than what it replaced.

Servicing without shutting the operation down

Aprons, roadways and yards cannot generally be closed for lighting maintenance. We plan access around operations, work with lowering devices where they exist and are safe to use, and bring the lift capacity to do it directly where they are not.

On airfield work the constraints tighten further: escorted access, movement-area authorisation, and windows measured in hours. It is the most demanding version of the outage planning we do everywhere else.

LED conversion on high-mast

The economics on high-mast retrofits are unusually strong, because the labour cost of reaching the fixture is so high that extending replacement intervals is worth as much as the energy saving. A metal halide fixture that needs relamping every couple of years and requires a lift each time is expensive in a way the energy bill does not capture.

The specification points that actually matter: verified photometrics for the new optic rather than a claimed lumen equivalence, appropriate uniformity for the task, and a driver and thermal design rated for the environment. We check all three before ordering.