I'm looking for tips on designing a lighting board for trailering my dinghy (Phantom)

It has pintels on the transom - so was going to cut a bit of MDF to attach number plate and lights to - with a high 'U' shaped bit in the middle to take the mast.

However, I'm a bit worried about weather (will MDF just disintegrate over time) and weight (will it be too much strain on the transom)

Toying with the idea of buying a UPVC window board and fashioning it out of that

Another question - how wide should it be? is 4 foot wide enough?

http://www.sailboats.co.uk/solo-long-length-mast-and-trailer-board-bracket-683255?gclid=CjwKCAjw8KmLBhB8EiwAQbqNoKxu469qINfmDba64os7BN7PGr_AG08WVUKxU30Jn-UGgrsEGngeKRoCUqoQAvD_BwE" rel="nofollow - https://www.sailboats.co.uk/solo-long-length-mast-and-trailer-board-bracket-683255?gclid=CjwKCAjw8KmLBhB8EiwAQbqNoKxu469qINfmDba64os7BN7PGr_AG08WVUKxU30Jn-UGgrsEGngeKRoCUqoQAvD_BwE

you need decent quality ply or proper universal brakes which are available in metal or fibreglass

Most important thing it to make sure you can hold the board onto the pintels, I always secure mine with rope onto the transom bar and I now have a pin to hold the board in place

I had a brand-new car 2yrs ago and ordered a factory-Fit towbar. It was cheaper than my local fitter.

I made a couple of Lighting board holders from an old bed. Set the pintles up to fit a couple of different boats.

Fitting bolts through the holders and using butterfly nuts allows me to fit a single lightning board to the different holders.

Sanded them down a bit and coated them with some tough outdoor varnish.
I also put the number plate on with velcro so that I can quickly swap that over between our two cars.

They've lasted 6yrs so far. 

One of my trailers also has a wiring plug cable tied along the trailer chassis so that it doesn't matter about the length of the lighting board cable.

Look great, but how do you mount this on a carbon boat and what do you stick the number plate too?

Originally posted by Old bloke Those wireless lights look great. When cars were simple and I was poor I used to fit my own towbar and wire up the socket. I used to leave the socket inside the boot away from the rain mud and salt. With the wireless connection you could easily do the same and remove another cause of the bloody things not working.

The wireless signal might struggle to get through the steel of the boot lid?

LED boards wont trigger the BCM fitted with dedicated wiring packs as they don't draw enough current. So they wont work at all.

If you have a bypass relay they'll work, but again they don't draw enough to trigger the beep.

There are ways around this, using resistors, putting a bulb inline Inside the car etc but its actually far less hassle to just use a conventional board and keep an eye on it. I'm not a huge fan of the LED ones, they are fine in the dark but the two ive tried haven't been bright enough for daylight use in my opinion, particularly the brake lights.

They have probably sorted this out in the last 3-5 years or so as the LED boards have become more mainstream.

Glad they worked out well for you.

I used them for the first time last week - worked a treat from the transmitter inside the boot. Actually operate inside the house when car parked on drive. They are designed for farm use - the trailers are large steel construction, so signal is probably set to 'kill'

I took a piece of 10mm marine ply (actually 2 bits of 5mm, glued together), about 10" wide and tall enough to fit the pintle / gudgeon and mast cut out, couple of coats of yacht varnish and then bolted a 4' 6" lightboard from screwfix to it - still going strong 5 years later 

My trailor board hangs off the pintels and I tye it to the transom bar. only isue i have had was the mast bouncing out of the cup on the top. Bungee tye down must have come of on the awful speed bumps at Draycot 

It's really hard, as I guess you know , to find clear information. But I've found the following (which may or may not be useful to somebody in the future) and it seems a waste not to post it :-

You don't need to register a trailer less than 750kg to use it in EU (from .gov so is good info).

As a visitor you should* be fine towing abroad as long as your trailer is under 750kg and conforms to the relevant UK regs.

If your trailer was built after about 2002 (I seems impossible to find the date the new EU regs came in) you must use the poles to mount the lighting board**, if you trailer doesn't have fixings for the poles it's pretty safe to assume it was built before they were a requirement and you will be ok in the UK.

* This is anecdotal so, while worth mentioning, may not be 100% reliable.

** My Blaze trailer does not have fixings for poles and the boat was new in 2002. I think I would continue to use the pintle mounted board in the UK if I bought a boat with a newer trailer but would accept that there is a small risk go getting a pull from the boys in blue.