What Actually Happens in Afternoon Sun

Three distinct effects get reported as the same complaint, and separating them tells you which fix applies.

• The sun is behind the scoreboard, in the spectator's eyes. Nothing about the scoreboard changes this - the crowd is looking into the sun. It is an orientation problem, and it is solved at the position rather than in the cabinet.
• The sun is on the face, flattening contrast. Direct light on the face raises the brightness of everything around the lit digits, so the digits stand out less. This is where face finish and LED brightness matter.
• The digits are simply too small for the distance. Sun makes this obvious rather than causing it. If the same scoreboard is hard to read on an overcast evening from the same seat, the problem is size.

Establishing which one you have takes one afternoon at the field, and it decides whether the answer costs nothing, ten minutes, or a new cabinet.

Orientation: the Free Fix

The Electro-Mech installation manuals give a directional rule for the United States and a general version for everywhere else. Put the scoreboard on the south or west side of the field, facing north or east. That keeps the setting sun off the face during afternoon games. The general version: avoid facing the sun.

At a ballpark this interacts with where the scoreboard naturally wants to go. It usually stands beyond the outfield fence, which fixes the direction the crowd looks - and if that direction points into a low afternoon sun, no specification improves the situation. Where the position is genuinely open, orientation is the cheapest decision on the whole project: it costs nothing and it is permanent.

The manuals name a second planning factor alongside visibility, and it is worth weighing at the same time: accessibility. A position that solves the sun but sits on a steep embankment or against dense trees adds cost to the installation and to every service call afterwards.

Brightness Is a Setting, Not a Fixed Property

This is the single most common misdiagnosis. The console carries 50 selectable brightness levels, and the LEDs can be dimmed to reduce glare under changing lighting conditions. A scoreboard commissioned on an overcast morning and never adjusted is frequently running well below what it can do at two in the afternoon.

The practical routine takes ten minutes and belongs at commissioning:

• Set a level for bright afternoon light. Stand at the seat that matters and have somebody at the console step through levels.
• Set a level for evening or floodlights. A face set for daylight is uncomfortable at night, and an over-bright digit blooms and swallows its own caption.
• Write both down. Inside the console case, with which is which.
• Show two people. Operators change; the setting does not adjust itself.

If a scoreboard reads well at one level and poorly at another, the equipment is fine and the operating procedure needs writing down.

Contrast: What the Face Is Made Of

Contrast is what makes a lit digit legible against its surroundings, and the construction contributes to it deliberately.

On the indoor products in this catalogue - where the same design thinking applies - the circuit boards carrying the LEDs sit behind an aluminum face finished in matte black enamel, and the manual states the reason plainly: the black face increases contrast. The digits are read against a dark surface rather than a reflective one.

Two things follow for an outdoor field. A face kept clean holds its contrast; a face covered in pollen, dust or the residue of a long season does not. And anything added around the scoreboard that is lighter than the face - a bright sponsor panel, unpainted framing, a pale wall behind it - competes with the digits for the eye. Where a scoreboard has become harder to read over the years without anything failing, look at what has been added around it.

Viewing Angle and Where People Sit

The LEDs used in these products protrude slightly past the scoreboard face - the epoxy shells stand a little proud of the aluminum. The manual gives the reason: it maximises the viewing angle while providing impact-absorbing protection from stray balls and other flying objects.

That matters at a ballpark because spectators do not sit in front of the scoreboard. They sit behind home plate, looking out at a sign beyond the outfield fence, and along the baselines at increasingly oblique angles. A digit read at forty-five degrees is a harder task than the same digit read square on, and it is one reason two people at the same game report different experiences of the same scoreboard.

The design accounts for it; the position can help or hurt it. A scoreboard angled toward the main seating rather than square to the fence line is reading to the crowd rather than to the outfield.

Digit Height, and When Size Is Genuinely the Problem

If the scoreboard is equally hard to read on a grey evening, sun is not the cause. The test is the distance rule: roughly 25 feet of viewing distance per inch of digit height.

Electro-Mech recommends that figure rather than the sign industry's 50 feet per inch of character height, because a scoreboard has captions to read as well as digits. Measure from the scoreboard position to the farthest seat that matters - at a ballpark that is usually the top row behind home plate rather than anything near the fence - and compare it with the table. If the number says the digits are too small, no amount of brightness will fix it.

What Not to Buy to Solve It

Three things get proposed in this situation and none of them is a specification this manufacturer offers.

• A brighter grade of scoreboard. There is no premium construction tier that costs more for the same size. The cabinets are aluminum across the line, and brightness is set at the console.
• A weather-rated or IP-rated cabinet. No IP rating or weatherproof rating is assigned to any Electro-Mech cabinet. If one were, it would be on the order of IP24 at most - and it would have nothing to do with sunlight.
• Modules rated for a number of hours. Electro-Mech does not make LED modules and makes no lifetime claim about any component or assembly other than individual LEDs, where the statement is that the majority will keep working while holding at least half their original brightness over that span.

What the company does say about durability is narrow: outdoor scoreboards last 15 years outdoors. Readability in sun is a question of orientation, brightness setting, contrast and digit height - not of a grade to buy up into.

If the Scoreboard Is Already Installed

Most people reading this have a scoreboard in the ground and a complaint from the stands. In order of cost:

• Check the brightness setting. Free, ten minutes, and it resolves a fair proportion of cases.
• Clean the face. A season of pollen and dust costs contrast. Free, half an hour.
• Look at what surrounds it. A new pale panel or unpainted structure behind the scoreboard competes with the digits.
• Check the seat that complains. If it is one section at an extreme angle, the issue is position rather than the cabinet.
• Measure the distance. If the digits are undersized for it, that is the finding, and it is a replacement or an additional display rather than an adjustment.
• Consider an auxiliary display. Where one part of the ground genuinely cannot read the main scoreboard, a second display driven from the same console is smaller than replacing a working sign.

Planning a New Field So This Never Comes Up

Everything in this article is cheaper before the concrete than after it. If the scoreboard is still a drawing, five decisions settle readability permanently.

• The direction the face points. South or west side of the field, facing north or east, in the United States. It costs nothing at this stage and cannot be changed later.
• The distance to the farthest seat. Measured on the ground from the intended position, and converted at 25 feet per inch of digit height.
• The mounting height. High enough to clear standing spectators, low enough that the front rows do not lose the face behind whatever is overhead.
• What sits behind and around it. A pale wall, unpainted framing or a light-coloured panel behind the scoreboard competes with the digits for the eye.
• Where the ID panels go. They add area to the sign - which affects footings - and they change what surrounds the digits visually.

The manuals put visibility and accessibility side by side as the two planning factors, and both belong in the same site walk. A position that reads beautifully but needs a crane to reach through a soft outfield is a position that will be expensive to service for fifteen years.

What Sizes Ballparks Actually Buy

It is worth knowing what other buyers concluded, because sun complaints often arrive with a proposal to buy something much larger.

Electro-Mech's sales and shipping record holds 9,275 baseball orders from 7,488 organizations in all 50 states, counted one per organization, model and city. The three most ordered models are the 10 ft. x 5 ft. LX1060 at 1,331 entries, the 8 ft. x 4 ft. LX1030 at 1,075 and the 6 ft. x 3 ft. LX1050 at 956 - together more than a third of everything shipped for baseball, and all of them carrying 15 in. or 18 in. digits.

In other words, the sizes that work at most ballparks are modest, and they work because the distances at most ballparks are modest. A field whose farthest seat is 300 feet from the scoreboard does not need 24 in. digits; it needs 18 in. digits set to a sensible brightness and pointed away from the sun.

One caution about reading this too literally. These are sales and shipping records: they say what was ordered and where it was sent, not what is standing today, and a shipping address is sometimes a dealer rather than the field.

Keeping It Readable Over the Years

Readability degrades slowly and nobody notices until somebody complains. Four habits keep it where it started:

• Clean the face before the season. Contrast is a design feature, and grime removes it.
• Re-check the brightness after any console change. Settings survive, but a console swapped or reset does not carry somebody's preference with it.
• Keep the drain holes clear. Not a readability issue directly, but the cabinet is drained rather than sealed, and water sitting in a cabinet is a problem that eventually becomes a visible one.
• Re-walk the sightline every few years. Trees grow, sponsor panels go up, floodlights get replaced with taller poles. The sightline that was clear when the scoreboard went in is not automatically clear now.

And one for the operator rather than the maintenance crew: if a new person runs the scoreboard, show them the brightness control. The most common cause of a scoreboard that "got dimmer this season" is a level nobody knew was adjustable.

Two Scenarios, Worked Through

The parents behind home plate cannot read the count

Home plate is the farthest point from an outfield scoreboard, so this is the seat that decides the specification. Pace the distance: at 320 feet, 15 in. digits are marginal and 18 in. digits are comfortable. If the scoreboard carries 18 in. digits for Runs and 15 in. for the counts, the complaint is about the smaller figures rather than the scoreboard as a whole - and that is a face-layout question rather than a size question. On an overcast day, if the same figures read fine, brightness is the answer.

One side of the ground struggles and the other does not

That is angle, not size. Spectators along one baseline see the face obliquely while those behind the plate see it more squarely, and the sun frequently sits on one side of the ground rather than the other. Two fixes are available without new equipment: adjust the brightness for the time of day that side fills up, and - if the scoreboard is not yet installed - angle the cabinet toward the main seating rather than square to the fence line.

Where neither helps and one section genuinely cannot read the main scoreboard, an auxiliary display driven from the same console is the smaller answer. Each console port drives a display directly, and displays can be daisy-chained in synchronisation.

A Checklist for a Sunny Afternoon

Do this at the time of day the complaint happens, not at ten in the morning:

• Sit in the seat that complains. Not near it - in it.
• Note where the sun is. Behind the scoreboard, on its face, or off to the side.
• Have somebody step the brightness up and down. And note which level reads best from that seat.
• Read the captions, not just the digits. Captions are the stricter test, and they are why the 25-feet-per-inch rule is what it is.
• Pace the distance back to the scoreboard. And divide by 25.
• Write down the answer. Whether it is a setting, a position or a size - so the next conversation starts from a fact.

What to Tell the Committee

Sun complaints tend to arrive at a board meeting as "we need a bigger scoreboard", and the honest answer is usually more specific and much cheaper. Three sentences settle it.

First: we measured the distance from the scoreboard to the seat that complains, and at the manufacturer's recommended 25 feet of viewing distance per inch of digit height, the digits we have are adequate or they are not - here is the number. Second: brightness is a console setting with fifty levels, not a property of the cabinet, and it has been set for daylight and for evening. Third: the position faces the sun, or it does not, and that is a decision we can only change if we move the sign.

If all three come back clean and the complaint persists, the finding is a genuine one and the options are a larger cabinet or an additional display for the section that cannot read the main scoreboard. But arriving at that conclusion after the three checks is a very different conversation from arriving at it first.

A Note on the LEDs Themselves

Two design details are worth knowing because they explain why these displays behave as they do in bright light, and because they are frequently misdescribed in comparison documents.

The LEDs sit behind the face, and their shells protrude slightly past it. On the indoor products where the manual describes this most fully, the circuit boards carrying the LEDs are mounted behind an aluminum face painted matte black to increase contrast, and the epoxy shells stand a little proud of that face - which maximises the viewing angle and gives some impact protection against stray balls. The same thinking runs through the outdoor products.

They can be dimmed. The LEDs may be dimmed to reduce glare under changing lighting conditions, which is the same capability the console's fifty brightness levels expose to the operator.

What is not claimed anywhere in the catalogue is a brightness figure, a nit rating or a grade of LED sold as brighter than another. If a comparison document offers those for these scoreboards, it is not describing this manufacturer - and the practical route to a readable face remains orientation, brightness setting, clean glass-free aluminum and a digit height matched to the distance.

The Order to Work In

Cheapest first, and in this order: check the brightness setting, clean the face, look at what has been added around the scoreboard, sit in the seat that complains at the hour it complains, and only then measure the distance and compare it with the digit height. Four of those five cost nothing but time, and between them they account for most of the complaints that arrive as a request for a bigger sign.

Where the measurement does say the digits are undersized, the finding is solid and worth acting on - either a larger cabinet or an additional display for the section that cannot read the main one. But it is a finding rather than an assumption, and the difference between those two is usually a five-figure budget line.

One more habit worth adopting at a ballpark specifically: check the readability question at the start of a season rather than at the end. Pollen, a summer of dust and a console nobody adjusted all combine slowly, and a scoreboard that reads perfectly in April can be noticeably worse by July without anything having failed. Ten minutes in the spring keeps the whole question from ever reaching a board meeting.

And where the answer does turn out to be the cabinet, the measurement gives you the specification rather than an argument: this distance, that digit height, this model.

Readability is the one specification a scoreboard is judged on every single game, and it is also the one most often blamed on the wrong thing. Work the list in order and the answer is usually cheap, occasionally free, and always defensible in front of whoever controls the budget.

That is the whole method: three causes, checked in order of cost, with a measured number at the end of it rather than an impression.

One sentence to leave with the grounds team: keep the face clean and the drain holes clear, and the scoreboard will look after the rest for the fifteen years the company says it lasts outdoors.

The order to work in is cheapest first: orientation if the scoreboard is not yet in the ground, brightness and cleanliness if it is, and digit height only when the measurement says so. Most of the time the fix costs an afternoon rather than a budget line.

If the measurement does say the digits are undersized, Request a quote from Electro-Mech and include the distance you measured and the seat you measured from.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my scoreboard wash out in the afternoon?

Usually one of three things: the sun is behind the scoreboard and in the spectators' eyes, the brightness is set too low for daylight, or the digits are too small for the distance. The first is fixed by position, the second at the console, and only the third needs new equipment.

Which way should an outdoor scoreboard face?

In the United States, put it on the south or west side of the field facing north or east, so the setting sun stays off the face during afternoon games. Elsewhere the rule is simply to avoid facing the sun.

Can I make the scoreboard brighter?

Yes. The console carries 50 selectable brightness levels, and the LEDs can be dimmed to reduce glare under changing lighting. Set one level for daylight and one for evening, and write both down.

Does a brighter or higher-grade scoreboard exist?

No. There is no premium construction tier costing more for the same size - the cabinets are aluminum across the line. Brightness is a console setting rather than a purchase decision.

How far can an 18-inch digit be read?

About 450 feet at Electro-Mech's recommended 25 feet of viewing distance per inch of digit height. The company uses that figure rather than the sign industry's 50 feet per inch because a scoreboard has captions to read as well as digits.

Does keeping the face clean matter?

Yes. The face is finished in matte black to raise contrast against the lit digits, and pollen, dust and grime reduce that contrast. It is the cheapest maintenance available.

Why can some seats read it and others cannot?

Viewing angle. Spectators along the baselines see the face obliquely, which is harder than reading it square on. The LEDs protrude slightly past the face specifically to widen the viewing angle, but position and orientation still matter.

Would an IP-rated cabinet help?

No, and none is offered. Electro-Mech assigns no IP or weatherproof rating to any cabinet, and such a rating would have nothing to do with sunlight in any case.

What if the digits really are too small?

Then it is a sizing problem, and the options are a larger cabinet or an additional display driven from the same console for the part of the ground that cannot read the main scoreboard.