Arc Stories from New York Blackout?

foxalopex · #1 08-15-2003, 03:00 AM

Hmm, I noticed in the news today that New York and surrounding areas including large parts of Ontario went into blackout due to power problems. I don't live out there but I wonder if any of you got any good stories using their Arcs in real-world trouble? (Test draining batteries doesn't count!)

d'mo · #2 08-15-2003, 06:24 AM

It's not all that exciting, but I was in the office when the power went out. I pulled my Arc LS from its belt sheath and exclaimed, “So, let’s year you make fun of my flashlight fetish now!” True Flashaholic joy.

With it, I was able to lead a few coworkers out of the building and helped another make some "emergency" computer connections. I took great joy that the LS blew away ALL of the other crappy flashlights available in the building.

Later, at home, several Arc AAAs were our primary lighting for the rest of the evening.

haydoncandlepower · #3 08-15-2003, 07:16 AM

I never appreciated the brightness of my Arc LSs until last night. Since I live on Long Island and don't go camping/hiking/whatever I've never used the flashlight when it was actually dark outside. The amount of lighting that's in the neighborhood is truly remarkable.

Well, without that lighting and taking a walk in the dark showed me how remarkable the Arc LS truly is. That's a serious amount of light from such a tiny package. Using it indoors in the dark doesn't give a good reference for how powerful it really is.

Edit: Oh, my indoor lighting was provided by my normal lamps with CF bulbs running off of the many UPSs I have. It was nice to watch CNN on satellite TV to get blackout news running off of a large UPS for about four hours. Ha. (I was able to pull this one from my computer since my internet connection was down.)

DaveT · #4 08-15-2003, 07:48 AM

Thank God for the 4th of July Arc sale.
I've EDC'd a AAA for over a year, but I added an LSH-S in July. I was stuck in a subway train (aboveground) for almost an hour before they led us off - not such a big deal, because we were in sunlight, could monitor the radio, and some could get cellphone calls through, and the last car was still at the platform.
However, we were like 6 stories aboveground (F train at Smith/9th St), and there were NO lights inside, with stairs down from the platform, then two LONG stairwells/escalators. Some people had keychain lights, and a few other people had Minimags or the like, so we set up a chain with lights at bottom and top of stairs. I went back up and there were still some stragglers on the platform either making calls at the pay phone or expecting another train to come along. I convinced them they needed to get down and that it was pitch black in the station (no emergency lights, even - bad news). I handed my Arc AAA (gotta have backup) to one woman in the group, and I was able to illuminate down the entire length of a long escalator to the floor below. What great power in such a tiny package! Got lots of comments and thanks on the light. The only thing I'll change is carry spares from now on...and maybe make the AA tailpack an EDC in my bookbag.
EDIT:
I'll be adding a couple of the AAs when they come in, along with a couple of the LS seconds and another AA tailpack, to my collection. One of the first things I did when I got home was give my wife one of the ARC AAAs I'd stocked up on to put in her purse (I'd already forced a Photon II onto her keychain).
Thanks ARC.
Dave

Charles Bradshaw · #5 08-15-2003, 10:40 AM

Well, I wear an LED headlamp everyday, as a routine matter. What can I say, other than I like LED light. I was asleep when it happened. Whichever headlamp I feel like wearing is my primary light source.

I did show my LSH-S and L4 to a neighbor, yesterday evening. Unfortunately, before dark.

Gransee · #6 08-15-2003, 11:05 AM

I am glad you guys were safe. Looking forward to hearing more great stories!

Peter

SUREFARC · #7 08-15-2003, 07:39 PM

What Petr said!

hideo · #8 08-15-2003, 07:49 PM

I'm showing this to my wife [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

of course we're accustomed to blackouts here at 9000 feet--basically when the sun goes down, it gets black

hideo

Gone Jeepin · #9 08-15-2003, 07:52 PM

I am not in NY, but still in the dark in SE Michigan. We went down at 4:10pm/EDT. I had time to get to my parents house and make sure that they were all set for the night. I left lights with them and extra batteries from my stash. I was also able to check in with some neighbors and am happy to report that everyone is ok so far too. I was using non-Arc as a general room light that I just left burning until the battery died. It was the "AAA" on a bead chain that stayed around my neck and the LSH-P in my pocket that got alot of use for me. The "AAA" around my neck was the "first grab" light. Other tasks required bigger lights or wider beams, but the Arcs were the real first use lights. The Arc "AA" would be really useful at this point as well. I am not sure how long I will have power so I will go play in the dark now... Stay safe and take everyone.

hideo · #10 08-15-2003, 07:56 PM

nice to hear the reaffimation for the ARC AAA on a neck carry--for the occasional times when I'm not pocket-carrying a light (or a folding knife (Gerber microLST) or a P-38 or a needle or a safety pin (Al-taped to the P-38)), it really makes life more pleasant

hideo

tsg68 · #11 08-15-2003, 08:29 PM

Dave T., you were about 8 blocks from my place in Brooklyn.

I work just a ten minute walk away so I didn't have to worry about being stuck in a high rise or on public transport. My wife however had to walk out of Manhattan to our apt. and used her light to use the darkened bathroom before leaving and again to get down the dark stairwell at work (immediately praising me for making her carry two LED's on her, upon her arrival home). I have to say Peter, the Arc AAA has proven to be my most useful light for just this type of situation. I cannot say more emphatically that AAA powered LED is where it is at for emergency use, small, single cell, long runtimes and waterproof, not to mention bright. I used mine all night long and also used the LSH-P to cook burgers on the gas range in the dark or wherever we needed more light. My wife and I took a walk around the neighborhood and hung out on the stoop with the neighbors and sipped some wine by Arc light too, it was really, really dark and a steady lethargic stream of tired people pouring through the hood on their way home by flashlight and headlights of cars made it kinda eerie, like dawn of the dead (though everyone was truly being as nice and helpful as they could be given the situation). Lanyard carry around the neck has proven to be my favorite with these lights as you can walk around and do chores hands free and still illuminate your way. Some other lights got some usage too (my wife's Sonic and our X5T as well as my Zipka to read a Magazine by in bed) though not as much as the AAA LE, turquoise and LSH-P. In the City here too much light in public space and you were blinding other people which ain't very neighborly (we tried out my M3 and a G2 outside, mostly out of curiosity, and they were really too bright, overkill really) The AAA LE (I just had to use my turquoise too) and the LSH-P really had the bases covered as far as practicality and functionality is concerned and I felt really secure in the fact that we had long runtimes and were using one battery out of our stash to power each of the Arcs and they cycled on and off flawlessly throughout the night. I think my wife is really glad she married a flashaholic now!! Thanks to Peter, Merri and all at Arc for really great products that made our night much less frustrating (the heat and still air being the truly frustrating part) I'll be ordering some more soon!

To anyone who thinks these products are expensive, a light like the AAA in these circumstances could prove priceless. Some of the more profit driven store owners were rumored to be charging $20 for Garrity and eveready style cheap AA lights and $4 per cell for AA batteries after the lights went out. I will never be without 2 EDC lights and spare cells to power them.

TSG [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

paulr · #12 08-15-2003, 10:35 PM

I was at my mom's house when the computer blinked off. I checked to see who tripped over the power cord, then saw the lights were off all over the apartment, went outside and saw the whole block had lost power. Kept walking and someone told me the whole city had lost power. Headed back, someone was sitting in a parked car with the door open and the radio going with folks standing around listening. Radio said the whole northeast was blacked out. I mumbled to myself "whoever said on CPF last week that they wish they had more power failures should be careful what they ask for!!".

The lights I had with me included an Arc LS in my pocket and an Arc AAA and a UKE 2L in my belt pack. The belt pack was tucked away upstairs and so I set up the LS as an area light in the now-dark kitchen where my mom and a visitor had been sitting chatting. My mom also had her PT Blast. I just sat the LS on a shelf pointing at a wall, so the reflected light softly illuminated the room. After 10-15 minutes I went upstairs and got the AAA and 2L from the belt pack. Ow, ow! The LS was hot! But not hot enough to actually burn my hand, just uncomfortable to hold, I'm sure it was within its design limits. I replaced the LS on the shelf with the AAA which still provided plenty of light for sitting around and being able to see where your drink was and who you were talking to. That's a really useful level of light and it's very handy to have a long-running source.

My mom has a small radio/tape player that she keeps plugged into the wall. A few months earlier there had been another power failure there (just her building, and just for a few hours) but thinking of blackouts led me to go buy a pack of D cells to run the radio at that time just in case. Those came in very handy. I loaded them into the radio and we used that to keep up with news for the rest of the outage.

Several neighborhood stores stayed open (without power) and of course flashlights and batteries were all snapped up pretty fast. I didn't need more flashlights but decided a few spare batteries would be a good idea (I had a spare pair of Duracells but figured they might be needed in my mom's Blast). The store appeared out of alkaline batteries but it had some Chinese-made "Extra Heavy Duty" (i.e. zinc carbon) AAA's at 99 cents for a twelve pack. They looked cheap and awful but I figured they'd be better than nothing so I took a pack off the shelf. The guy in front of me in line asked the cashier for AA's and it turned out they had alkaline cells behind the counter, AA's and AAA's (but no D's) so I got a pair of alkaline AAA's, and decided to get the cheap cells anyway just to try them out. I figured if the Arc AAA could run 6 hours on an alkaline, it should run at least an hour or so on a Zn-C cell.

It turns out that the Zn-C cell ran the Arc for over 5 hours! I ran it continuously for 4 hours the first night just to see when it would crap out, and shut it off when I went to bed. Next day I ran it another hour or so. It had a steeper discharge curve than an alkaline would have had, i.e. through most of that run it was dimmer than an alkaline would have been (the Arc AAA is only semi-regulated). But it was still making more than enough light to walk around by the whole time. It never went into the completely unregulated mode that is only useful when you're very well dark adapted. I changed it out because of a bad problem (Peter take note!!): somehow the light wouldn't make reliable contact with the battery and just turn off entirely and refuse to turn back on without removing the battery, jiggling, tightening the head down extra hard, then unscrewing and tightening loosely, etc. I never quite got the hang of it. Same thing happened with a new one of the Zn-C cells (not as bad though). I don't know quite what was going on but I don't think that cell was really dead. Anyway I switched back to an alkaline which was still going strong.

The Arc AAA was definitely the champ of the outage for me. I ran it for 5+ hours (not all essential) as an area and general purpose light. When I needed to go somewhere leaving the AAA, I used the Arc LS. There were a few times when the LS's extra brightness was nice (e.g. when looking for something) but it was never essential. I played with the UKE 2L outside a little (it was amazingly good at lighting buildings across the street) but decided to use it sparingly so I could scavenge its two 123's for the Arc LS if needed (turned out to not be needed). My mom had a 4AA "closet light" but no batteries for it--I got some AA's at the same place as the AAA's and those worked fine so that light was handy. Finally, the food in the fridge started getting warm and Mom decided to cook it, which needed some direct light. So I held the Arc AAA over the stove for a while, then got an idea. I went to the local discount store which by then had long since run out of flashlights and batteries, but they had plenty of baseball caps so I bought her one, brought it home and clipped her PT Blast to it (the Blast has an integral pocket/hat clip). She loved it, said it made her feel like a coal miner. So that made a very handy headlamp.

Lessons learned from such a power failure:

Having bright lights isn't very important, especially long-running ones. Most times when you want a bright light, it's just for a few moments.

Having long-running lights is very useful, they just don't need to be all that bright. The Arc AAA was great. I may add a CMG Infinity to my travel kit.

The main use of a long-running light is as a stationary area light. A light that can stand on end is nice for that, but if you don't have one you can probably improvise something.

Having several lights is better than having one super-duper do-everything light.

The building stairwell had emergency lights which were quite powerful and useful during the first few hours, but then their batteries died and the stairwells were pitch dark. It would have helped a lot if they had a few LED's on top, that could have run for many days on the SLA packs inside.

I might have liked having a few chemical lightsticks around to stick in the stairwell. A flashlight left out there probably would have gotten stolen.

I would have felt better with spare D cells for the radio. Although the stores had some AA's on hand through the whole outage, all the D's got snapped up pretty fast. The D's in the radio did last long enough, as it turned out, and they weren't even alkaline. (We probably ran the radio about 12 hours because other people in the house kept wanting to listen).

Small, low-powered LED lights are great; other than that, I feel flashaholic lights (i.e. anything super-bright for its size, anything using Luxeons, etc.) aren't important. I'd much rather have two or three cheap plastic household 2AA or 2D lights than one Surefire L4 in this type of outage. Also, it's better to depend on common batteries than exotic ones. Although I did have spare 123's for the Arc LS, an AA-powered light would have been easier to keep fed.

I think it's worth having a few lights around that you can lend to strangers without worrying about getting them back. Hence, more cheap plastic lights.

I think I'm going to swap out my EDC Arc LS for a PT Blast. Also will get a few 99 cent household lights to keep in the fridge (maintains battery freshness).

Saaby · #13 08-16-2003, 09:28 AM

The Arc AAA just does some wierd stuff when it's been on for hours and hours and the battery is dead. I attribute it to several things:

The electronics are warm. I wouldn't say they're dangerously warm, it's just part of the whole problem

The battery is dead [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] As you noticed, once you got the Arc going you were good to go, but after you've run it for several hours on end it takes the electroncs and battery a few moments to recover before being able to start up again.

Oxidation. You get oxidation on the positive and nevative battery terminals. When you turn the light on and off it should clean the negative terminal but you may have to clean the positive terminal a bit to get the light to light up. This can be easily accomplished by taking that battery and head out and rubbing the + end of the battery against the solder drop, or by compressing the foam retainer a bit with yoru finger and cleaning it a bit.

Charles Bradshaw · #14 08-16-2003, 09:53 AM

This massive outage proves the saying "you never know when you will need a light," to be true. Yet many still refuse to carry even a keychain light.

I do hope a highly significant percentage of the 50 million affected make the decision to EDC even a lowly coin cell keychain LED light.

This is was a situation where the LS4 would be perfect.

ufokillerz · #15 08-16-2003, 10:25 AM

i had my pelican M6 w3v and 2 ARC AAA's on me, 1 was a LE. ALso had a stash of 123 cells on me. walked into my precinct, did some patrolling and then took charge of the barricade by the precinct. the arc aaa's did a good job of lighting the ground up by my feet and made it easy to walk. the m6 on the other hand lighted up several blocks =)

Wingerr · #16 08-16-2003, 10:25 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Saaby said:Oxidation. You get oxidation on the positive and negative battery terminals. When you turn the light on and off it should clean the negative terminal but you may have to clean the positive terminal a bit to get the light to light up. This can be easily accomplished by taking that battery and head out and rubbing the + end of the battery against the solder drop, or by compressing the foam retainer a bit with your finger and cleaning it a bit.

[/ QUOTE ]

I found that coating the contacts with a bit of Penetrox-A works very nicely to take care of any oxidation issues- just have to make sure you only put on a very light coating, because it's conductive. If you put on too much, you have to back off on the head further to ensure it stays off-

paulr · #17 08-16-2003, 11:16 AM

I checked the AAA electronics temperature after it had been running a few hours just out of curiosity--they did get slightly warm but only slightly. I don't think the heat had any effect. The LS sure gets a lot hotter after just a minute or so.

I still don't know what caused the probs with the Zn-C cells. The battery contacts are likely suspects but either the + or the - contact could have caused the problem. The - side of the battery is just flat, there's no button like on a Duracell. OTOH I've always felt skeptical of the Arc AAA's solder blob contact at the + end. The LS uses a much higher quality cobalt/gold contact and I don't know why the AAA doesn't use something similar.

I still have the nearly-full pack of Zn-C batteries so if Peter wants to test them I'd be happy to put a few in the mail.

As for the Arc LS4, of course if I'd had one I'd have used it, but it's not all that attractive a light for a blackout. I'd much rather have had 3 or 4 Arc AAA's and a PT Blast or two (or even a regular LS). All those lights put together would cost way less than a single LS4.

Charles Bradshaw · #18 08-17-2003, 04:01 AM

Paulr, The LS4's low setting is more what I was thinking of for the 8/14 or similar situation. That gives you extended runtime. Besides, you can always toggle up to high if needed.

Of course, this is theoretical, since the LS4 isn't on the market, yet. I am applying what we currently know of the LS4 to our recent 'experience'. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

paulr · #19 08-17-2003, 10:26 AM

Yeah, I understand about the LS4, the low setting might come in handy in that situation. I have to be clear though, of the 7 hours or so that I logged on my Arc AAA, at least 4 amounted to a runtime test of the Zn-C (i.e. deliberately wasting a battery, mostly by leaving the light running out of sight in my pocket) and most of the rest was just for convenience (lighting a room while sitting around not doing anything important). With even the slightest effort to conserve battery power I would have been fine with 30 minutes of runtime instead of 7 hours. At the cost of some inconvenience (the light was useful while cooking dinner etc.) 5 or 10 minutes would have taken care of all the important stuff. So while the AAA's long runtime was nice to have, I could have gotten by with just the LS.

I mention this because I hope my AAA story wasn't what swayed Peter into thinking an Luxeon AAA would have too little runtime (viz. about 1 hour). I'm still a fan of that concept. If I could swap my standard AAA for a Luxeon AAA, I would do so despite the recent blackout experience. However, I'd put a yellow Photon II on the same keychain as a backup. I'm told that the yellow Photon can make useable light for 10 hours or more.

Charles Bradshaw · #20 08-17-2003, 12:20 PM

Paulr, I understand. Still, it is fortunate that the 'wasted' AAA was not needed later. It was a good idea to find out how the runtime on that type of cell. Now you have confidence in what to expect from those. The duration of the blackout could have been far longer than it turned out to be.

My first Arc LS, is a white Rev1 Second, which included the 1AA pack. It gives 7+ hours on one lithium AA, though not as bright as 2 Lithium AA (still 7 hours Sun mode).

I am going to add 2 each Arc AAA and Lightwave 2100 to my 'to get' list, which includes a list of batteries and quantities thereof.

We all have different preferences. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Charles Bradshaw · #21 08-17-2003, 12:22 PM

My situation is different from most on CPF. I am at home home most of the time, and away from the house, maybe a maximum of 16 hours per month.

paulr · #22 08-17-2003, 12:44 PM

Charles, it's very unlikely that the "wasted" AAA would be needed later. As mentioned in my original post, I had a pack of twelve of them, plus several spare AAA alkalines. If the blackout had lasted anywhere near long enough for AAA batteries to be a problem with no relief supplies coming in, I'd have been far too preoccupied dealing with the resulting famine and riots to think about how to power my silly keychain flashlight. I only did the runtime test because I had plenty of those AAA's to spare and lots of time on my hands.

#23 08-21-2003, 03:56 PM

When I cause another blackout, I'll let you know how mine faired! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/naughty.gif[/img]

Ardy · #24 08-21-2003, 11:30 PM

Tiger,
How many times we said "No playing around power plants?"
You bad bad boy, no LSH-P for you for one week. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

KC2IXE · #25 08-22-2003, 08:45 AM

I was in the SUBWAY [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img] but I got very lucky, as my train happened to be in Times Square Station [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Took out the ARC-LS to guide folks out of the station (1/9 train if your wondering)

Got home, and my wife had the gaglight out. She can never find small lights (she misplaces them), so I bought her a 3D mag long before I knew of this forum. I went upstairs, and got her one of my ARC-AAAs, which she used the rest of the night. I started doing my ham radio emergency stuff (station setup and then note taking) with my EDC ARC-AAA. The LS was just TOO bright for taking notes. Got called out to help the Red Cross. Used my LS while with the ERV in downtown Flushing. We then got called out for fire duty - at the first site, I didn't NEED a flashlight, at the 2nd site, I really wish I had a high dome, or even my surefire with me, as I could have used a bit more throw to do damage assesment of the 2nd floor from the ground. By the 3rd site, the "regular" Red Cross dammage assesment guy was borrowing my LS to go into the fire scene (fire was long out).

Folks were impressed. 2 friends have ordered AAAs in the last day [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]