Blackout

Joe Talmadge

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 30, 2000
Messages
2,200
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
Okay, admit it -- you guys all hope they'll be a blackout in your neighborhood, so you can break out your flashlights and be a hero. Go ahead, you can admit it to me, I share your affliction.

We had a blackout last night, it lasted only about an hour, but it gave me an opportunity to see what lights worked for me.

Here's my situation: it happened right while we were fixing dinner. I have a 1-year-old and 3-year-old, and it's important they get fed, or there's BIG TROUBLE around here! So, we're all in the kitchen, we lose power, so now I can only boil or fry things on the gas stove. Because of the babies, and because my wife and I are both cooking, it's important that there's a reasonable amount of light -- much more than needed for a bachelor or even an older family.

Since I don't know how long the blackout will last, one thing I know is that I won't be breaking out my Surefires. Instead, I take stock of other lights that are bright enough to be useful: Arc LS (given to the 3-year-old), Eternalite (nice brightness and runtime even at highest setting), UKE 2L (best brightness, and acceptable runtime during cooking chores), a Princeton Tec Blast, PT Rage, and UKE 2xAAA. We ran all of these at the same time, to keep things bright enough in the kitchen and keep the kids from freaking.

Things I learned:
- I thought in this situation I'd be carrying the Arc LS. You know what? It's guaranteed the 3-year-old will demand the coolest flashlight. Better have a good second-coolest light, and plan for that to be your main light.

- I could have really used a headlamp (I was cooking, constantly doing things with 2 hands). Even a small light clipped to a baseball cap would've been a fine solution. The headlamp doesn't have to be bright, but given the fact that I have young kids, I need a headlamp of at least Arc AAA brightness. I may be that 1AAA single LED cliplight that just showed up on Glowbug, that someone pointed out on the LED forum.

- I could have used a lantern. This may be just the excuse I need to buy that 4AA CCFL/LED/Incandescent jobbie you guys have been giving good reviews for.

- This is the perfect time to convince your SO that she should be carrying a flashlight at all times. My wife picked the 4-AAA Princeton Tec (the Blast or the Rage, whichever is 4-AAA), and I feel good about it.

Joe
 
Why not break out the Surefire's? After all, you paid good money for them in the hope that one day you'll be using them in the manner for which they were designed - to illuminate!
tongue.gif


In situations like these, the word "Rechargeable" comes to mind for some reason...
 
Well, I'm big on using my toys, but the SureFires were never meant as blackout lights, and I don't think they work well. Certainly, burning through a set of 123As every 50 minutes or so -- and a new bulb possibly every few hours -- for what might have lasted an entire evening didn't seem at all enticing!

I would have broken out the E2 (at least) had I needed that much bright light at some point, but I really needed long-lasting, bright-but-dispersed light for closer-up use.
 
Except for the fact that most rechargeables don't have much staying power. I have three; each is good for about an hour or so, then they're done. No power still? No recharge...

I hear you, Joe. I've got plenty of "bright" lights that, unfortunately, don't have much endurance. I'll be buying LEDs from now on.

And I've been debating about a headlamp of some sort. Your experience convinced me that I need one.

Good post; thanks for the insights. We had two hurricanes already, and not so much as a flicker of power shortage. Of course, if I had NOT been prepared...

Steve
 
Originally posted by SCampbell:
Except for the fact that most rechargeables don't have much staying power. I have three; each is good for about an hour or so, then they're done. No power still? No recharge...
Steve
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Unless like me you have a 12v 10AH SLA sitting around and a Ray-O-vac PS4 charger with car adaptor.

EDIT (I just checked, it's a 30AH SLA)

I put them to good use a few weeks ago when I had an 8 hour blackout.
 
Big storms hit the SF Bay Area region yesterday. Winds up to 70 mph caused much property damage and closed down regional bridges. Heavy rains caused landslides and flashfloods.

350,000 at one point or another were out of power last night. Lucky *******s.

I was not so lucky as to have even a flicker of my lights and power...wouldn't you know it?
 
Unless like me you have a 12v 10AH SLA sitting around

In this house there must be over 300Ahs worth of 12 volt lead acid cells (and we aren`t off grid or even have any solar panels or windmills), just one of the perks of being a fire alarm engineer. If it`s getting on a bit and is not good enough to support a system for 24hrs, then give a 30 minute ring of the bells, it gets replaced. And I often rescue the better ones for various uses. Got two big 65Ah monsters that I had great plans for (solar power) but never did do anything with. So they get topped up 4 times a year along with the rest. Maybe next summer....?

...I also deal with emergency lighting and have 4 or 5 fixtures removed from sites that I then went on to repair, and are now dotted round the place. These are the flourescent type, very common in this country, that give 3+ hours from their internal 4ah nicad cells.

We havn`t had a power failure that lasted more than a half hour for a dog`s age. I kinda hope we don`t either, as those nicad batteries aren`t cheap, and they usually need replacing after a total deep discharge, they never come back up to give 3+ hours of light again. And nothing works here without power- no, not even the gas stove, it has an electric shutoff solenoid valve. No easy way to hook in an inverter down there either...
rolleyes.gif
 
Heh, I bought a cyclone headlamp from walmart ($20 has 3 white led's 1 krypton) it's been a godsend if you need light a bit more than a few seconds to find and grab. Always pointed to where your looking at and both hands free. I've used it constantly for prob over 8hrs now (camping/book reading) and it's still on the same heavy duty (non alk aaa) battery it came with. It's o-ring sealed and passed the blow test with flying colors(water proof). It also puts out quite a bit of light each led was brighter than my infinity with fresh batteries. (by the way that works out to >3x brighter than infinity)
Best $20 I've spent on any light. One drawback though.... during camping I was called "geek" more than once by my female friends because of the headlamp. Funny thing though... those same people borrowed the headlamp quite a few times.

It's branded cyclone (makers of various halogen/xenon downhill bike headlamps) it's worked great for me and at $20 what a deal.
 
My power was out for a while last night but since I have a 12 VDC LED light system throughout the house, no problem
tongue.gif
I did get to use my EDC and some new mods shining in my neighbors back yard to determine the damage they suffered from the wind. For some reason, they weren't as cheerful as I was
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CNC Dan,

Yeah, I have car (DC) charging units for both Stingers and the SL-20. That's still behind the curve. Three hours plus a tad of usable light, 12 hours at least to get one back up to speed; unless you have a fast charger.

But that doesn't do the stick any good at all. You might not care if it was enough of an emergency, though.

Still, a good large LED light will solve all of that. Just have a sackfull of D cells and hang out.

I will definitely be getting a D-cell LED light. But I'm going to sit back a while and see what develops.

Steve
 
Sorry about the power outage... NOT!!!
grin.gif
I agree that in that situation with young children and need to use both hands a headlamp is a good idea. I have 2 Petzel models (1 Micro incandescent and 1 Zippka LED) and have gotten alot of use out of them. I am leaning towards the Zippka more these days due to the nice clean white light vs the yellow glow of the older Micro model. The Petzel Zippka and Tikka have an optional little nylon and velcro case that is great. I use the case to keep the Zippka attached to the shoulder strap of the pack I carry
smile.gif
.
 
Hm- LS light with a small SLA (6 or 12v, ~10Ah) and a frosted block of plexi to diffuse the light... Wire carry-handle to hang from the ceiling. With a switching power-supply, battery-life should be impressive, and making it switchable between 70/300/600mA should be easy. New project time.
grin.gif
 
Short blackout? cool. Sounds like you had some fun!

My favorite blackout flashlight, years ago, was a mini-maglight, because it would run for about 5 hours, and I could carry 2 extra sets of batteries w/o a problem. Those that had 2C and 2D lights were screwed. They ran out of batteries too quickly.

Times have changed, and now I *always* carry an Arc-AAA. The mini-maglite now has a newbeam conversion, which I carry when I need a light, even if it's just a spare, and the Trident headlamp is what I mostly use for working by flashlight. Have a Tikka, too, for lighter duty headlamp use. (You need 2 LED headlamps.
smile.gif
)

Then, for area lights, I have a couple of Eveready Arc-Whites (cold cathode flourescent), a couple of closout radioshack 2-AA CCF's, a couple of Eveready 2 LED lanterns, a couple of "Walmart special" 4-AA single tube flourescent lights, and a couple of 12V single tube flourescents that I run from either a 12V deep cycle wet cell, or a gell cell I keep for ham use. Keep lots of AA alkalines on hand, and keep the 12V cells trickle charged.

I find area lights are usefull for walking around and also calming people down, while headlamps are good for reading or working on things. About the only time I use a flashlight in a blackout is when I'm looking around for something in a closet or cupboard, or walking around outside.

Part of all this is because I'm a flashlight nut, part is because I do volunteer radio stuff where you never know where you're going to be, but you'll probably be in the dark. (Usually in more than one way!
smile.gif
) I try to have 2 of each light, too, unless it's just an extra or spare. Murphy's law...

Now I need to make an LED lantern that will run from a gel-cell, and buy one of the carry cases for my Tikka that was mentioned above.
 
hahahaha, i also got an experience with blackout,
It happened when me and my girlfriend going out to the mountain, visiting her friend,
when we arrived to her friend "villa"
and have a minutessss of chat,

and suddenly its blackout! and we are away farrrr from the city, the condition is so blackk, that we event cant see our hands infront of our eyes.

And im carrying my SF 9AN in my pants pocket (my girlfriend always complaining about it)
LUCKY ME! hohohhohoho.!

time to be pride! , soon i igniting my SF to the ceiling and YES! its daylight again.
(i feel sooooo happy that time)

and suddenly the chat topic is talking about my flashlight, and one of them is looking forward to buy this flashlight (welcome to cpf?)

but, yes, the rechargeable is not long enough.
lucky me again, the lights are up after about 20 minutes.

I think thats all.
grin.gif
 
maybe peter gransee should make a D cell version of the ARC-AAA for blackout use, as it would probably have a very long runtime
smile.gif
of course it wouldn't be all that bright for its size, but runtime is the issue here right?
 
You guys are lucky...........during storms over here two weeks ago I was cut off for four days. My Maglites were used for the practical going to the bathroom type of thing and collecting coal for the open fire (yes,we use coal over here!) But my Surefires never really got used much. (Too expensive in batteries and bulbs!) I mainly got by using an old gas camping lamp and a Lightwave 2000. The lightwave hadn't got used very much before as I didn't rate it too highly. However, I now have reappraised my need for LED lights and will get some more. That small Lightwave got used every night sometimes for up to four or five hours at a time and it never needed any new batteries! The light was maximised by placing it on a shelf one side of the room to reflect out of a large mirror (good trick?) I have to say it has done me proud!

By the way, our gas stoves ( have two) proved not too successful as by day 3 we had used up 6 cans of gas and couldn't buy any more locally due to others having the same idea. In the end I bought a Coleman petrol camping stove. Which whilst really good had me very uneasy about being used indoors due to fire risks and fumes etc. Still as I have a young child I had to heat some things up!!

Doug
 
Blackouts (power outages) tend to happen at the most annoying times, like when you are watching a program that isn't going to be shown again, and you REALLY want to see it: power dies halfway into program and doesn't come back until after its over (grrrrr). Happened to me several times.

I tend to think in longterm worst case scenarios for planning purposes, though not in cataclysmic terms. I figure 6 months without power is more than enough for planning. This is one reason that I ordered a custom 2C pack for the Arc LS.

Nihraguk and Dougmccoy, I put single white nichia based replacement bulbs in my 2D Mag, Coleman Peak 1 headlamp (2D), Petzl Zoom, Radio Shack old 3D worklight, and a 2 LED I got from C. Crane in a Radio Shack Focusing Krypton 3D. That makes the most out of those batteries and gives new usefulness to old flashlights. The Mag and Coleman have Verslux PR-2 LED bulbs in them and those are quite bright on 2 D cells. The Zoom and RS 3D worklight have bulbs from LEDcorp.

I also have a PT Solo with Matrix Module, LW Illuminator, LW 4000, 2 Brinkmann Rebels, Modded headlamp for Arc LS, Infinity, Infinity Ultra, Reactor, 2 Arc LSes (1 cyan), and Folding 2 LED Lantern for my LED lights. I have one of those 2AA RS flourescent lanterns, 4AA flourescent lantern, and a Brinkmann Legend LX for my incandescant needs.

For cooking I have 2 propane backpacking stoves and a Magic Heat stove plus extra cans for backup.
 
Originally posted by SCampbell:
[QB]Except for the fact that most rechargeables don't have much staying power. I have three; each is good for about an hour or so, then they're done. No power still? No recharge...

For AA or AAA batteries, both of my chargers, C.Crane and Radio Shack #23-034, are capable of running off of the 12v cig. lighter or utility recept. in my vehicles. The 12v power cord that came with the RS fits the C.Crane unit and vice versa. In fact, I have a second RS 23-034 that comes along on vacations or long road trips to keep my NiMh powered Double Barrels and Tec-40 fed. It would be second nature for me to begin "topping off" everything from my garage when I realized that the line power might be out for a while. That hasn't happened in a while though, dammit.
 

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