Good question,
I am one of the accelerator operators at Cornell University's positron-electron particle accelerator, and the control room (where I spend most of my time) is like something out of a sci-fi movie: low level lighting, loads of LEDs and scopes and CRTs and computers and other displays. It's very handy to have a light on hand for a multitude of odd tasks, from dropped pens to running BNC connections.
Also, walking around the 1/2 mile circumference ring (which is 40-50 feet underground) presents many opportunities for me to use my LS or AAA. During the recent blackouts my Arc lights came in very handy. We have backup generators here, but they must be started by hand, and a lot of breakers need to be switched and pumps restarted, and so on.
My Arc LS gets the most use when I survey magnets in the ring. They must be placed to within a mm or so for our optics calculations to work out well. Unfortunately, though we have a $50,000 Leica total station, we only have cheap 2D industrial flashlights. It never ceased to amaze and annoy me every time I had to deal with weak lighting of targets. BUT NOT ANYMORE! I bought the 2AA TSP for my Arc LS and so I can use batteries from the stock room and my targets are now lit up nicely. Actually, for survey use, I find that the light is actually a bit TOO white. It increases the glare from the reflective material. Still, it's way better than a dim incan. The thing that really gets me is that even after changing the batteries and bulb on those lights, they can still be dim because of bad contact points, tarnishing, mechanical switch failures, etc. Even nag-lites. My mini is worthless even with new bats and bulb. It sits useless on my desk. Fortunately, I have my Arc LS now! Also, it fits perfectly in the nag -lite leather holster (with 2AA TSP, of course).
Anyway, thanks Peter, for a great light. I love the multiple power pack configurations. Keep up the good work.
p.s. If anyone happens to be in Ithaca, NY and wants a tour, let me know!
