PeLu said:
I agree with Ocelot, except that my experience shows that 4 or 5 levels are better than a continous control.
I would personally define "better" as resulting in a more robust switch.
For ease-of-implementation when I build my own lights, I can very easily do a continuous control without resorting to extra ICs or a CPU. But since most people don't build their own lights, that is a concern that they don't have. I also don't like having to step through 4-5 other levels to get to the one I want.
I also like continuous because I cave in extremely varied brightness caves (not that others don't). For example, we have some VERY black lava tubes around here, some not-so-black. Also alpine caves with pretty dark schist in places (floor/large part of the walls, with ceiling in marble). Then, in the same cave, you have full, white marble walls. Then there are the much lighter-walled caves where power isn't so necessary. More recently in Peru, the floor/ceiling were often sandstone which is betwen the two extremes. Which is why I like being able to really tune the light to the circumstances, and optimize the battery power.
And then of course the crawlways... And turning down the light to do book or read maps.
PeLu said:
Itis absolutely not necessary to keep 3 lights on your helmet all the time. Actually I only have one on my helmet at a time and I'm quite happy the last several hundreds caving trips.
I happen to have three lights on my helmet, but they don't take up as much space/weight as one might think. I agree that 3 lights is overkill. Although one backup mounted on the helmet should be available; what are you going to do if your light fails while on rope in the middle of an ascent? Or you go down a crawl to check it out, leaving your pack behind, and something happens? I used to carry another light around my neck, but that often chafed my neck, so I switched to a spare light on my helmet.
This reminds me of caving in Guatemala, where we were floating in a river on our way out of the cave, and we were all using carbide lights. The passage at one points gets much smaller, the river speed picks up, and all of a sudden you get sucked into the choke point, the wind blows out your carbide, and you go whipping around a bend in the river... It sure was nice that someone had a spare electric headlamp to switch on at the time.
I have a Brinkman high-pressure xenon running on 2 lithium CR123A cells for high lead spotting. It's a highly focused 5W light that throws a pretty good beam. It's a small & lightweight light mounted to the side.
The other helmet light is a photon micro light for emergency use, tucked inside a large rubber band (tire inner tube). Almost no weight at all.
PeLu said:
Rechargeable lights are only worth the hassle if you do lots of caving. Primary cells are just easier.
Well, you would have to define "lots".
I only cave maybe 1/month, a bit more in the summer. Since I use the same rechargeable batteries in my digital cameras and GPS units, it's not that much of a hassle. Certainly if I didn't share these batteries, and I only went caving once every 4-5 months, then rechargeables wouldn't make much sense.
The other advantage of rechargeables is that they have much lower internal resistance than primary batteries when you are talking smaller sizes such as AA, so they can provide more power for a longer period of time without dropping a bunch of wasted power as heat inside the battery.
Scott
Denise and I are just now getting into caving.
