Some home-made lights in action

[papasan]

went caving today. i had, of course, a bunch of lights and a few glow sticks on me. an arc-le, an arc-ev, and a PT surge. mounted to my hardhat i had two modified kids adventure headlamps (the $6 ones from wal-mart) with ZLT+ circuits and LS/Os. the main a white and the backup an amber lambertian.

it worked out fairly well. a friend that went with me had a petzl duo 5 LED module and a lightwave illuminator and my LS was about twice as bright and deffinatly shot out further. although one excellent thing about 5mm LEDs that i missed was the side light, they put out a little light in almost 180 degrees. the LS optics focused the light down pretty tight (old optics).

the backup light i didn't use very much until the end of the trip when the white started to fade a little (we were underground a little over 3 hours). i like the beam pattern much better, it had a nice tight hot spot with plenty of corona, but the amber light was less usable. although it did remind me of an incandescent alot and actually was pretty close to the color of the petzl duo's hi beam.

the arcs i just pulled out to show off and the surge i only pulled out once or twice. the cave didn't have any huge rooms (the ballroom was only 30x20 or so) and the yellowish light was repulsive =P. tho much better than the duo or amber LS.

 

[lambda]

Great set up!

Nice to hear some real world reports from the field from someone who used a Luxeon for primary lighting.

One of these days I'm going to try mine in the local caves too; ya, right, in my spare time.........

 

[papasan]

it was kind of spooky using homemade lights in a zero light environment. adds a little to the adrenalin =).

oh, forgot to mention that i had a cree UV and a mini-mag on me as well.

i can hear the moaning now...

i only brought the mini-mag because it was in my belt pouch with my knife and leatherman =P.

oh, and my green infinity in my first aid kit.

jeez, that's liek 10 pounds of lights and batteries. no wonder i'm tired.