Two power outages last night . . .

[FrogsInWinter]

So yesterday the power went out on my block twice. The first time was around 6:30pm. It was still light out so I only got a little bit of use out of my Lightwave 4000 in the basement. The power came back on at about 8:00pm. Then at a little after 9:00pm the power went out a second time. Now it was time to break out the lights.

I walked around the house for a bit using my Nuwai Luxeon 1 watt headlamp on low. For walking around the house, the Nuwai headlamp is probably all you need.

But walking around the house got boring pretty quickly. So it was time to go outside. For that I got out my Fenix L2D-CE and 4C Maglite with TerraLux SSC P4 drop-in. The SSC'd Mag throws its light really far, pretty much the entire length of my block. At one point I swept the light across one side of the block, and in doing that, I temporarily blinded this kid that was outside, guess that's what that yell was . It was fun seeing my neighboors walking outside with generic plastic 2D lights and stock Mags, then clicking on my L2D-CE (set to Turbo mode) or SSC'd Mag.

It was interesting comparing the L2D-CE on turbo to the SSC'd Mag. The SSC'd Mag wins hands down when it comes to throw thanks to that big reflector. But as far as output, both lights seemed pretty even. The L2D-CE had the whiter tint with the SSC'd Mag appearing slightly green in comparison.

The power came back on a little over an hour later. From this little experience, I've learned that I need much brighter lights for the next power outage/blackout :devil:.

 

[ltiu]

You get black outs where you live!!! Where do you live? I want to move there!!!

 

[FrogsInWinter]

I live in NYC. Actually the time to be here, for us flashaholics at least, was in 2003 when almost all of the Northeast was without power. Some places didn't have power for close to 30 hours. Unfortunately for me I was not a flashaholic then and thought my stock 2D Mag-lite was bad ***. The thing that sucked about the blackout was that only my block was affected. All the adjacent blocks never lost power.

 

[vic2367]

hey no fair,,,im in nyc and we didnt loose any power :candle:

 

[Walt175]

In this heat???? I'll keep my power on, thank you very much! :sweat:

 

[vic2367]

awwww your no fun

 

[FrogsInWinter]

hey no fair,,,im in nyc and we didnt loose any power :candle:

For whatever reason it was just my block that lost power.

 

[KingGlamis]

Sorry to slightly hi-jack, but I didn't think this post required a whole new thread. Today we had a short power outage at work. I happened to be standing in the owner's office when it happened. Within 5 seconds I had my EDC out of my pocket and lit up. The owner kind of chuckled, as if he wasn't really surprised that I had a light on me, but was also relieved that I did.

 

[dmc888]

I noticed the same thing with my l2d and mag with terr6 when i compared them.

The output is pretty much the same until you shine past about a block away then the mag is brighter.

Love my l2d.

 

[TORCH_BOY]

We Never lose our power, if so its only for 5 minutes

 

[Quickbeam]

Duke energy just teases us with power outages. The power goes out weekly (it seems) just long enough for all the clocks to reset, the phone to reset, the TV's, VCR's, everything to reset and then comes right back on. I got so sick of having to set the phone's base station clock I put it on a small UPS.

Hundreds of lights and little (legitimate) opportunity to use them... *sigh*.

 

[zipplet]

Here where I live in Kent, we don't get long outages very often, we get teased with small brownouts very often though, I know how you feel Quickbeam... I used to have a UPS on my computer/network setup because of that.

We also get the odd surge, I've had equipment destroyed before

 

[TorchEnvy]

I enjoy playing with my lights as much as the next guy, but I can't power my central air conditioner on my spare lithium primaries! Keep that juice flowin', MidAmerican Energy!

 

[f22shift]

I live in NYC. Actually the time to be here, for us flashaholics at least, was in 2003 when almost all of the Northeast was without power. Some places didn't have power for close to 30 hours. Unfortunately for me I was not a flashaholic then and thought my stock 2D Mag-lite was bad ***. The thing that sucked about the blackout was that only my block was affected. All the adjacent blocks never lost power.

that was a great time. i too wasn't a flasholic but had a bunch of tea light candles. so i had a whole bunch lit everywhere with tiki torches in the porch bbqin'. good memories.

 

[FrogsInWinter]

The good and bad thing is that power outages on my block could be a regular occurrence this summer. How did the guy from Con Edison put it? Something along the lines of, 'You ain't seen nothing yet'. Seems like the antiquated, overtaxed power grid in NYC isn't gonna get a break this summer.

 

[leprechaun414]

thanks for the heads up. Sounds like a feild trip to visit the big apple :twothumbs

 

[Lee1959]

Like has been said I will pass on power outages in this hot weather, or actually like we had last week as today was beautiful. It is dangerous for the eldery in this heat, and it is plain miserable even for myself. I remember all too well the Northeast outage of 2003, was it that long ago already? What a miserable couple of days that was. But it was a good test of my first headlamp, and showed how well they work in such situations.

 

[Kraid]

I had a very legit use for some lights a few months ago. An earthquake hit the Big Island of Hawaii which knocked the power out on my island, Oahu for a full day in someplaces. I'm on a Submarine thats in drydock, so we live/work on a floating office building we call "the barge". It took the civilian ran shipyard about 14 hrs to get the generator up and running, in the meantime, I had 3 LRI Photons to light areas up for me. I even placed one on the quarterdeck on top of the emergency light that was "Supposed" to light up. Something for the security watch to see by. Eventually the nuke electricians broke out some weak (for their size) battle lanterns.

Walking around a completely blacked out nuclear submarine at midnight with no one on board except yourself guided by a Photon II is an exciting and un-nerving experience!

 

[bigfoot]

We just had a power outage here last night thanks to some thunderstorms passing through. Apparently some lightning decided to take out half the town's power grid. Thankfully it wasn't as hot as the night before, so A/C wasn't really needed.

For a good 6 hours it was "lights out" except at my place. When the power company got the electricity back on around midnight I could hear cheers around the neighborhood.

I think I saw one person with a flashlight and that was it. Most had one or two candles burning, if that. This served as a good reminder to me that being prepared is worth its weight in gold. About all I was worried about was my ice cream melting in the freezer.

What got the most use last night? Well, the Stanley "369 Tripod" light was perfect for setting up in the bathroom. And I really appreciated how the 9-volt "Pak-Lite Super" can tail-stand and has two modes (low / high).

One of the other lights I broke out was a Mini-Mag 2AA modified with the Nite-Ize three LED setup and with a red Mag lens filter on it. This light is perfect for walking around the house and not burning out your night vision. According to Flashlight Reviews it can go for 11 hours until the 50% mark. I would say this is my new favorite light for navigating around the house without tripping over anything. Also not used, but it could have been handy, was my Petzl Tikka+ headlamp.

I remember Sub_Umbra's posts about how it doesn't take much light; he is completely right. I had my Surefire G2 out as well, just in case I needed more, but didn't use it at all.

Lessons learned? I am going to return to Costco and purchase some of the "hockey puck" three-LED lights that run on AAA batteries. These will be GREAT under the cabinets in the kitchen, in closets when rummaging for something, etc.

 

[Lee1959]

I have a half dozen of those puck lights Bigfoot, I keep them in my emergency box in a ziplock bag along with batteries for them. Last time the lights went out I grabbed a few, lit them up and sat them around as candles, they worked great.