Do you have a clip on your (smallish) flashlight? Do you have a watch? Clipping the light to your watchband frees your hand.
Not really a headlamp substitute, but it is surprisingly handy for all sorts of I need a light-tasks. The quark clip works splendid for this, others clips may be to wimpy. Anything bigger than 2*AA size is probably too big. 1*AA/1*CR123 is perfect, 2*AA is good, but maybe a bit long. 1*18650 should be the right size.
I've done this numerous times in my shed, checking my kids, out camping and so one. The light will shine on what you are doing with your hands. Good for walking as well (point your arm to lit something up). The drawback is that changing modes or turning on/off is difficult with a tail clicky if you wear anything more than a T-shirt. So is inserting the clip into the watchband wearing a heavy jacket.
I think if you forget about the watch and just use one or more straps on your forearm you have a rather good outdoors solution. A knee injury has prevented me for testing how this works for running, but I suspect the light will bounce too much. Combine it with a headlamp and it should be OK - the headlamp to see where you're going and you point your arm to find out where the trail leads you. For walking and all those close proximity tasks it does work quite well. I'd still prefer a headlamp for those applications, but this is a good substitute.
I think this setup should work very well for skiing downhill. Your forearm will point more or less in the correct direction holding a ski pole anyway, so it makes sense to strap a light parallel to your forearm. Voila, a good and cheap setup for augmenting your headlamp. In flat terrain and uphill, a decent headlamp is plenty powerful for skiing - but going downhill it isn't. High powered headlamp that could compare with, say, a quark AA^2, are rare and very expensive.
I'm afraid of the "bad pun" and "bad humor" militias roaming the net, and therefore I will never call a hands-free solution "handy" ...
Not really a headlamp substitute, but it is surprisingly handy for all sorts of I need a light-tasks. The quark clip works splendid for this, others clips may be to wimpy. Anything bigger than 2*AA size is probably too big. 1*AA/1*CR123 is perfect, 2*AA is good, but maybe a bit long. 1*18650 should be the right size.
I've done this numerous times in my shed, checking my kids, out camping and so one. The light will shine on what you are doing with your hands. Good for walking as well (point your arm to lit something up). The drawback is that changing modes or turning on/off is difficult with a tail clicky if you wear anything more than a T-shirt. So is inserting the clip into the watchband wearing a heavy jacket.
I think if you forget about the watch and just use one or more straps on your forearm you have a rather good outdoors solution. A knee injury has prevented me for testing how this works for running, but I suspect the light will bounce too much. Combine it with a headlamp and it should be OK - the headlamp to see where you're going and you point your arm to find out where the trail leads you. For walking and all those close proximity tasks it does work quite well. I'd still prefer a headlamp for those applications, but this is a good substitute.
I think this setup should work very well for skiing downhill. Your forearm will point more or less in the correct direction holding a ski pole anyway, so it makes sense to strap a light parallel to your forearm. Voila, a good and cheap setup for augmenting your headlamp. In flat terrain and uphill, a decent headlamp is plenty powerful for skiing - but going downhill it isn't. High powered headlamp that could compare with, say, a quark AA^2, are rare and very expensive.
I'm afraid of the "bad pun" and "bad humor" militias roaming the net, and therefore I will never call a hands-free solution "handy" ...
