Little Pete(Offline)

This is a question for anyone who was involved in the earlier cave pushes.

I was just interested what the primary lighting procedure was pre HID. As far as I know, the Pro 14 burns for around 150mins with a 50w halogen (http://www.halcyon.net/lights/pro14_spec.shtml).

When you run the big push dives that might be 3-4 hours or more on the bottom and then deco, how do you manage lighting. Was it that light 'stages' were dropped along with safetly bottles and pulled out again later (either batteries with E/O or whole rigs)?

Just interested given that the current choice seems to be huge Ni-cad packs to give 10+ hrs off an 18w HID.

Thanks.

Joe Hesketh(Offline)

Was in no way involved, but since no-one's posted...

Don't forget Halcyon used to make a monster even bigger than the Pro 14, namely the Pro 24 (see pic below side by side with Pro 14). That would burn for ~300 min with a 50W halogen



Otherwise, I've heard in tapes and stuff GI3 talk about building "ridiculous nicad packs" that burn forever (and you can get a lot of nicads inside one of the big cans...).

Also, perhaps sometimes it just didn't last - I also heard GI3 say about the spare backup light in his pocket (ie this one http://www.wkpp.org/images/pina_equi...ontents_r.jpeg) sometimes being used on deco when the primary had run out. I guess that depends on the cave - somewhere like Wakulla where the cavern entrance is so deep you'd spend a large proportion of your deco in ambient light anyway.

Would be interested to hear any first hand views though.

Joe

Little Pete(Offline)

Now that's a monster battery pack

Rick(Offline)

No.....that's a standard body gavin tube!

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Divingniknaks(Offline)

Pete,

Dont forget with E/O cords you can also carry multiple battery packs on your waist and just move the light head to a fresh pack, which from conversations over beer with a certain person I understand has been done as well.

HTH

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GLOC (Online)

Mmmm, so how does the concept of balanced rig work with something like that? I suppose it boils down to ditching all the battery packs apart from one.

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Little Pete(Offline)

I thought that might be the case Phill though I wondered if with the E/O cords it would be easier to drop several battery packs along with the long distance safety bottles. You pick up another battery 2000 feet into the cave or something and work it from there so you switch back on the way out.

Ziggi(Offline)

For the people who haven't seen the DIR 1 movie (way back from 1996)
GI is there talking about a Gavin Light, it's a transsparant canister, but that thing is huge, it's even bigger than the Halcyon Explorer 24, I think. He also mentions something about AUL.

db8us(Offline)

Some used NiCad cells with around 20Ah at that time.

Little Pete(Offline)

So why has the general battery type come down to SLA and NiMh rather than including Ni-cad? Is it a price thing or something?

The only ones I know of using big Ni-cad packs are JJ and Casey in the WKPP plus Reinhard and Micha in the EKPP.

Very interesting topic though.