Re: [Texascavers] carbide vs LED (attempt 2)
Mark Alman wrote: Wow, after reading all of these near-death incidents caused by or around carbide, it makes me wonder why anyone would consider not switching to 100% LED use! Mark Well, I could quibble about whether or not carbide caused all the incidents or whether the propane leak might have been a cause. An accident is what happens when the immutable laws of physics are ignored. - Ambrose Bierce But what about all the deaths carbide lights have prevented? I can think of a few trips personally where the carbide lamps were the only indication of high CO2/low O2. More than once I have rappelled into bad air and knew almost immediately by the response of my carbide lamp. The most recent time was less than a year ago. No LED light will tell you that. For those of you who don't have much experience with low O2 in caves, it can be highly stratified in caves. I have had my head in 15% 02 while at my feet it was 9% (I had a meter that day). OSHA forbids working in atmospheres below 18% O2, if memory serves. At 9%, one passes out very quickly. Imagine you are rappelling into a stratified atmosphere similar to this one. How slowly are you rapelling and how are you going to notice the changes in air quality? Changing over on rope in bad air is very difficult in my experience even if the air quality is significantly better than 9% O2; low O2 makes one stupid (temporarily, I am led to believe). Cap lamps mark stations well with removable, relatively benign marks and will mark on relatively wet surfaces. A cap lamp can be made completely nonmagnetic, is easily removable so that one can read instruments without having yet another piece of equipment to bring into the cave. They work and are durable. I have used a cap lamp since I started caving in 1971. I have tried electrics over the years from time to time and currently own an Apex. I still have yet to find one I trust to last. My Apex leaks if I put under water and sooner or later it will corrode and quit working from that or some other reason that I will fail to understand. I have dropped a cap lamp down a 90 foot pit; it had a minor ding and I was able to continue using it for many more years and still have it in working order. The Autolite I am using is probably more than 50 years old. With very low tech maintenance, there is nothing that will go wrong with it that I cannot fix without tools in the cave. And it will probably go another 50 years with a reasonable amount of care (which is more than I can say for me). Do you think that any of the individual lights in use today will still useable in 20 years? And if not, what does this say for the likelihood that they will fail while you are depending on them? How many times have you been on a trip where an electric light has completely failed? I have seen it frequently. So far, I have not seen a Stenlight fail, but I have seen several Apex fail and high number of Petzel products. But Stenlights, while very bright are also very magnetic and pretty expensive. Carbides are still not very good for diving I will grant, but with a little knowledge, they stand up to long-term immersion quite well. I will also grant they have real drawbacks on multi-day in cave camps. And there is a learning curve that appears to be a bit much for some people. And the USDOT has made it relatively expensive to buy carbide. However, I no longer encourage new people to use carbide lamps. I do think that a durable enough LED light for a reasonable price is not far off. But I think there are some real advantages in having some of us around (OK, so I am not around you in particular) who still know and use the old technologies. And most of us don't bring CO2 meters caving. Philip L. Moss philipm...@juno.com PS If any of you know why my emails occasionally look like Chinese characters when I use the reply function and can tell me how to prevent the font switch without the simple expedient of never using reply, I would appreciate the advice off line. Six Sigma Certification Villanova Six Sigma Certification 100% Online Program - Free Info. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4c14db61d6027a01efm01vuc
Re: [Texascavers] carbide vs LED (attempt 2)
While surveying a cave in southern Kentucky years ago, well decades ago, I developed a headache. After a few more shots down and into a room with a huge pile of rotting leaves, my carbide lamp started acting up. For some reason I climbed up high and onto a ledge to change carbide. The lamp still had plenty of good carbide. I looked down at my companion and noted he was fumbling with his carbide lamp and not accomplishing anything. At that point I realized what was wrong and shouted at my companion to climb up where I sat. Once he climbed up to my level his carbide lamp started to burn properly. We beat a hasty retreat. My headache went away once we were outside the cave. That same year I remember survey trip to another cave. We had a high school student with us, who was a student of the 3rd member of the team. The student, Paul, had a brand new waterproof pack. As we were preparing to leave for the day, Paul decided to change carbide. We were next to the cave stream. As Paul opened his pack there was a tremendous explosion. The blast burned all the hair off Paul's face and his face was bright red with black soot. We washed his face as quickly as we could with the cold stream water. He complained of pain from the burn. By the time we got to town Paul didn't feel the need to visit a doctor or require any pain ointment. The red color had pretty much gone away. By morning he was fine albeit minus facial hair. When I first started caving, one could buy carbide at a local hardware store, either in bulk or in a can. I bought a 100 pound drum of carbide which I shared with fellow cavers. I've had two Princeton Tec LED lights go bad - an Apex and an EOS. Princeton Tec replaced both under warranty without question. If you get the Princeton Tec lights wet inside, just open them up to get the excess water out and re-close. Once home or back at camp, open the lamp up and allow the circuit board to dry. For about ten years I was building my own LED head lamps for caving. I made no attempt to waterproof the lamp or electronics other than a conformal coating on the circuit board. The LED element was mounted on a home made aluminum bracket (bolted to the helmet) that doubled as a heat sink. The circuit board was mounted to the back side of the bracket. The fixture was submerged many times and was never affected by being wet. The typical arrangement consisted of one Luxeon 1-watt LED and four super bright 1/8 LEDs all mounted on the aluminum bracket. (Very much like the Apex arrangement.) Other than having to replace the switches, I never had any problem with those head lamps. I considered them a big improvement over the Nite Lite that I previously used and definitely an improvement over a carbide light. I continued to carry my trusty Autolite for backup and for placing survey stations. I never had to use it as a backup and I eventually started using either a Sharpie or red fingernail paint to mark stations with a very small dot. I haven't carried a carbide lamp for years now. I was lucky to work for a company that permitted and encouraged employees to work on personal projects during their lunch hour and outside of working hours and allowed them to take parts from open stock without charge. Parts taken from controlled stock had to be signed out and judgment used as whether or not to reimburse the company. Our quality assurance manager was always happy to make custom circuit boards for employees. (I think that he had too much free time available.) My best to all, Bill Walden - Original Message - From: Philip L Moss To: texascavers@texascavers.com Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 9:20 AM Subject: Re: [Texascavers] carbide vs LED (attempt 2) Mark Alman wrote: Wow, after reading all of these near-death incidents caused by or around carbide, it makes me wonder why anyone would consider not switching to 100% LED use! Mark Well, I could quibble about whether or not carbide caused all the incidents or whether the propane leak might have been a cause. An accident is what happens when the immutable laws of physics are ignored. - Ambrose Bierce But what about all the deaths carbide lights have prevented? I can think of a few trips personally where the carbide lamps were the only indication of high CO2/low O2. More than once I have rappelled into bad air and knew almost immediately by the response of my carbide lamp. The most recent time was less than a year ago. No LED light will tell you that. For those of you who don't have much experience with low O2 in caves, it can be highly stratified in caves. I have had my head in 15% 02 while at my feet it was 9% (I had a meter that day). OSHA forbids working in atmospheres below 18% O2, if memory serves. At 9%, one passes out very quickly. Imagine you are rappelling into a stratified atmosphere similar to this one. How slowly are you rapelling and how
Re: [Texascavers] carbide vs LED (attempt 2)
The only time I ever rappelled into Deadman's hole, I had an experience like this. I went down slowly, expecting possible co2 because the caves in the Ellenberger in that area are known for it, but still, I was very surprised by how stratified it was. Where I stopped on rope when the air started to seem thin, if I held my bic lighter over my head, it functioned normally. When I drew it down to my waist, the flame began to separate from the lighter, by the time I lowered it to near my feet, the flame was over an inch above the lighter barely burning. This was probably 30-40 feet below the entrance. On Jun 13, 2010, at 8:20 AM, Philip L Moss wrote: I can think of a few trips personally where the carbide lamps were the only indication of high CO2/low O2. More than once I have rappelled into bad air and knew almost immediately by the response of my carbide lamp. The most recent time was less than a year ago. No LED light will tell you that. For those of you who don't have much experience with low O2 in caves, it can be highly stratified in caves. I have had my head in 15% 02 while at my feet it was 9% (I had a meter that day). OSHA forbids working in atmospheres below 18% O2, if memory serves. At 9%, one passes out very quickly.
Re: [Texascavers] carbide vs LED (attempt 2)
Very similar experience in Midnight cave about 12 years ago on an aborted trip. I was first down. It seemed awful dank from the beginning but near touchdown on the garbage pile, it got so bad I was having trouble breathing - I could feel hyperventilation coming on . (No CO2 monitor, no lighter even - but that might have been a good idea).. Quickly changed over and ascended the hell outta there. It was one of those cases where you consider that if you hadn't acted fast, you might just not have had a happy ending! (And of course, fresh air on the surface was like a big cold glass of water after hiking out of the dessert - SWEET!) -WaV
Re: [Texascavers] carbide vs LED (attempt 2)
Phillip, what client do you use to do email? Swiching to text only (turning off HTML or RTF modes) may resolve the problem. Charles Sent via C=64 Mobile On Jun 13, 2010, at 8:20 AM, Philip L Moss philipm...@juno.com wrote: Mark Alman wrote: Wow, after reading all of these near-death incidents caused by or around carbide, it makes me wonder why anyone would consider not switching to 100% LED use! Mark Well, I could quibble about whether or not carbide caused all the incidents or whether the propane leak might have been a cause. An accident is what happens when the immutable laws of physics are ignored. - Ambrose Bierce But what about all the deaths carbide lights have prevented? I can think of a few trips personally where the carbide lamps were the only indication of high CO2/low O2. More than once I have rappelled into bad air and knew almost immediately by the response of my carbide lamp. The most recent time was less than a year ago. No LED light will tell you that. For those of you who don't have much experience with low O2 in caves, it can be highly stratified in caves. I have had my head in 15% 02 while at my feet it was 9% (I had a meter that day). OSHA forbids working in atmospheres below 18% O2, if memory serves. At 9%, one passes out very quickly. Imagine you are rappelling into a stratified atmosphere similar to this one. How slowly are you rapelling and how are you going to notice the changes in air quality? Changing over on rope in bad air is very difficult in my experience even if the air quality is significantly better than 9% O2; low O2 makes one stupid (temporarily, I am led to believe). Cap lamps mark stations well with removable, relatively benign marks and will mark on relatively wet surfaces. A cap lamp can be made completely nonmagnetic, is easily removable so that one can read instruments without having yet another piece of equipment to bring into the cave. They work and are durable. I have used a cap lamp since I started caving in 1971. I have tried electrics over the years from time to time and currently own an Apex. I still have yet to find one I trust to last. My Apex leaks if I put under water and sooner or later it will corrode and quit working from that or some other reason that I will fail to understand. I have dropped a cap lamp down a 90 foot pit; it had a minor ding and I was able to continue using it for many more years and still have it in working order. The Autolite I am using is probably more than 50 years old. With very low tech maintenance, there is nothing that will go wrong with it that I cannot fix without tools in the cave. And it will probably go another 50 years with a reasonable amount of care (which is more than I can say for me). Do you think that any of the individual lights in use today will still useable in 20 years? And if not, what does this say for the likelihood that they will fail while you are depending on them? How many times have you been on a trip where an electric light has completely failed? I have seen it frequently. So far, I have not seen a Stenlight fail, but I have seen several Apex fail and high number of Petzel products. But Stenlights, while very bright are also very magnetic and pretty expensive. Carbides are still not very good for diving I will grant, but with a little knowledge, they stand up to long-term immersion quite well. I will also grant they have real drawbacks on multi-day in cave camps. And there is a learning curve that appears to be a bit much for some people. And the USDOT has made it relatively expensive to buy carbide. However, I no longer encourage new people to use carbide lamps. I do think that a durable enough LED light for a reasonable price is not far off. But I think there are some real advantages in having some of us around (OK, so I am not around you in particular) who still know and use the old technologies. And most of us don't bring CO2 meters caving. Philip L. Moss philipm...@juno.com PS If any of you know why my emails occasionally look like Chinese characters when I use the reply function and can tell me how to prevent the font switch without the simple expedient of never using reply, I would appreciate the advice off line. Six Sigma Certification Villanova Six Sigma Certification 100% Online Program - Free Info. VillanovaU.com
