Several years ago, Coast Company came out with a nice looking headlamp called the HL8.
I imagine lots of cavers have tried the HL8, as it has been readily available at several stores. I had been wanting it since I first saw it. I was really looking forward to getting it someday. I finally decided to spend some money on myself after months of being a miser, in part because the price now us only $ 55 plus tax. I will let you read the details of the specs in the link below. The HL8 has 3 decent brightness levels that adjust oddly by rotating a large knob. Best to just leave it in the middle. The HL8 has a rotating focus, but the mid-focus has a terrible light pattern. Meaning it is either an okay spot beam, or a very good flood, and nothing good in between. Here are several things that may affect your decision to buy the HL8, or to use it in a particular cave. Rotating lamp parts have a very tiny gap filled with a lubricated o-ring. These have to be kept clean and maintained or they will leak and corrode the electronics. I would not use this lamp in a very wet muddy cave, where you might duck under sumps or be in heavy waterfalls, or really gritty mud, etc. Better to use a lamp designed by cavers for that and pay $$$. The battery-pack lid is held down with a cheezy tiny thumbscrew. You need to press the lid tight and then very carefully tighten the thumbscrew till it is just firm or you will strip the threads and ruin the battery-pack. They should have used two screws with larger threads. The o-ring on the battery plack is just a hard rubber polygon-shaped thing with no seal-groove. That is never going to be fully water-proof. I guess you could add a thin layer of white lubricant and use Gorilla duct-tape to hold it down, and then not plan on changing the batteries during the trip unless they just die on you. Even with those flaws, the battery pack is the best of the retail headlamps. This lamp fits perfect on small helmets. Large helmets may require the lamp and battery-pack to be mounted with screws. It is bulky to wear on the bare head. http://www.frys.com/product/7795838?source=google&gclid=CjwK EAjwl9DIBRCG_e3DwsKsizsSJADMmJ11b7vTeaXzhf6KZm8A8Bv8g7AKggXw B_7lC9gou5SkERoClErw_wc I have given most of my lights away at recent NSS Conventions. So I will probably keep this one, until I can get a real caver-designed headlamp. This would be a good lamp to use on 13 hour trips to caves in the Guads, like 3-Fingers, or Hell Below Cave, or Madonna Cave or Ogle Cave, back of Cottonowood Cave, etc. Probably overkill for Lake Cave or Christmas Tree Cave or Hidden Cave. If I went to loss Grutas de Precipicio, near Bustamante, I would use this headlamp. If you are going to NSS Convention, don't take it in a cave in Texas. David Locklear NSS # 27639
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