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 <[email protected]> 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
[email protected]
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.
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