DIR- Generic Cordless primary light

[Kevin Floyd]

I have no plans to buy a primary light, I’m going to borrow one for fundies but I have been browsing some options and have a question about how cordless lights work within DIR if at all.

how do you handle a light with no cord? Is it still stored on the right D ring? I’m guessing deployment is basically the same. How do you clip it off in the temporary working position?

I did some googling but didn’t find any vids of them being used beyond people swimming around with them already deployed

 

[ericfine50]

I think if/when you try a corded light, you will really like it. Having the cord from BP to LH keeps the light head connected (can't drop it and lose it), and the battery canister is what is used for long hose routing. Having used both over the years, once I went to a can light, I didn't look back on my hand held lights.

 

[Kevin Floyd]

I think if/when you try a corded light, you will really like it. Having the cord from BP to LH keeps the light head connected (can't drop it and lose it), and the battery canister is what is used for long hose routing. Having used both over the years, once I went to a can light, I didn't look back on my hand held lights.

Exactly, I plan on going with a canister when ever I get to the point of laying down the coin.

my real question was is a cordless light DIR and if so how do you use it?

 

[PfcAJ]

Is it DIR? If you’re doing a dive where you can get away without having a cord then yeah it’s fine.

clip it to your right chest when you aren’t using it just like normal.

 

[tbone1004]

@Kevin Floyd since DIR has gotten quite vague as of late, does it fit within the origins of the term? Probably not, but at the same time cordless lights weren't really an option back then. We get an hour of burn time out of something as bright as a 10w HID in our tiny backup lights now. If you look at the agencies that still use the term DIR like UTD and ISE, they are both selling cordless primary lights so by default it is technically "DIR". If you ask the GUE/cave diving crowd, the answer may be different and I'll defer to people like @PfcAJ on that though Halcyon does make a baller cordless primary which I own and love.

Video by an agency that still promotes DIR diving about cordless and corded lights.
Their thoughts on the goodman handle which is going to be quite important if you are committed to staying with DIR. I think hard goodmans on a handheld light are idiotic, but I'm not a DIR diver.

 

[rongoodman]

Their thoughts on the goodman handle which is going to be quite important if you are committed to staying with DIR. I think hard goodmans on a handheld light are idiotic, but I'm not a DIR diver.

It seems like it would be a pain in the neck switching a light with a soft goodman handle to the right hand every time you need to dump gas or something with the left.

 

[tbone1004]

It seems like it would be a pain in the neck switching a light with a soft goodman handle to the right hand every time you need to dump gas or something with the left.

it is and is something you either have to come to terms with and use a hard goodman with the drop risk, or use a soft goodman and figure it out. On my Halcyon handheld, I have a scooter loop that stays around my wrist for drop protection and when I swap to the right hand I just don't use the loop until I switch it back. If I'm using a backup light, I try to be considerate with the light motion or I will just turn it off since I don't use twisty handhelds. Again though, I don't subscribe to DIR in its entirety so I am not strict about stuff like that. I piped in here to give the links to ISE's videos which clearly show that handheld primaries are accepted and how they use them. I use handheld primary lights all the time, but when I do it is usually in OW where switching hands is less critical than in a cave, and if in a cave, it's usually in sidemount where I don't need to swap hands for buoyancy changes since I don't have to reach back. I'll clip off before I switch hands though

 

[Kevin Floyd]

I guess maybe saying “is it DIR” is nit really what I meant.

What I’m trying to understand is are these cordless primary lights that are now brighter or as bright as a canister with really long run times as functional as a canister light without having that cord?

 

[Kevin Floyd]

@Kevin Floyd since DIR has gotten quite vague as of late, does it fit within the origins of the term? Probably not, but at the same time cordless lights weren't really an option back then. We get an hour of burn time out of something as bright as a 10w HID in our tiny backup lights now. If you look at the agencies that still use the term DIR like UTD and ISE, they are both selling cordless primary lights so by default it is technically "DIR". If you ask the GUE/cave diving crowd, the answer may be different and I'll defer to people like @PfcAJ on that though Halcyon does make a baller cordless primary which I own and love.

Video by an agency that still promotes DIR diving about cordless and corded lights.
Their thoughts on the goodman handle which is going to be quite important if you are committed to staying with DIR. I think hard goodmans on a handheld light are idiotic, but I'm not a DIR diver.

perfect. Thanks, that answers my question perfectly.

plus the ISE guy is pretty funny, I really like the vids were he is in his car telling us about something as the works through the gears.

 

[tbone1004]

I guess maybe saying “is it DIR” is nit really what I meant.

What I’m trying to understand is are these cordless primary lights that are now brighter or as bright as a canister with really long run times as functional as a canister light without having that cord?

functional in what sense?
You need a sufficient quantity of light in an acceptable beam pattern for the dive you're doing. The backup lights provide a reasonably narrow beam at 600 ish lumen which is about what a 10w HID can do and that was a normal primary light for many years.
The lights need to have enough burn time for you to be able to complete your dive. They're good for 45 minutes on high for a single 18650 backup light, and if I'm doing a 60-90 minute intro type cave dive I'll often just take a pair of them and swap at turn.
Once you exceed that, investing in a real canister is worth it IMO, especially if you subscribe to DIR. I don't subscribe to all of it, so I just do what works for me at the time. A lot of the reason I own and use the bigger handhelds is because my canister light is threaded into my sidemount harness and is a righteous PITA to take out if I want to use it with backmount.