Flooded Light, new light recommendations?

[KentB]

@grant****stick
Humour me. What dive did I do? What profile did I run? When did I do this? Who did you get your information from? (Hint -surely wasn’t me and my last trip to Florida was solo soooooo heresay say at best) what’s my experience level? What’s my skill set at?
You can’t answer any of this with first hand knowledge since you have never met me let alone dove with me.

 

[kaylee_ann]

@Dark Wolf thoughts? ik you've had a few lights.

 

[tbone1004]

I had a razor Primary can light and the light head flooded, so I'm in the market for a new light. I dont want a razor light as Ive had this one flood twice and also 2 backup lights from them flood, 3 of them were in the first couple months so im just not interested in their products.
I grabbed a big blue 4800 hand held for the time being off a friend who no longer dives and I don't like it. I like the small light heads that can lights offer.
Ive used a dive rite EX35 for ~20 dives and wasn't really a fan.
I want a can light with a small head and something fairly powerful.

I mainly dive in the Vancouver Canada deep enough to be pitch black regularly deeper than 200', some cave diving hopefully more often in the future with travelling going back to normal
I'm also open to options with a battery with a second output for suit heat as my venture heated vest is not quite keeping up to long deco obligations in the winter time.

budget is ....... I dont want to overpay but Im not looking for cheep/budget options Im willing to pay for quality.
i liked a lot of things about the razor light but the quality was low and their customer service was all but non existent.

must haves
small head
fairly powerful
minimum 4 hr burn time on high.

LM? UWLD? any other suggestions?

The only option that ticks both small light head and crazy output is the UWLD. All the others have fairly choady light heads and nothing out there is as powerful as the UWLD. If there is a lot of particulate in the water you'll need to turn it down for backscatter purposes but at that point it will be about as bright as the Focus 2.0.
The stack cap on the UWLD allows you to run the vest heater when you want it but remove it if you don't, and the vest heater is the most powerful and flexible on the market giving you full output of the heated vest instead of the LM/Halcyons that only output about 75-80% of the vests heat output because of the lower pack voltage.

 

[tbone1004]

@grant****stick
Humour me. What dive did I do? What profile did I run? When did I do this? Who did you get your information from? (Hint -surely wasn’t me and my last trip to Florida was solo soooooo heresay say at best) what’s my experience level? What’s my skill set at?
You can’t answer any of this with first hand knowledge since you have never met me let alone dove with me.

I believe he is referring to your Day 6 cave training taking place in Eagles Nest which is generally frowned upon in the community. That's a bit sporty of a pace that has gotten a lot of people in a lot of trouble over the years. I'm not going to say that was a blatant standards violation as I don't know what agency that was taught under but it is certainly not allowed by most agencies and like I said, is frowned upon in general. I'm also not going to say that you aren't a skilled diver, but even if you had hundreds of hours on a CCR with dozens of hours at the Mod3 level, you were still very new as a cave diver.

Also, I did see you in the water during your training, but as I can't remember which day of cave training that was I'm not going to say anything about it. I had to turn Mel's headphones on in the parking lot for her since she already had her dry gloves on, that one stuck out.

 

[kaylee_ann]

I believe he is referring to your Day 6 cave training taking place in Eagles Nest which is generally frowned upon in the community. That's a bit sporty of a pace that has gotten a lot of people in a lot of trouble over the years. I'm not going to say that was a blatant standards violation as I don't know what agency that was taught under but it is certainly not allowed by most agencies and like I said, is frowned upon in general.

well, Grant said he used it for his first post-class full cave dive. which implies he believes Kent dived the Nest outside of class.
it was an unfounded remark, and even if he did dive it during training, that would be on the instructor. and what does it have to do with anything, anyway? @grantctobin

 

[J-Vo]

I can vouch for @Bobby 's costumer service. He just replaced the cord on my LD36 for the third time and I practically had to force him to take money for it. Also, repair was less than a week door to door.

 

[rddvet]

well, Grant said he used it for his first post-class full cave dive. which implies he believes Kent dived the Nest outside of class.
it was an unfounded remark, and even if he did dive it during training, that would be on the instructor. and what does it have to do with anything, anyway? @grantctobin

As a local cave diver, instruction shouldn't happen at the nest except in certain circumstances. Sure it falls on the instructor.

 

[tbone1004]

well, Grant said he used it for his first post-class full cave dive. which implies he believes Kent dived the Nest outside of class.
it was an unfounded remark, and even if he did dive it during training, that would be on the instructor. and what does it have to do with anything, anyway? @grantctobin

next time we are both either in Boston or Raleigh it's probably best discussed over a beverage of some variety.... I'm in those cities at least once a month for work so hopefully we can make that happen!

 

[tbone1004]

I can vouch for @Bobby 's costumer service. He just replaced the cord on my LD36 for the third time and I practically had to force him to take money for it. Also, repair was less than a week door to door.

Which right now is impressive given that his shop is currently getting overhauled.

3rd replacement cord? Those are mil-spec cables, what are you doing to that poor light?

 

[kaylee_ann]

next time we are both either in Boston or Raleigh it's probably best discussed over a beverage of some variety.... I'm in those cities at least once a month for work so hopefully we can make that happen!

Oh really?? That’s awesome haha. I’ll DM you!