Gear Tips:
Headlamps

by Rob Lombard
gear@redpawfeed.com TheFrostLine.com
http://www.thefrostline.com

I was out feeding dogs the other night. I searched for my headlamp, as I don't have any other lighting in the dog yard. Like many others I have several headlamps due to the fact that races require that you have two complete functional units along with the fact that the bigger ones are really not very convenient for quick use like running out to the dog yard to feed, scoop and look over each of the dogs. I really prefer the small one that is easily slipped on over a hat or directly onto my head, it was no where to be found, so I grabbed the big one which requires that I fish the wires down my shirt or wrapped around my head to the battery pack clipped on my belt. Got that all done and headed outside, click, the orange beam that could only light up my hand in front of my face indicated the batteries are about done. This brings up what I call "battery milking" which gets performed when out on a run on a cold night with batteries that work great coming out of the warm house but are on their last leg when out on a cold run. It works like this: you do as much as you can with your headlamp turned off to let the batteries "charge" back up a touch, then quickly turn the headlamp on to see what you need to as quickly as possible before the dreaded orange beam comes back and turns to nothing shortly after that. Boy was I getting frustrated; what was supposed to be a quick run out to the dog yard had now turned into a major ordeal just to get out of the house and get the feed buckets prepared. I started thinking there must be better solutions out there these days. I need a light that is easy to use, light weight, sparing on batteries and has a bulb that lasts forever. Hmmm, sounds too good to be true right?

Anyone that has been mushing or training coon dogs can relate to the unexpected frustrations that occur with headlamps. Headlamps are your best friend on cold long nights but they can also become your worst enemy if YOU don't prepare yourself properly with reliable equipment and the fore thought to use them in the situations that you will encounter. A couple hours into researching what is out there for choices was somewhat of a shocker to me; what I thought of as basically a flashlight on your head became a myriad of styles along with the requirement of building your knowledge of batteries and bulbs. Yes in order to make an educated decision on a headlamp you need to know all about the expensive parts which is NOT the headlamp itself, rather it is the batteries and indirectly the bulbs that dictate battery consumption. OK I did know that halogen is bright compared to regular bulbs and I did know that the price for having the brighter light was that you would burn through the batteries quicker. Now throw the cold into the mix!

Tip - Make sure that there is no way the flashlight in your kit can be turned on accidentally if batteries are installed. Even some seemingly foolproof switch designs seem to find ways to turn themselves on

On a more factual level you may find these comparisons enlightening about the differences between bulbs. Halogen will have a light range on an average 3 times as far as a standard bulb, so with a headlamp that can range 90 feet with a standard bulb you can expect to range around 270 feet with a Halogen. However, halogen will use 4 times the batteries compared to a standard bulb. To put that into perspective, a headlamp that will last for 12 hours on a standard bulb is only going to last for 3 hours using a halogen bulb and that means changing batteries in one nights run to keep the full range of your beam! A third comparison is the life of the bulb: halogen bulbs are much more reliable and have a much longer life than incandescent bulbs. Last race season I discovered that one of the things most forgotten is spare bulbs so be sure to find out what kinds you need and stock up prior to race day. It can be a bit hard to locate the right bulb in a town that you are not familiar with on short notice.

Tip - Don't shine your headlamp in other's eyes! Most people find this disrespectful and rude yet I have it happen to me at EVERY race event.

LEDs!!!

A huge discovery at the races last year was the new LED headlamps that were out there. This was the first year I noticed them anyhow but as you will see these lights will make traditional flashlights, headlamps and anything else extinct in a matter of a few years I am sure. These headlamps brought a bunch of color to the nights with blues and green lights shining amongst the blinking red veterinarian, officials, and lead dog lights (also LED lights). So just what do LED lights offer that make them the fastest growing style of headlamp? Two main reasons: the bulbs last virtually forever and they are very easy on batteries. While some makers claim the LEDs will last upwards of 100,000 hours, others only claim 50,000.

Like pearls, LEDs are graded and can be matched for output and color. One fallout from this has been that the brighter and whiter you want them, and the better color matched they are if more than one, the more expensive these LEDs are. That translates to a more expensive end product.

At first when LED lights came out they were just not bright enough for camp work or seeing your lead dog in a bigger team. LED's themselves have been around for quite some time in electronic equipment mostly with the little red light being the most commonly used application. In 1990 the white LED was invented which paved the way for today's emerging flashlights, penlights, and headlamps. Two years ago you could not buy a LED lamp that was practical for anything other than close up low light applications. The lights were great for applications where you need to retain your night vision due to the soft blueish glow that was emitted. So what happened is there were hybrid lights that had both the traditional beam and a LED light which allowed you to switch from the bright beam to the LED when you only needed the softer lighting.

Today a company called Lumileds is making the Luxeon Star, which is equivalent to 10 or more of the original white LED's, and has become the standard to compete with. So now there is the high output 5 mm LED and, the newest style, the 1 watt LED. I am only aware of a couple of headlamps using the Luxeon Star right now and they are the Streamlight Argo and the Princeton Tec Yukon HL. The Streamlight Argo ($42.95) is a one LED lamp with high, medium, low and strobe settings which aid in battery consumption reduction while giving you the brightest LED made. The Princeton Tec Yukon HL ($59.95 ) is unique in the fact that it is the first total LED hybrid light containing one Luxeon Star LED accompanied by three high output 5mm LED's to allow for bright light need situations and low light situations to preserve batteries better. I am sure that there will be many models using this bulb in the near future so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Another headlamp that has been receiving very good reviews and which made it's mark before the advent of the Luxeon Star 1 watt LED is called the FrontaLED. Made in Switzerland, it contains 10 LED's and is said to cast very good light and perform flawlessly in cold conditions. One of the reviews said that they used the Alkaline batteries that it came with, used it extensively for 17 days, and never required a battery change! The second big FrontaLED feature is its magic magnetic switch. To turn the lamp on, you just push it forward on its hinge. The round dark thing you can see behind the turned-on lamp in the below picture is a magnet, glued to the lamp holder; a magnetic switch sealed inside the lamp assembly turns on when the lamp moves away from the magnet.

Tip - change the bulb and batteries in your headlamp while running on a practice run one night. The practice will prepare you for the time when it is NOT expected.

As I look at the various models out there it is evident that much like the traditional headlamps, LED's just aren't designed for mushers running in sub-zero temperatures. That is why the arctic headlamp made by Cold Spot Feeds and replicated by others has been THE headlamp for the serious musher out there. They made it for mushers with everything catered to cold weather and waterproofing. Another thing about LED lights is that they shine directly forward so reflectors are not a factor, which also means that you can't concentrate the beam but rather they give off a glowing type light that lights up a large area around you.

One of the unique qualities of the LED's is that they don't turn into that dreaded orange glow as the batteries begin to die, they continue to glow white and, according to several tests, they will remain glowing enough to read a newspaper (if held within 6 inches) for a week if you had the time. The point being that the LED's glow just diminishes but still remains quite white making that milking of the batteries I was talking about a thing of the past. Prices on headlamps using the LED system were very reasonable from a headlamp standpoint, starting around $30 and going up to $100. I think we are at the age of the LED. I will be buying one as soon as I can afford to, which as I complete this article I am wondering how I can afford not to.